Okay, so I haven’t written 192 previous blogs on this topic, but I hope you get my point that being a fantasy baseball owner is a frustrating experience for any one of a long list of reasons.
In any event, some of the trading deadline deals have reminded me of yet another foible of the madness of owning an imaginary baseball team.
photo credit: Martin Kingsley
Deadline deals can cause much anguish among fantasy baseball owners.
I have been in an American league-only Rotisserie baseball league since 1986. Earlier this season, one of my fellow owners made what he thought to be an extremely shrewd trade. He dealt Dice-K, Lyle Overbay, and Jhonny Peralta for AAA prospects Daniel Hudson and Brett Wallace.
Other owners immediately wondered if he had opted to play for the future instead of trying to win now. Not at all. His thinking was that Hudson and Wallace would be called up around the All-Star Break by the White Sox and Blue Jays respectively. Thus, they would help him win this year AND he would have their services at our league’s very modest $5 salary for next season—a real bargain.
So in the big picture, he felt he had a trade that MIGHT work out just as well for this season while definitely looking to be a step up for next year.
Instead, he watched helplessly as Wallace got dealt to the Astros while Hudson was sent to the D-backs as part of the deadline deals. On top of that, Hudson has a 6.32 ERA in three starts.
The only consolation is that Dice-K has been up and down, Peralta has been okay, and Overbay has been looking like a first basemen whose days in the lineup are numbered.
Still, it’s hard to play for the future when you have no control over it.
