The first week of Yahoo’s Fantasy Baseball covered almost two weeks of the regular season, which included the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics two-game series in Japan on March 20-21 and then the gap until teams started the regular season March 28th, 2019.
Transactions
Right off, I had a significant injury to deal with, Scooter Gennett has a right groin strain and will miss up to 10 weeks of action. Considering he was a vital part of my infield, I had to find a new second baseman. I dropped Brian Anderson and picked up utility player Joey Wendle (INF/OF – Tampa Bay) on March 24 to fill the hole. Since I moved Gennett to the Disabled List, I had a free spot on my roster. After waiting out to see how the season started, I grabbed Marcus Stroman (SP – Toronto) on March 29. He threw seven shutout innings on Opening Day against the Detroit Tigers, so I thought he’d bring the fire to a less powerful Baltimore Orioles team in his next start.
As luck would have it, Wendle got injured with a left hamstring strain, so I needed to cut him on April 1. Kolten Wong (2B – St. Louis) was on fire to begin the season and was still available, so I used my third transaction of the week on him. The guy is currently batting over .400 with a couple of home runs and stolen bases. Experts think his production will go down as the season progresses, but for now, he’ll keep the infield afloat.
I noticed that Odubel Herrera was batting close to .150 with only a few hits and zeros across his batting line, so I decided to drop him in favour of another infielder. I used my final transaction of the week to grab Tim Beckham (INF – Seattle) who is currently day to day with hamstring tightness. I will keep my eye on Herrera as the season progresses, but these other players are only filling in and not really part of my long term plans with the team.
Matchup and Scores
Ondskans Imperium took on Dodge This in week 1 and tied 5-5. It was instead a disappointing finish since we held a series lead of 6-4 for the majority of the week, with a peak of 6-3 on Thursday, April 4th.
When the final out was recorded, Ondskans Imperium had 186 games played and Dodge This had 182, so the opportunity was there to pull out a victory and start the season on a high note. The biggest gripe we have is we lost the Batting Average category based on percentage points. Both teams finished with .284 averages, but when you dig deeper they had 0.28385417, and we only had 0.28370787.
We won all five pitching categories like we planned and lost all five hitting scoring categories. It seems the hitting and batting average category is going to be a harder win than we thought. We will have to retool every now and then to prevent ties every week moving forward.
Standings and Team Stats
The fact we are in fifth place with a 5-5 record is already a win over last season at this time. We started the season with an 0-10 loss and never ever got out of 10th place. I already consider this a success!
In team statistics, we currently sit in the middle of the pack in several categories. In other groups, we are near the bottom. Not what we planned, but it is just the first week of the season.
Where the Matchup is Won and Loss: The Bench Players
One of the biggest things about fantasy sports is bench players. You are only allowed a certain amount of positional players in your line up every day, and sometimes you got to make tough decisions. Then when the guy you put in your line up has a terrible day, and the guy who has sucked has a great day on your bench you want to pull your hair out. I’ve always wondered what could have been with these players at the end of the season, so this year I thought I’d jump on crunching the number early. Here’s the damage from week 1.
Now, these are our numbers, not the other team’s numbers. You have to take that fact into consideration when you try to calculate these numbers in regards to the matchup. With eight additional runs, I could have potentially won the runs category. We still wouldn’t have won the home runs category, and with new numbers, we even lost the RBI category by one. We could have made the stolen bases category much closer but still a loss. Meanwhile, who knows about the batting average, but leaving 21 additional hits on the bench could have broken the “tie” in the matchup’s final totals.
Before you ask, none of my pitchers were on the bench during game days. My relief pitchers are always in the line up because they pitch daily, while my starters get switched around based on their rotation schedule.
Thank you for reading this far down, as you probably figured out by now. I love spreadsheets. I debated on breaking down stats like this last year, but this year I said why not. Sometimes I think about applying for sports writing jobs but have no current writing examples. If I ever return to my writing roots, which was sports, I had to expand what I write about today. Stay tuned for next’s week recap of the Ondskan Imperium 2019 Fantasy Baseball season.
Keeping the Stats 