Week 7 v. Nipple Jeff

With this entry, I will finally be on track again. Expect a regular post on Monday. To start with, it seemed like Nipple Jeff's team would be the weakest I'd faced in a while. He admitted it himself in our chat at the start of the week. Jeff also admitted that rooting against my guys would be rough on him: "this kind of stinks, as I've got a ton of the players on your team, on other fantasy teams....they should come up with a name for that." Well, it looks likes his other teams must have had a nice week for themselves. And for me. For starters, my starting pitching returned to form... and more. Took ERA, WHIP, and wins with awesome numbers, thanks in large part to two great starts from Mark Buehrle, Wakefield, & Lowe and a Joe Saunders shut-out. Tied saves but lost strikeouts. More on Buehrle and strikeouts later.

At the plate, the star was trash-heap pickup Mr. Willy Aybar, whom Jeff owned earlier in the year. Chilly Willy got hot real fast when facing his former team, going six for seventeen with 2 homers, 5 knocked in, and 7 runs scored. Platoon players Kevin Millar, Seth Smith, and David Murphy each had a long ball. This led to victory in the home run and runs categories. My team speed netted me steals, and that was all I needed for a 6-3-1 victory on the week. Still stuck in fourth place in the division and eighth overall, but I was happy to stay there rather than drop again.

The big deal of the week was the trade market - my pitching has been solid, and so I decided to deal from strength. Did I acquire a hitter? I tried to, but in the end I was happy with the deal I made. Sixteen Brendan (whose name should be SEVENTEEN Brendan as that's the actual name of the girl's magazine to which he is addicted) is sitting near the bottom of the standings and had a struggling first rounder in Jimmy Rollins. I also saw he had Mr. Eric Bedard, I player I like but always find the price to be too high. I tried to get them both, and convinced Brendan I was desperate for Bedard, all the while offering solid-producing Dustin Pedroia for Rollins. I ended up getting Bedard for Buerhle. Brendan may get a few more wins out of it, and hopefully I'll get a lot more strikeouts since Bedard has a good K rate (8.95 K per 9 innings) and Buerhle never strikes out anyone. I still may deal pitching away once Hiroki Kuroda comes back and hopefully get some power hitting in return. Somewhat related: Nipple Jeff is also trying to deal away starting pitching, so the market may be crowded. In summary: I'm happy I made a deal, but sad I didn't get Rollins.

In Week 9 I face Single Thong Joe, who got into the league by trying to do something not-so manly and got caught by his girlfriend. That's right, she walked in as he was trying on one of her thongs. She bolted and wouldn't speak to him for over a week. Her dad called Joe and set up a delivery date for her stuff to be handed off to him. Somehow, once she listened to the story of why he was doing such a ridiculous thing (to get into an exclusive ESPN fantasy league), she took him back. Are they still together right now? Will they break up over my approaching victory over Joe? Fingers crossed...