fantasy baseball wrapup

while the year still has one more day left, i've managed yet another up and down fantasy baseball year.

i had three teams this season, all yahoo fantasy baseball. one team was with internet friends and friends of theirs, and the other two were randomly-assigned yahoo 5x5 public league rotisserie jobs.

in the league with people i actually know, i got crushed horribly, sitting ugly in 9th place, although going into today's obligatory beatdown, i am only one point back of eighth place.

my pick to click for this season was carlos zambrano.

his rookie year, real quickly, was 4-8 3.66/1.45 with a 63/93 BB/K in 108.1 IP. 9 HR allowed, along with nine unearned runs.

i made sure to draft him in all three leagues a few rounds before anyone else would likely consider him, and i essentially counted on him to take a step forward from a 13-11 3.11/1.32 with a 94/168 BB/K in 214 IP. 9 HR allowed, and a total of 14 unearned runs given up throughout the season.

this season, carlos went 16-8 with a 2.75/1.21 with a 81/188 BB/K in 209.2 IP, 14 HR allowed, and a total of 9 unearned runs were given up.

barring injury, he looks to be a pretty solid bet to reach 20 wins next season, hopefully maintaining or bettering his stats, which all seem to get slightly better with every passing season, the only blip being an increased total of HRs, 14 as opposed to last year's 9, after he gave up 9 home runs in half as many innings in 2002.

i targeted two more pitchers, but a bad/live draft caused me to not pick them up in that league, which largely went to my demise.

johan santana: he was the twins best pitcher from what i remember last year, but he never got the opportunity to start fulltime. finally somewhere after the ASB, he seemed to get an extended look. i'm too lazy to drop numbers, but after having a first 40% of the season where was something like 2-4 or 2-5 with a 5.10/1.45 ERA/WHIP combo, from approximately mid june, he was untouchable, going something like 18-1 or 18-2 with a 1.something ERA and .080 whip, while leading all of baseball in total strikeouts. johan's final numbers? 20-6 with a 2.61/0.92. 54/265 BB/K in 228 IP, 24 HRs and a scant 4 unearned runs trickled in against him. i would like to note that approximately 16-18 of those HRs came in the first few months of the season, before he went on his incredibly dominant streak and marched to al cy young-dom.

even though i cannot possibly fault the whitesox for shopping paul konerko while his value is as high as it has ever been at any point in his career (.280/41/117), it is indeed hilarious to read stories about how ross gload might make konerko expendable going into next season. gload is a respectable supersub, .323/7/43 with 20/34 BB/K in 226 AB this season. his obp is .380 and his slg is .482, which is what the cubs need... a guy who can put up #s at 2004 ross gload's clip all season next year, but i treally think you'd expose this 27 year old guy who has ~44 games of MLB experience prior to this season if you were to trot him out there everyday.

stranger things have happened, but i've never heard of a fan favorite guy who had a career year being potentially chased out of town by a 27 year old rookie who is impressive for what limited exposure he's had, but a guy who really only has this one season on his resume.

anywyas, i promise more babble later. i need to remember that i have a short attention span.