Our League's alternative to our March 27 auction

[Judge Jude]

so I trailed by just 3 points entering the final category of ERA in the new 100-game projections, and fortuitously had been at the bottom of this 4-5-6-7-8-9 ranking in 162-game projection and so was very much alive:

3.88, 3.90, 3.91, 3.91, 3.91, 3.93

here's how those played out:

3.88 to 3.93, lost 3 points
3.90, no change
3.91 to 3.96, lost 3 points
3.91 to 3.89, gained 3 points
3.91 to 3.92, gained 2 points
3.93 to ..... 3.95, me, I did gain a point

the leader gained 3 points
I grabbed a share of 2nd with my point, and went 5-5 in the tiebreaker
5th with 75 and 6th with 74 - each poised to move up - each lose 3 points instead
meaningless 9th got the other 2 points

so the final tally:
84 (he was last in our 2019 auction league)
79 (me!)
79
76.5
72
71
69.5
65
58.5
46.5
41
37

and that's a wrap!

wait, what? an 82-game schedule?

God help us all.....

[Judge Jude]

UPDATE

so here's my squad if anyone wants to play along this season

NL-only 12-team 5x5, 25-man rosters
no bench, no trades, no transactions
you dance with the 25 gals who brung ya

my last SP Leake is one of 10 of the 300 players chosen so far who will not be competing

projections have me as a contender, though AVG could be an issue. I do have some pop

honestly, I am not enthused enough to want to be doing weekly transactions - I haven't even watched any preseason games yet

but I have a SP in both of Thursday's games so may try to get into it

2 or 3 rivals - all owners participated in this year's bizarro draft in April - have vowed to ignore it due to being disenchanted with baseball. one changed his team name to "See You in 2021"

MY SQUAD

SP - Scherzer, Hendricks, CSmith, PLopez, Cueto, Samardjiza [Leake]
RP - Neris, Knebel, Stanek
INF - C Molina, C Wolters, 1B Rizzo, 3B ESuarez, CI Longoria, 2B Albies, SS DeJong, MI Kendrick, UT BCrawford
OF - Polanco, Eaton, Dyson, Fowler, Naylor, UT Duvall

[Gregg]

UPDATE

so here's my squad if anyone wants to play along this season

NL-only 12-team 5x5, 25-man rosters
no bench, no trades, no transactions
you dance with the 25 gals who brung ya

my last SP Leake is one of 10 of the 300 players chosen so far who will not be competing

projections have me as a contender, though AVG could be an issue. I do have some pop

honestly, I am not enthused enough to want to be doing weekly transactions - I haven't even watched any preseason games yet

but I have a SP in both of Thursday's games so may try to get into it

2 or 3 rivals - all owners participated in this year's bizarro draft in April - have vowed to ignore it due to being disenchanted with baseball. one changed his team name to "See You in 2021"

MY SQUAD

SP - Scherzer, Hendricks, CSmith, PLopez, Cueto, Samardjiza [Leake]
RP - Neris, Knebel, Stanek
INF - C Molina, C Wolters, 1B Rizzo, 3B ESuarez, CI Longoria, 2B Albies, SS DeJong, MI Kendrick, UT BCrawford
OF - Polanco, Eaton, Dyson, Fowler, Naylor, UT Duvall

I am in the same boat regarding enthused. I hope it will change when I have to make my daily moves.

I hope you win your league. Only the strong will get to win this * season.

[Judge Jude]

UPDATE:

my AVG was still at a sorry .195 on Aug. 12 - in just over 500 AB!

since then - kaboom.

I have hit a league-high 14 HR in the last 5 days (after just 33 all season) to go with 35 R, also leading the league.

Rizzo, ESuarez, DeJong, Longoria, Fowler all smacking the apple quite well of late.

my AVG is all the way up to .239 - still only 11th, but adding 6 more AVG pts would net me 5 standings points.

after being at or near the bottom in all hitting cats, I am up to 10th in SB, 8th in HR and R, and 6th in RBI.

biggest liabilities: Albies (.159 in 44 AB and has been out for 4 weeks with an injury), Polanco (.114 AVG in 79 AB), and Dyson (.157 in 51 AB).

in a twist, we implemented our new "keep a player's stats for rest of year if moves to AL" rule for this one. so hoping for a little more out of Dyson and Naylor now.

health is more of a problem on the pitching side - I am missing 5 of my 10: CSmith, Jeff S, Knebel, Stanek, and opt-out Leake.

A CSmith return would be key.

have been stuck in 8th in ERA, Ratio, and K for a month. my ERA is bad - 4.69 - but the bottom 4 range from 5.35 to 6.38 (!, team has 4 Ps and just 97 IP to my 190).

am T-3rd in W and lucky to get 3.5 points so far from Neris 2 SV.

overall, I'm up to perhaps a season-high 49 points and 10th place by a half-point and by 10 points (the latter was another expected contender - but Yelich, JBaez, Strasburg and friends had other ideas).

leader is at 99.5 points, followed by 78, 76, 75. the third and final "money slot" of the 8 teams competing is 76 - a little surprising because the 4 'non-competing' teams are just like us in not being able to replace players. the third-place team has had 24 of 25 players active for most of the season, which is amazing.

it's been a fun exercise - we just didn't have our hearts in the usual grind with all this silliness, but it gives us something to live for.

[Sharky]

JJ - I think you will like the “keep a player’s stats if he gets traded to the AL” rule. We adopted this years ago and never looked back. It just removes an element of random bad fortune. If the goal is to simulate being a GM, you lose players to injury but not because someone else (a real GM) traded your player to the other league. Maybe it will encourage your league to reconsider.

Hope you’re having some fun with this crazy season. And more important, hope you and your league mates are healthy and (reasonably) sane!

[Judge Jude]

end of the year wrapup:

I finished a disappointing 9th - after spending the first several weeks in last place, being 11th on Sept 1, and briefly in 6th 10 day ago

7.5 points HR
8 RBI
6 R
3.5 SB
1 AVG

9.5 W
4 SV (with 5 SV!)
6 ERA
5 Ratio
6 K

5x5 final R$, round by round
1. Scherzer 12
2. Albies 13
3. Rizzo 13
4. ESuarez 16
5. Neris 1
6. Hendricks 25
7. DeJong 8
8. GPolanco 3
9. Eaton 8
10. Dyson 3
11. Molina 5
12. CSmith -3
13. Kendrick 4
14. Longoria 12
15. PLopez 15
16. Cueto -4
17. Samardzija -14
18. BCrawford 14
19. Fowler 5
20. Knebel -9
21. Wolters -1
22. Naylor 2
23. Stanek -10
24. Duvall 18
25. Leake 0

REFLECTIONS
- My Most Valuable Hitter was my last one - Duvall

- The fabled Million Dollar Infield picked in Rounds 2-3-4-7 all failed to have big seasons

- since I was picking only players who had been on my "real" team before, I had to reach for Neris as my only possible closer - and for Dyson, with no other speed on my eligibles list. both backfired

- had 3 SP in double digits - Hendricks 25, PLopez 15, Scherzer 13 - which is good

- my 4th-best pitcher was Neris, worth 1 buck. that's really bad

- the Big Three were worth 53. the Magnificently Bad Seven were worth minus 42 units. 3-man bullpen was minus 18

- I still had more P points than H

- from the 14th round on, found Longoria 12, PLopez 15, Crawford 14, Duvall 18

- winner poached Kershaw, Marquez, and Votto from my eligibles list

finally, we had a funny closing weekend

leader all season was up by 30 - THIRTY! - points with 29 days to go. but he gave all of it back by Friday and after entering final day with a 1.5-point lead, at mid-games he was losing a tiebreaker for the title.

funny, because we had no transactions nor a bench. you just sent whomever of your players was left from the original 25, and play it as it lies.

leader had Blackmon, Muncy, Winker, JD Davis, and Votto all taking the pipe down the stretch, and Merrill Kelly's injury at midseason stung on a roster that had David Price as their second SP pick.

the hard-charging team had Ozuna, W C Smith, deGrom, and Darvish heading the revival.

here's a twist: while all 12 owners participated in this potentially-fruitless exercise in April, several became disgusted with the whole situation. once it went down to 60 games as a season, four owners opted out of the "money" portion for $25 for pot and $5 for site.

the actual winner opted in and collects $130.
the runnerup opted out - nearly won $130 and would have won $50.
that bumped the bronze medalist up to the $50 in runnerup money.
the preseason favorite opted out - and passed me on the final day to claim 8th place.

another expected contender needed a late rally to escape the basement (9 P points, with Strasburg, Paddack, Kimbrel, Lucchesi, Hamels, Quintana as their top 6 picks. minus -18 staff, with only Paddack 6 and final pick Amir Garrett 4 rising above sea level).

64 players out of 300 were sidelined by the final day.

everyone had at least 4 carcasses at that point, except the bronze-turned-silver guy. he lost 25th-round pick Ryan Zimmerman before Day 1 - yet finished with his other 24 intact in one of the most amazing sequences of luck I have ever seen.

we return for our 37th auction come spring - for this auction league, 2020 never happened.

and this Parallel Universe went up in smoke. was fun while it lasted, though