My good friend Chris Peterson runs this keeper league and invited me to join this season. I took over the team that had finished last in 2001, but it had a fairly strong core of players and I managed to squeak out a win. I identified that closers would be valuable and targeted them in the draft. Through a series of trades giving up pitchers, I replaced Jerry Hairston with Jeff Kent, Juan Uribe with Nomar Garciaparra and Sean Burroughs with Troy Glaus – all of whom are now on my keeper list.
As this was a points based system, Yahoo didn’t calculate our team stats for us so I ran them in Excel once a week. Chris asked if we could add a “League Standings” as if we were playing head to head and so a few days later we added projected standings to the stats using a normalized pythagorean win/loss record based on runs scored/runs against. The fact that the actual standings and the projected standings matched up so closely (the difference attributable to innings and at bats used) showed us that the point system Chris developed is working well to measure the teams against each other.
Best late round draft pick: Durham Bulls, Jose Jimenez RP-Col
Worst early round draft pick: tie, Georgia Peach Fuzz, Geoff Jenkins OF-Mil & Durham Bulls, Juan Uribe SS-Col
Worst keeper: tie, IssaquahIncinerators, Jeff Zimmerman RP-Tex & Durham Bulls, Jeff Weaver SP-Det/NYY