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Go forward to more recent blurbs.

4/29 - When does a surprisingly strong month of April signify a long term change in prowess, and when does it signify an aberration? If you have a guy like Brian Roberts on your roto team, do you try to sell high, or simply enjoy the ride? And how much do you offer in return for a player like that? It’s not an easy issue, and if you are in a league of managers who generally know what they are doing, you are unlikely to be able to make outrageous deals. I guess if you really think the month was a complete fluke, you try to sell and extract some value. But if you think there is a sustainable reason for the production, you hate to find the diamond in the rough and then trade it for a zircon. I guess you have to evaluate your options in light of your position in the league and the caliber and receptivity of your potential trading partners. (Duhhh…!)

There are some interesting pitching matchups this weekend. Tonight, Randy Johnson faces Roy Halladay, Mark Mulder faces Tim Hudson, and then there’s the geriatric special of Greg Maddux against Roger Clemens. Even the matchup of Jake Peavy vs. Brandon Webb has potential to be a tough pitchers duel. On Sunday, we get Jason Schmidt vs. Oliver Perez, Bartolo Colon vs. Johan Santana, and Mark Prior vs. Roy Oswalt. If you are looking for a few pitchers to pick up in the TSN game for the weekend, you have plenty of choices. And when two stud hurlers face each other, sometimes it even works out OK to own both sides of the matchup. Sometimes.

4/28 - When, according to manager Alan Trammell, the Tigers’ offense “snowballed”, it was the first time this week that snow had worked out favorably for Detroit. Not so in Colorado, where the Rockies and Marlins got snowed out. They’ll try to play two today, even though snow is forecast again. Florida doesn’t have any more trips scheduled to Colorado this season, so they’ll probably make an extra effort to endure the elements.

I hope you weren’t relying on Armando Benitez to anchor your relief corps this season. He tore a hamstring covering first base on Tuesday, and is expected to miss four months. I took Billy Wagner as my top closer in the RIBC draft (round 4), and Benitez was taken in the very next pick. I may have dodged a bullet there. (Of course, I also drafted Bonds in round one, so my draft wasn’t bulletproof either.)

There are only 8 MLB games today, 4 of which are scheduled for the afternoon. If you want to goof off at work this afternoon, you’ll have ample diversions. Well, maybe not ample … but diversions nonetheless. The weather may not cooperate, too, although the 12:37 start in Toronto seems pretty safe.

4/27 - Bartolo Colon may have been victimized by “mistakes.” But he didn’t have a corner on that market last night. The slate of starting pitchers was loaded with guys that have had good months. But the list of those who ended up with a red TSNP number is a long one, including not only Colon, but Rich Harden, Carlos Zambrano, Mark Buehrle, Matt Clement, and Rodrigo Lopez. There were others who stayed in positive TSNP territory, but still disappointed, including Pedro Martinez (33) and Jason Schmidt (39). Only one pitcher topped 100 - Johan Santana. And curiously, one of the better performances came from a guy that everyone has been dumping this week, Josh Beckett, with 72 TSNP. Granted, that’s not a particularly good payback for the almost $800K (and counting) TSN Ultimate price losses that he sustained. But it was the sixth best pitching point total of the evening.

Of course, the big news of the night was the Alex Rodriguez explosion. In TSNP, it amounted to 128. When you think of it, it’s amazing that the guy throwing him those gopher ball only suffered a -41 TSNP result. The reason is that five of those runs knocked in by ARod were unearned.

The weather also claimed two games, including the third Detroit game in the past four days. If you have Tiger hitters in your lineup, they haven’t done much for you lately.

Today’s MLB schedule includes eight afternoon contests – weather permitting. And after surveying the weather reports, there are at least few games that may not make it, particularly in the northeast. The Red Sox are scheduled to start at 1:05. Looking out my Connecticut window at 9:30 this morning, I’d say the prognosis is iffy at best.

In GuruGolf, the New Orleans weather looks favorable for at least the first two rounds. Tomorrow morning’s freeze is at 8:15am EDT. Don’t forget it.

4/26 - It’s hard to believe that April is coming to a close. On the other hand, the baseball season is only about 1/8^th complete, so there’s plenty of time to compensate for early mistakes and disappointments. Keep plugging away!

John Garland pitched a complete game shutout last night, his third consecutive 3-digit TSNP game. He may be someone who warrants closer scrutiny. In the TSN games, his buying started heading into this start, and probably will continue. Meanwhile, Oliver Perez finally pitched the type of game that most were expecting from him this year. Until last night, his season TSNP total was -57, and his best outing was a +11. Last night’s +143 may not jump start managers into buying him, but it can’t hurt. And if you have him on a roto team – and probably spent a reasonably high draft pick to get him – this must have been quite a relief.

4/25 - Just for kicks, I ran the baseball sortables for the TSN game to show total hitting TSNP over the last 7 days. I was curious to see how well it correlated with the price changes over the past couple of days. The results were mixed. Victor Diaz, Milton Bradley, and Torii Hunter all had 3 digit gains for the past 2 days combined. The top point producer, Manny Ramirez, is probably too expensive to get much buying action this early in the season. Kevin Mench seems to be the outlier, ranked #4 with a reasonable pricetag (under $5m), but evidently mired in gravity. Maybe he’s the next one to make a move. Or maybe his recent hitting prowess is perceived to be nothing more than a random variation.

There were six players in the Ultimate game who booked gains of $100K or more on Saturday and Sunday combined. Two of them - Inge and Hunter – didn’t even make it onto the playing field for those two days, with snow in Detroit. The last weather forecast that I saw suggests that today’s game will be played, although it will be chilly and damp.

4/22 - Not surprisingly, yesterday was “Dump Beckett” day. It’s not that Beckett has done anything to deserve the shunning. It’s that many TSN managers are unwilling to hold him for a start in Coors Field next week. His ownership fell from about 41% to 29% in one day of trading. Expect the exodus to continue.

Pedro Martinez picked up about half of those roster spots, and didn’t disappoint. Meanwhile, Brandon Lyon has turned the corner (Ultimate price, but not Basic), and the selloff could get ugly. If you need a cheap replacement, there are some interesting choices. And after Dontrelle Willis pitches tomorrow, his situation gets a bit dicey. The Marlins head to Colorado, and although Willis could start in that series finale, the M’s rotation in Colorado looks to be Beckett-Leiter-Burnett, with Willis pitching at Philly on an extra day’s rest. Even so, Willis buyers are likely to be scarce, and if there are sufficient sellers, it might be time to let him blow off some steam as well. It’s your call. I’ll wait to see how he does on Saturday, but I’m leaning toward a “take the money and run” approach.

The scores are low at the Shell Houston Open, and it looks like the cut line could be several stokes under par, assuming that today’s scores are similar to yesterday’s. Gurupie Valkyrie put together a nice round in GuruGolf, posting a -18 with his Pedro Putts team. There was one blemish on the scorecard, though – a lone par on the 11th hole. Still, he lapped the competition by 2 strokes for the round. Well done!

4/21 - LeBron James certainly brought his “A” game. 27 points, 14 assists, 14 rebounds. But New Jersey came from behind to beat a somewhat disinterested Celtics team, and LeBron gets to start golfing.

Special congrats to the winning RIHC team , co-managed by Europeans Swish City and Edgar. Their season started well when they drafted LeBron with the 9th pick in round 1. Don’t expect LBJ to go that deep again, at least not for the next 15 years or so.

If this page looks a bit different today, it’s because I’ve resequenced the left menu to move baseball to the top. I will not be providing stats for any NBA playoff games, so the Hoops items have been shifted to the bottom. For those site visitors who play only Hoops, thanks for your support this season. We’ll look for you again in the fall!

4/20 - The NBA regular season – and fantasy season – wrap up tonight. The Cavs and Nets are the two teams with the most to play for, so any TSN team that doesn’t have LeBron, Kidd, and Carter is really striving for differentiation. Aside from those two teams, there are some seeding battles to be decided – but not many. If you can make it through tonight’s action without a DNP or significantly reduced minutes, you’ve done well.

TSN baseball updated position eligibilities this morning. Fifty players are now eligible at new positions. I posted a list at the message forum if your curious to see which players were updated.

The Shell Houston Open tees up at 8am ET tomorrow. The weekend weather forecast looks pretty good. It looks like we’ll get two undelayed tournaments in a row!

4/19 - If Tim Hudson wants more offensive support, maybe he should ask George Steinbrenner to lambaste his team. The Yankees scored 13 in the second inning, while the Braves have been notching only one per game over the past three days. On the other hand, they only needed one last night.

There were a few fantasy scoring oddities last night. The top pitcher in TSNP was Hudson, with 139. But he didn’t even get the win. Meanwhile, Jaret Wright did get the Yankees win in Tampa, lifting his TSNP output to -22. It’s rare for a winning pitcher to post a negative score. He did outpoint his starting pitching opponent by 119 TSNP, though. Meanwhile, on the hitting side, A-Rod hammered out 118 TSNP – a good total for a winning pitcher.

In the TSN game, we appear to have our first significant price loser among hitters. Xavier Nady managed only one at bat as a late game sub, ceding last night’s starting spot to Dave Roberts, who returned from the DL. Nady was the first significant price gainer this season, and last night was a vivid reminder that “what goes up,…” Based on sampling, his Ultimate ownership dropped from about 44% to 40%, so there is still plenty of room to fall – and I’m sure yesterday’s damage will prompt more selling. Notably, his price dropped only $10K in the Basic game.

If you have any trades left in the TSN Hoops game, you might as well burn them tonight. You’ll have more for tomorrow. Only one NBA playoff team has yet to be determined, and the Cavaliers are on life support. The Cavs and the Nets each play 2 more games, and Cleveland’s magic number is three. Boston gets to play a key role, facing Cleveland tonight and New Jersey tomorrow. If Cleveland can win tonight, they at least stay alive for one more day. A Cleveland loss and a Nets win would sink the ship. So if you are looking for motivated players for tonight, LeBron, Kidd, and Carter would be my top three choices.

4/18 - We’re down to the final three days of the NBA (and fantasy hoops) season, and the current challenge is to keep a full roster of healthy bodies. It seems like all of my teams – TSN, PSC, roto – are getting slammed with DNPs. I know we’re all in the same boat, but it’s not a fun boating experience. Come on, Thursday!

In GuruGolf, we managed to complete an entire tournament without a single stoppage of play. I’m sure Darren Clarke would have preferred a complete washout of yesterday’s round. He was playing shots that I’m used to playing. Twenty-five GuruGolf rosters had Clarke – about 1 in 10. Only 14 had Lonard.

In some ways, worst ball scoring was even more dramatic than best ball. Kevin Na set a blistering pace with a +6 hole in each of the first two rounds. But the leading worstball result was a +61 from monkeyman, who had all four golfers make the cut. For bestball, it’s clear that you want all of your golfers to survive to the final rounds. In worst ball, there is tension between playing well enough to make the cut, and poorly enough to boost the score. I must confess that I don’t think I fully appreciate the nuances of worstball strategy, but it’s an interesting diversion, nonetheless.

In TSN baseball, managers are displaying remarkable patience this season. Look no further than Denny Bautista for evidence. His -54 TSNP outing on April 14th only knocked his Ultimate ownership down from 17% to 13%, which has allowed his price to continue to climb at a healthy rate. The daily pattern suggests that tonight’s gain will be small, and tomorrow will bring a minor loss unless he gets some game day buying, which seems unlikely. But whether it’s patience, or trade scarcity, he’s held up well. Of course, part of the explanation is that he only peaked at 17% ownership. Had he been at 40% and immediately lost 25% of his managers, the damage would have been swifter, and would probably have prompted a chain reaction. But even the top three pitchers in popularity – Beckett, Willis, and Lyon – only appear on about one-third of all Ultimate rosters, so no one appears poised to fall off a cliff. The higher they go, though, the harder they’ll fall. Eventually.

The Red Sox and Blue Jays play at 11:05am this morning. Watch out for the early freeze implications.

4/15 - And the verdict is in. I’m an idiot.

At the end of yesterday’s blurb, I mentioned that for one of my TSN Ultimate baseball teams, I picked up a pitcher yesterday, and it wasn’t Dontrelle Willis. Instead, I opted to take a flyer on Denny Bautista, who would also have a big price week IF he had a decent outing against Seattle. Cheap young pitchers are always fraught with risk, but I figured it was worth a shot on one out of my 5 teams. Oops… After yesterday’s -59 TSNP lesson, I guess I’ll meekly move to Willis… unless some other bright idea occurs to me before this evening.

There are no afternoon baseball games today. I don’t think that’s happened yet this year, and it won’t happen again until next Wednesday. We’ll even have morning baseball on Monday.

The NBA begins its final push tonight, after light activity on Thursday. There are 12 games tonight, and no fewer than 7 on any day thereafter. My trade plans are pretty well mapped out until Wednesday, when we’ll have new trades for one final game. I’ll need to wait until then to figure out which teams will still be motivated, and which teams might be sleep walking that day.

In GuruGolf, the first round not only started on time, but finished on time with no interruptions. Whoa! It’s been quite awhile since we had much (if any) golf to distract us on a Thursday.

4/14 - Shockingly, the first group in the MCI Heritage golf tournament teed off on time this morning. How’d that happen?

If you have Dontrelle Willis on a roto team, it won’t get any better than this. Two starts, two complete game shutouts. I have him in the RIBC (13th round pick), and he’s singlehandedly making my pitching staff competitive. If your league trades actively and your strategy is to sell high, you might want to consider it. I certainly don’t expect Willis to collapse (knock on wood). But somewhere along the line, there will be a period to balance out these two starts. Hopefully, some other pitcher will pick up the slack when Willis returns to the land of mere mortals.

In the TSN game, selling high is a key strategy for wealth generation. If you already have Willis on your TSN roster, you should certainly hold him through at least his next start. The combination of his torrid beginning and the consolidation of 5 days worth of trading for pitcher repricing assures a steady stream of profits for awhile. If you don’t have him, your decision is more difficult. Do you add him immediately to benefit from the current price momentum, realizing that your point production from that slot will be zero for at least the next 4 days? I have the answer!

The answer is: “It depends”. It depends on your trade capacity, and more importantly, on the rest of your pitching staff. If you have a logical sell candidate, then you might want to jump sooner than later. If not, you may want to see how the rest of your staff performs over the next few days. The choice of sure gains vs. unsure points is one of the tensions that makes the TSN game interesting, if not exasperating at times. In this case, I already had Willis on 4/5 of my teams, so don’t have much angst over this particular decision. And on my fifth team, I already sold one pitcher this morning, but didn’t buy Willis. So I guess I made my choice already. Maybe it will work out, maybe not. Maybe I’m an idiot.

4/13 - Twice more we got a reminder that there is no such thing as a safe closer. Yesterday it was Armando Benitez and Danny Kolb who wilted in the ninth. With so many “quality closers” (clearly an oxymoron this month) taking hits, it’s all the more amazing that the saves leader is currently Arizona’s Brandon Lyon, who picked up his fourth last night, which was also his third in the last three nights. As I surmised in yesterday’s blurb, now that TSN Ultimate pitching trades have been refreshed, I’d expect more teams to shift into Lyon, which most certainly will precipitate his inevitable implosion. At least those who got in early got a nice string of points to go with a steady profit stream. The price gains should continue for awhile longer. The points? Your guess is as good as mine. But he’s bound to “go out like a lamb” at some point, probably sooner than later.

In Hoops, there were only five games, but most of the popular players did pretty well. For TSN Ultimate, we now have received our last really useful dole of trades. I know, we get four more for the final day of the season, but with only two teams not scheduled on the final day (Denver and Milwaukee), you won’t need 4 trades to dump your Nuggets and Bucks. Of course, you’ll also have to figure out which other players will ride the pine on that final night. It’s one of the more maddening elements of all fantasy sports. The fantasy season is climaxing, and yet many key players play limited minutes (or not at all) if the game has no impact on playoff positioning.

Don’t forget to set your GuruGolf lineup. The first groups tee off at 7:20 tomorrow – weather permitting, of course. The weather forecast at Hilton Head calls for a 40% chance of showers tomorrow morning, although the rest of the weekend looks reasonably dry and sunny. Even if we don’t get started on time, a Sunday conclusion still seems likely.

4/12 - Maybe I’m just not remembering well. (That’s happening with alarming regularity over the past few years.) But it seems to me that this season in TSN (Ultimate) baseball is most notable so far by of the lack of concentrated player holdings. Based on sampling, the most highly owned player is Shea Hillenbrand. He’s on 48% of all rosters, but most of those teams drafted him before the season started. I avoided Hillenbrand for that reason, but so far he’s produced well enough to hold on. The next most heavily owned player is Xavier Nady (35%), who has benefited from strong hitting in the first week. He was only drafted on 5% of rosters, but has steadily been creeping up. Carl Crawford (30%) ranks third, again based mostly on heavy drafting. To date, Crawford and Hillenbrand rank 41st and 42nd in total TSNP among hitters, so you’d think they’d need to pick it up a bit to hold on to their ownership. The 4th and 5th ranked hitters (by ownership) are Cesar Izturis (21+%) and Aaron Miles (21-%), and no other hitters are on more than 20% of rosters. The top hitting producer, Pat Burrell, finds himself on only 11% of all teams.

On the pitching side, only one is on more than 20% of all rosters, and that’s Josh Beckett (24%), who is also the top point producer so far. Brandon Lyon (17%) ranks second in ownership, and it’s a little surprising to me that he hasn’t attracted more buyers. Maybe that will change when new pitching trades are finally handed out after tonight’s freeze – although there are a couple of cheaper pitchers with more TSNP, so perhaps the cheap pitcher buys will be spread around. The only other pitcher on more than 10% of rosters is Jeremy Bonderman (13%), and it’s unlikely that he’ll be gaining over the next few days after his weekend whomping.

One of the primary complaints about the TSN game format is that the pricing mechanism encourages a lot of roster convergence to the same players. So far, that doesn’t seem to be the case this year, perhaps in part because there are not many players who have generated a “gots to have” pace in the first week. But there are a few players who I would have thought would have been more in pursuit. Maybe that will still be the case, but for now, there seems to be a greater degree of diversity than I’m accustomed to. And frankly, that’s probably a good thing.

4/11 - The most improbable aspect of Tiger’s miracle birdie on hole #16 is that he followed up with 2 bogeys. At the time, I thought that Tiger had closed it out. But there was more drama to come. Golf isn’t always a gripping spectator sport, but this was a “must see” finish.

Congrats to the two winners of the GuruGolf prizes for the Masters. The winner of the best ball scoring was Liters. His score of -40 tied for first, but his superior financial value wins the tiebreaker. In the worst ball contest, the winner was WB – The Other Side, who showed that “slow and steady” was the best approach this week. There were some spectacular early rounds for worst ball, but the winner simply ground it out, including three guys who made the cut.

The next GuruGolf prizes will be for the cumulative scores for the 9 tournaments that lead up to the U.S. Open. Once again, the prize will be a sleeve of RotoGuru logo golf balls for the best cumulative score in best ball (Titleist) and worst ball (Top Flite) competition. If a GuruPatron wins, the prizes are doubled. I’ll call this contest the “Spring to the Open”. Hopefully, these modest inseason prizes provide some extra interest, and also provide some prize opportunities for late starting teams and mulligan opportunities for lousy starting teams.

The NBA season has just 10 days remaining. For the TSN game, significant roster differentiation is tough to attain, as four players each appear on more than 90% of the top 100 Ultimate rosters. However, there are still plenty of viable options. At this point, your roster choices may need to be dictated by your competitive position. If you are protecting a lead, you probably want to match up closely to your closest competitor(s). If you are chasing a leader, then you want to differentiate in at least several key positions. And if you are in a close race, you probably just put out the best roster you can and hope your judgments are correct.

And baseball continues to gain momentum. There’s no shortage of information to be reviewing. As someone with no competing “day job”, it’s all I can do to stay focused on all of my teams’ needs. For those of you who have to earn a paycheck as well, I don’t know how you do it. I guess you need to have plenty of personal RAM so that you can multi-task in the extreme without risk of freezing up.

4/8 - Billy Casper’s scorecard looks like what I’d expect to shoot if I ever got to play a round in the Masters. Well, OK, I probably couldn’t score that well from the championship tees, but it has the look of a scorecard that I’m very familiar with. It’s almost disappointing that Casper opted not to sign it, thereby keeping his name out of the Masters record book for both the highest round (106) and the highest single hole (14). Seems like that would have been a glorious badge of honor. But then, I suppose I don’t have a good perspective on the mindset of a former Masters champion.

Only one GuruGolf foursome had Casper in it, and even though Casper won’t contribute anything further to the team results, that worstball score is going to be a tough one to catch over the final 3-1/2 rounds. Kudos to JeffG for an inspired pick.

In baseball, add Shingo Takatsu to the list of closer implosions for the week. His -40 TSNP score isn’t as spectacular as the on-field collapse would suggest, in part because he left the game tied. In fact, his bullpen mate, Luis Vizcaino, followed with a -71 TSNP debacle to complete the meltdown.

There were only 3 NBA games last night, but they produced two triple doubles. On was from Jason Kidd, who leads the league in TDs this year. The other was more surprising, because Kobe Bryant was a game time decision, and with the Lakers officially eliminated, it seemed unlikely that he’d put in a full night’s work. Go figure.

4/7 - Blown saves are already making some of the biggest headlines in the opening week of the season. Mariano Rivera has gotten the most notoriety, blowing back-to-back games against Boston. True, if Alex Rodriguez had turned a double play yesterday, Mo would have earned a shaky save. But Rivera set up his fate by allowing the bases to be loaded.

There have been other spectacular collapses as well. Braden Looper turned a 6-4 lead into a loss at Cincy on Monday. Trevor Hoffman gave up 4 runs in the ninth at Colorado on the same day. Bob Wickman took a 3-0 lead yesterday and lost 4-3 in the blink of an eye. Some TSN managers like to load up with closers at the start of the season, hoping to avoid an early Smoltz-like implosion. But as this week reminds us, closers as just as combustible as starters.

What isn’t combustible, though, is anywhere near a PGA Tour event golf venue. As usual, today’s first round of the Masters has been officially delayed until afternoon at the earliest, and the weather outlooks that I’ve found suggest that the current opening tee times of 12:30pm are probably wishful thinking. A total washout is still very plausible, although with a smaller field than for a normal tournament, even an opening round could get squeezed into a cooperative afternoon. It just remains to be seen how cooperative this afternoon turns out to be.

4/6 - Perhaps John Smoltz will decide the bullpen wasn’t such a bad place after all. It seems like every year, some popular pitcher gets reamed in an early start, dating back to an infamous -100 TSNP outing from Ramon Martinez back in April, 2000. Smoltz posted a -83, which isn’t quite as spectacular as some disasters, but still stings if you had him.

I just checked the weather forecast for Augusta, GA for tomorrow’s opening round of the Masters. Predictably, it reads “Variable clouds with thunderstorms - possibly severe in the afternoon. High 69F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall possibly over one inch.” Same old, same old. Showers are also in the Friday and Saturday forecasts. As you assemble your fantasy golf foursome, make sure you find some good “mudders”.

I activated the baseball Assimilator roster copy function yesterday. You can now directly copy in the last frozen roster from the TSN or PSC game sites. This feature makes it much easier to monitor your competitors’ rosters, if you like to do that.

NBA players continue to drop like flies. Last week, Grant Hill and Kobe vaporized. Last night it was Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and Dirk Nowitzki’s status is also in limbo, pending results of an MRI on his knee. It’s getting to be a real challenge to keep a roster full of healthy players. In fact, “healthy players” is probably too constraining an objective. I’ll settle for “able to play”. The season ends in two weeks (some would say the season really begins in two weeks, but that isn’t a fantasy perspective). Soon, injuries won’t be the only variables, as some teams look to get their key players a little extra rest prior to the playoffs. That always makes the end of the fantasy season a maddening exercise.

4/5 - I think that most of the baseball data is updated properly in the sortable stats and the Assimilator. There are probably a few minor glitches that will need to be resolved, and there are still a few features that need to be activated, including the ability to copy over rosters from the TSN and PSC game sites directly into the Assimilator. Those features should be activated within the next few days. Meanwhile, let me know if you detect any other issues that require attention – large or small.

While baseball was just getting started, the NBA took a one day hiatus. And two other RotoGuru contests reached their conclusion:

• The overall winner of the Market Madness Contest is kevmarbury3, with a total score of 669. (A perfect slate would have earned a score of 970 this year.)
• The best result excluding basket units was by BasketCase. Although his entry includes two basket units on the short side and one on the long side, those results were zeroed out for the purpose of this award, and the entry is valid according to the “no basket” contest rules.
• There are also several additional GuruPatron awards, including some booby prizes. Give me a few days to sort it all out. All winners will be notified via email within the next week.
• In GuruGolf, the March to the Masters contest is compete. This contest awards prizes to the top finishers for the previous five tournaments, starting with the tournament at Doral and finishing with yesterday’s rain-shortened BellSouth Classic. The winner is Smith32 with a 5 week total of -209, a three stroke victory. The corresponding worstball winner is Let’s Play Fair, with a total of +197, a two stroke victory. Both of these winners will receive RotoGuru Logo golf balls. Again, emails will be sent out shortly with info on claiming these prizes.

4/4 - I’m working on baseball stats processing. Hopefully, everything be in decent shape by tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, pardon my reticence today while I immerse myself in some programming updates.

4/1 - Now it feels like baseball season. Juan Gonzalez has been put on the DL.

The first few days of baseball season are busy ones at RotoGuru World headquarters. Since I track “eligible games”, I need to properly identify the opening 25-man rosters for each of the 30 teams. That will happen during the first few days next week. I’ll also have to dust off my stats tracking mechanics, starting on Monday morning with the Red Sox-Yankees box score. This will be the 8th opening day for baseball since the inception of RotoGuru.com, and I should have the process down by now. But it may be a day or two into next week before everything is sorted out to my satisfaction.

The first freeze for the TSN game is Sunday night at 8pm. The first repricing won’t occur until Tuesday night however. Unless you plan to have some Boston and/or New York players, there’s no compelling reason to have your lineup in place by Sunday night. However, if you are not planning to have a full roster for opening night, you should really have a completely empty roster instead. Because any player sells you make after 8pm on Sunday will count as trades, regardless of whether your roster is valid or not.

This week’s PGA event, the BellSouth Classic, hasn’t even started yet, and the weather forecast for the rest of today looks pretty ominous. It’s quite possible that the first hole might not get played until tomorrow.

2005: March . . . February . . . January

Click here for prior daily blurbs, by month: