D-Day Approaches

The draft is tomorrow and I'm exhausted already.

On Tuesday, I met with Lumbergh and his co-owner, who we'll call Tweedledee, mostly because he failed to reveal any distinguishing characteristics about himeself during the meeting. We gathered at the same midtown pub/restaurant where Lumbergh and the Thin Man met me a few weeks ago. This time, I followed Tweedledee's lead and ordered a beer. I needed it.

I had just finished my own league's fantasy baseball draft the night before and had spent that entire day furiously cramming for the draft, which didn't do me as much good as I would have liked. My team is fine, but I've left myself plenty of work to do during the season to make sure I win. That's fine, a little competition isn't bad. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time for it with the two other leagues I'm in, plus a baby's imminent arrival.

In any case, I came to the lunch meeting prepared to talk about my auction strategy and the kinds of players we should be going after. I waxed poetic about the economics of the salary cap and how we should be conservative with star players and instead target below-market values across the board. With 17 fantasy teams choosing from a pool of 24 major league teams to fill 23 roster spots, it's going to be challenging to find quality players at each position. The fact that 6 major league teams are left out of the bidding is a little discouraging, since so many good "sleepers" are on those teams: Royals, Orioles, Mariners, Nationals, Pirates and Padres. To be sure, those are the worst teams in baseball, but there's no need to leave them out.

My strategy session was met with approval from Tweedledee and complete bewilderment from Lumbergh, who was only interested in whether I thought Luis Castillo and Daniel Murphy would be good players to have. Clearly, I am going to have to balance their desire to win with their preference for crappy Mets role players. But with 391 players being drafted tomorrow, I'm going to have scrape the bottom of the barrel at some point, so it might as well be with Mets.

After a long, trying ordeal, I was able to download a fantastic auction draft software that will really help me during the draft. For some reason, it's only compatible with Windows, and I have a Mac, so I had to dig deep into the abyss of moving boxes in my apartment to resuccitate my old Dell in time for tomorrow.

Adam is going to come and be my assistant GM for a bit tomorrow, which will be helpful as I get my feet under me in this foreign auction format. I think it will be a lot of fun, but also incredibly draining. 12 hours of constant chess matches and poker faces with a room full of hardcore lawyers. I am counting mostly on my knowledge of baseball to keep from being eaten alive. I'm well prepared, but it's also my rodeo, so we'll just have to see how it all plays out.

8:00 a.m. tomorrow it begins. Nice way to start the weekend.