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6/30 - June is ending, so the baseball season must be halfway over. A quick review of MLB standings suggests that the actual midpoint (based on game count) isn’t until next Monday or Tuesday, which makes sense, given that the season starts several days into April, the early schedule is lighter than average, and the season extends into a few days of October. Whatever.

After disappointing stints with several closers, I essentially decided to avoid them the rest of the way (see June 7th blurb). At that time, I even remarked that Chad Cordero was the top ranked closer (total TSNP), but that most of his points had come in the previous 10 days. I decided not to get him, as the likelihood that he would continue that pace seemed remote.

Oops!

He’s not only the top reliever over the past month, but the top pitcher overall. In fact, make that the top player, as he’s more than 150 TSNP ahead of Pujols for the last 30 days. I’m certainly not about to chase him now, but those who have held him have gotten a very nice return, both financially and statistically. Go figure.

The Western Open got off to a delayed start this morning. It’s possible that everyone won’t finish round 1 today, although the weather sounds like it will cooperate for the rest of the weekend.

6/29 - Five days ago I mused that it was probably the right time to release Dontrelle Willis. Naturally, I failed to heed my own advice. Sometimes it’s frustrating to be right. Willis’ total of -9 TSNP might not be aptly called a “meltdown”, but at the time I had to choose between dropping either Willis or Halladay, and I opted to drop Halladay. I had a rationale at the time, but today it escapes me. Actually, I had planned to add back Halladay for today, and I actually did that on several teams, but not on my top team, as I figured that I wouldn’t want to hold him for his next outing at Fenway Park (so watch him shut down the Red Sox). Oh well, it’s long season, and every team will make decisions that work out spectacularly, and others that are regrettable.

There are six afternoon games today, so if you have roster moves to make, check the schedules. Forty percent of all players will be frozen early.

In golf, the Western Open tees off at 8am ET tomorrow morning. If you are running lean on trades, you’ll need to be careful over the next 3 weeks, as many of the golfers in the British Open field will miss the two bookend tournaments. At the golf forum you can find a link to the preliminary field for next week’s John Deere Open, which might help you save a trade or two. Early commitment lists are never foolproof, but there will certainly be a significant overlap between the early commitments and the actual field. Similarly, if you are looking ahead to the British Open, you can find a list of entries at the www.opengolf.com site. So there is a fair amount of information available if you choose to do the research.

6/28 - It was kind of a slow night. Only 8 MB games were played, and none of the pitchers threw a monster game, although several were certainly respectable. A couple of hitters were in the TSNP 60s, but most of the popular hitters had limited success.

Tonight offers a full slate, and several popular pitchers are starting, including Willis, Halladay, and Buehrle. There are also a few interesting options for those who prefer to take the road less traveled, like Schmidt, and perhaps Clemens in Colorado.

I was plotting out my next few pitching cycles, and realized that the All Star break is already in view. Guys who pitch on Friday of this week will get only one more start before the break! It won’t be long before we start to figure out what the rotations will look like coming out of the break.

6/27 - If you managed to trade for Mark Prior on your roto team after his latest injury, you’re probably feeling pretty shrewd this morning. If you dumped him at that time, fearing the worst, you probably feel duped. The early reports suggested that he might return before the end of the season, but sounded pretty ominous. But he missed only a month, and his first start yesterday, against the White Sox, was pretty encouraging. Of course, this is Mark Prior, whose history suggests that the next injury can never be too far away.

I must confess that, although I almost never watch women’s golf, I found the USGA Women’s Open yesterday to be more compelling than the men’s event. Annika, of course, spent the whole event practicing her best Retief Goosen imitation, although Michele Wie ultimately showed that she was the one who had mastered it. It’s hard to criticize a 15-year old, however. Wie plans to play in the John Deere Classic next week, so I guess I’d better make her eligible in GuruGolf, since someone will probably decide to take a flyer.

I am making a minor rules adjustment in GuruGolf, beginning this week. Previously, to be eligible for replacement by a provisional golfer, the replaced golfer must have been listed in the tournament field sometime during the week. I have decided to include field alternates as well, since it seems that there is a legitimate reason to put them in a foursome (or to leave them in a foursome) if there is a realistic chance that they will play. The rules (at the game site) have been updated to reflect this adjustment.

6/24 - I keep expecting Dontrelle Willis to melt down – not emotionally, but statistically. Yet, after a stretch of games in which his performance was very mediocre (but never terrible), he throws a complete game shutout, good for 158 TSNP. Fortunately, I still had him on all of my TSN teams, where I’ve owned him nonstop since late May. I keep thinking that I’ll move him, but it has always seemed to be more important to adjust some other pitching slot, and Dontrelle has hung around. This is probably the time to move him, going out in a blaze of glory. But, at least on some of my teams, I think I’ll stick around for another start. Probably a mistake.

I glanced at the year-to-date TSNP stats this morning, and pitchers continue to dominate. 21 of the top 30 are pitchers, with hurlers like Livan Hernandez, Brandon Webb, and Jeremy Bonderman all ranked ahead of hitters like Sheffield, Soriano, Delgado, Dunn, and Manny Ramirez, to name a few. Of the nine hitters in the top 30, four are eligible only at 1B (Lee, Pujols, Teixera, and David Ortiz), so it’s hard to benefit from more than a couple of them. So far this season, my top TSN team has averaged about 1300 TSNP from each pitching slot, but only about 780 from each hitting slot. I have no comparison to make against prior years, but that seems like a pretty substantial imbalance on the surface. If you factor in the trade advantage for pitchers, however – you can trade a pitcher every 11.6 days (on average), but you can trade a hitter only every 21 days – then maybe the imbalance isn’t so unusual.

6/23 - Jason Schmidt is having a Jekyll & Hyde season. His last two outings have been Jekyll-ish, so I suspect it’s time to Hyde now. (Note: See Johnson, Randy.) Buyer beware.

Ten MLB games are on today’s docket, and five of them are afternoon games. Then, starting tomorrow, we get one last burst of interleague activity, with eight A.L. teams playing in DH-less NL parks. Plan accordingly.

6/22 - Ooops!

Picking up Randy Johnson for yesterday’s Yankees Stadium start against Tampa Bay seemed like a good idea at the time. Through the first inning, it continued to look decidedly non-stupid, as Randy struck out the first 2 batters he faced. Then came the second inning. Walk – pop out – home run – home run – single – triple – single… The third inning wasn’t much better. Mercifully, Johnson didn’t answer the bell in the top of the fourth, and miraculously, the Yankees teed off for 13 runs in the 8th inning, taking Randy off the hook for a loss.

Randy wasn’t the only starter to be victimized, nor was he the worst casualty. In fact, four starters did worse, including -133 TSNP from Chan Ho Park vs. LAAoA, almost topping (bottoming?) the -138 from Yankees batting practice pitcher Travis Harper. Perhaps the most notable of the other pitching debacles was Brett Myers (-66 TSNP), since he was the most widely owned pitcher in TSN Ultimate.

If you had both Johnson and Myers, you had an interesting opportunity last night. If you also had a player in one of the late games (perhaps Jason Phillips or Mike Matheny), you could have dumped that player prior to the late game time and left the slot empty, thereby invalidating your roster for the night and getting the benefit of zero points, rather than a big negative. That tactic is not riskless or costless, since a trade is used, and since some active players are probably still unfinished at that point. But if you have a big negative overhang, the cost and the risk might worth it. There aren’t many times that this potential tactic comes into play, but last night was one in which I know some teams not only considered it, but exercised it. Something to bear in mind if you haven’t considered it before.

By the way, if you avoided both Myers and Johnson, nice going. With all the hitting going around, you probably had a good relative point total. And if you added Smoltz, Bonderman, or Garland, it was probably a banner night.

The Barclay’s Classic tees off at 7am ET tomorrow morning. Don’t forget to set your GuruGolf roster. Scores are bound to be lower than last week!

Today I welcome a new “Sponsor of the Month” at RotoGuru.com. If you frequent other bookmaking sites, you may want to compare your favorite site to myBet.com. The following is taken from the “About us” page at myBet.com:

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6/21 - After several days of disappointing results from pitchers ranked in the top five in TSN Ultimate ownership, it was nice to get some stellar totals from two guys who were ranked #7 and #11 in ownership. Jake Peavy and Chris Carpenter combined for 314 TSNP, and Carpenter dropped 18 TSNP in the 9th inning – although if you owned Felipe Lopez along with Carpenter, you had a net gain in that inning as well.

Today is Randy Johnson day. After being plagued by inconsistency and mediocrity for most of the season, Unit has thrown a couple of studly games back to back, and the buys seem to be trickling in – although Tuesday is not a day when buys tend to mount up. In most recent years, Johnson would be on all contending rosters for almost every start. This morning, he only ranks #18 in total ownership, behind such marquis hurlers as Bruce Chen and Gustavo Chacin.

6/20 - The U.S. Open certainly didn’t follow the pre-ordained script. Well, that’s not quite true. It followed Michael Campbell’s script, as he later described: “I snuck in there, and without anybody noticing, I won.” He wasn’t totally camouflaged, although, as three GuruGolf teams somehow found him.

Here are the GuruGolf prize winners for the U.S. Open:
Best Ball: Green Hornet (-34, Funk, Clark, Herron, Oglivy)
Worst Ball: WB-Barrington (+66, Cabrera, Couples, Ogilvie, Daly)

There are three tournaments between the U.S. Open and British Open. The next prize contest will cover those three weeks – the “Open Faced Sandwich” contest. The same rules apply as in previous contests.

In baseball, you would have done well to choose the road less traveled this weekend. The most popular TSN pitching choices on Saturday and Sunday – Willis, Halladay, Pedro, and Santana – combined for 110 TSNP, an average of about 27 per start. At least they all posted positive scores, although Pedro’s +8 was a close call – and probably the also most surprising result, given his career dominance over the Mariners. Go figure.

6/17 - Birdies were few and far between at the U.S. Open yesterday. Of the players listed in the GuruGolf game, the average number of under par holes in round #1 was only 1.8 per player. In a “normal” week, that average is typically between 3-4, and even for the Masters, the average was 2.3. This will not be a good week to get stuck with only one golfer for the weekend, and even having only two won’t assure a negative team score. The cut line will include only the top 60 plus ties, plus anyone within 10 strokes of the lead. If no one takes command in round 2, the latter criteria could be huge.

Randy Johnson threw his second consecutive stud-like game last night, a complete game with 11 strikeouts. His last two games have totaled 299 TSNP, conjuring up memories of the Randy Johnson of old. He started the season with a TSN price of $8.9m, but it has drifted down to $8.17m in the Ultimate game and only $7.53m in the Basic game. That’s certainly no bargain price, but if he strings together a few more starts like these, it’ll be his low water mark for awhile.

The weekend offers a fair amount of pitching congestion. Willis, Pedro, and Halladay all work on Saturday, while Santana and Peavy face each other on Sunday. Chris Young also starts on Sunday, and while he isn’t yet in the same class as the others I listed, he is currently the fourth most widely owned pitcher in the TSN Ultimate game. Most teams won’t have all six of those guys working, although I’ll bet some do.

Happy Fathers Day to all of you Dads out there. Enjoy your weekend!

6/16 - The U.S. Open teed off this morning, and while many are remembering this as the 6th anniversary of Payne Stewart’s Open win at Pinehurst, it’s also the first anniversary of the launch of GuruGolf. Last year, GuruGolf began regular season action with the U.S. Open, and while the scoring was pretty brutal for that event, the game got off to a solid start. This year, with 17 events (and related price changes) already in the books, teams can generally afford a slightly better foursome than for last year’s Open. Of the regularly active teams, about 15% are now worth $5000 or more (from a starting point of $4000). The median franchise value is around $4700. Next week is the midpoint of the season, so a simple extrapolation of value gains to date would suggest that the season will end with median franchise values in the mid $5000s.

The most expensive foursome would currently cost just under $7000 (Singh, Woods, Mickelson, & Els), so it’s quite possible that no team will ever be able to afford that team, although the richest teams are on pace to get close. But it looks like most teams are going to have to continue to find values from mid-tier players – and I think that’s a good result. If nothing else, it fosters greater roster differentiation.

Last night was a good one to leave most starting pitchers on the sidelines. The top two TSN price gainers, Adam Eaton and Jon Garland, combined for -18 TSNP, and Garland’s +33 contribution to that total was thanks mostly to his team’s ability to score 12 runs. Eaton not only suffered negative points, but he also sustained a hand injury that may result in some time off. Sucks if you have him. Probably also sucks if you are him.

6/15 - So much for the extra offense supplied by the DH in American League parks. Five pitchers threw complete games last night. That’s about a typical week’s supply. In addition, David Wells flirted with a no hitter, and a couple other pitchers had very high quality starts. Meanwhile, the most widely held pitchers in the TSN game were Johan Santana, Jake Peavy, and Josh Beckett, and that trio combined for only 128 TSNP, which would have individually ranked as only the 8th best result.

GuruGolf: Get your U.S. Open lineups set today. The opening tee time is bright and early tomorrow morning (7am ET). So far, more than 100 different golfers appear on rosters, with no golfer dominating the selections. There are also 33 golfers in the field who are not currently available in GuruGolf. If you would like to select one of them, please send me an email today and I’ll make the golfer available at $500. See the forum for the names of the unlisted golfers.

6/14 - I had decided to tough out the latest losses for Roy Halladay and Dontrelle Willis over the past 5 days, and it was expensive, as the two dropped a little over $600K combined (TSN Ultimate $). With Halladay facing St. Louis, I was concerned that this might have been a bad time to stick it out, but I decided to remain with the plan, even after Halladay’s losses mounted up a bit heavier than I had initially expected. So I was very relieved to get such a nice payback last night, as the two combined for 247 TSNP, including a complete game from Halladay. If I had known what the magnitude of losses would be in advance, I might have bailed. I even thought long and hard about moving from Halladay to Clemens a few days ago, when it was pretty much assured that the next three days for Halladay would cost $300K+. But I ended up falling back on my mantra, “When in doubt, do nothing.” And this time, nothing worked out just fine.

We’re in A.L. parks this week, so N.L. pitchers don’t get to face opposing pitchers, and N.L. hitters get some extra at bats. Set your lineups accordingly. Or, if you can’t figure out how to adjust, then just do nothing. Sometimes that works out just fine.

6/13 - Washington DC was apparently the sports capital of the country this weekend. Mike Tyson uttered “no mas” for his fight and career. Tom Kite held the third round lead in the Booz Allen Classic, but Sergio Garcia closed him out (and the rest of the field) on Sunday. And the Nationals are en fuego. In fact, the Phillies have won 9 out their last 10, and during that span they fell a game further behind the Nats.

If the baseball playoffs were to start today, the AL teams would be the White Sox, Twins, Orioles, and Angels. The NL would be represented by Cardinals, Nationals, Padres, and Phillies. No Yankees. No Red Sox. No Braves. Of course, it’s only mid-June. The playoffs don’t start today.

Congratulations to the winners of the GuruGolf “Spring to the Open Contest”. In the best ball competition, oscobol370 came from eight strokes back to win by a value tiebreaker over Hole in the Head, who had been leading for several weeks running. In the worst ball contest, Cheeseboy pulled away from the field, posting the best (worst) score for the final tournament, and winning the 9-week contest by 23 strokes.

The U.S. Open is this week, and the standard logo golf ball prizes are offered for the top best ball and worst ball results for this week alone. If you haven’t been keeping up with your team, you might as well take a flyer this week. Who knows?

6/10 - I guess you could say I was both right and wrong. A couple days ago, I commented that I thought that TSN pitching rosters were converging toward the same guys, namely Halladay, Pedro, Santana, and Willis. Those four pitchers are all still among the most heavily owned. And yet, each of them has sustained net sells over the last two days, enough so that only Santana looks like he’ll enjoy a net price gain leading up to his next start. My guess is that many teams will still continue to hold them, at least through the next start. Pedro works on Sunday, and Willis and Halladay are scheduled for Monday, although the weekend weather in Miami looks very tenuous, so Willis may or may not get pushed back.

Many of those teams who dumped Halladay, Pedro, or Willis picked up Josh Beckett. In fact, those three pitchers experienced about 2500 combined sell in the past two days, which is just about equal to the buys for Beckett. The financial reward will have to suffice, however, as Beckett melted down in the seventh inning and ended up with -23 TSNP. A Pyrrhic victory of sorts.

6/9 - Whenever the pitching slate is loaded with widely held starters, the results seem to underwhelm. Yesterday, Johan Santana came through with a 172 TSNP monster, but Halladay, Willis, Peavy, and Chris Young each failed to produce a stellar result, even though none were particularly bad (although Peavy’s game against Cleveland can hardly be considered satisfactory). The pitchers to have avoided were Tim Hudson and Chris Capuano, both of whom finished in red numbers. If you got stuck with Capuano’s -45 TSNP, hopefully you had A. Rod as well, to cancel out some of the burn.

The Booz Allen Classic teed off in hot and humid Washington DC this morning. Of the roughly 250 active teams in GuruGolf, only Jim Furyk appears on as many as 1-in-5 rosters – barely. Overall, 120 different golfers are represented in at least one foursome. There have been weeks when one or two golfers dominate the landscape, but not this week.

6/8 - I feel an impending convergence in the force.

In the TSN game, as roster values bulk up, I suspect that pitching choices are going to be more and more similar. Pedro is going to be showing up for most of his starts. Ditto for Johan Santana and Roy Halladay. Maybe even Dontrelle Willis. Of course, this is all dependent on those pitchers continuing to put up strong numbers, and of the four, I’d rank Willis as the most speculative, despite his fast start. If I’m right, you may only have 3-5 starts per week to differentiate your team’s pitching performance.

If you don’t have Pedro yet, wait until Sunday, however. A Tuesday starter is seldom a good buy on Wednesday, no matter how strong his outing was. There are plenty of good pitching options today, and Pedro is a good bet to be widely moved into Halladay, Willis, Santana, or maybe even Jake Peavy.

Overall, pitchers seem to have the upper hand this season. Using total TSNP as the guide, 18 of the top 25 producers this season are pitchers, as are 16 of the next 25. Last year, only 23 of the top 50 point producers were pitchers (on June 7th). Home run production is down this year, by roughly 2-3 HRs per day. Scoring is also down, by roughly 6 runs per day. Maybe those differences won’t persist. Or maybe they’ll widen. I don’t think these differences necessarily argue for a relative shift in roster composition. But it is interesting to ponder.

6/7 - Just for kicks, I looked up last year’s total TSNP as of June 6th. Here is the list of the top five players:

1121 Benitez, Armando
1072 Johnson, Randy
1037 Rivera, Mariano
1028 Graves, Danny
1025 Clemens, Roger

6/6 - In the TSN game, the key to pitching success is often wrapped up in picking the right pitchers. And that includes avoiding the wrong ones as well.

This weekend, the list of wrong ones certainly included Javier Vazquez, who got shelled for -79 TSNP in Philly on Saturday afternoon. Other good ones to miss were Mark Mulder (-73), Jason Schmidt (-38), and Rodrigo Lopez (-58). There were more spectacular collapses, but the ones I listed are the ones who were more likely to be owned.

Once again, we embark on interleague play. Watch out for AL teams in NL parks – and that list includes every AL team this week. It may not be the regular DH that sits, but some regular will be a casualty each day.

We have only one week remaining in GuruGolf’s Spring to the Open contest. Team Hole in the Head enjoys an 8 stroke lead heading into the last tournament, but it ain’t over yet. Team Cheeseboy has a 5 stroke lead in the worstball competition. Of course, the GuruGolf season doesn’t end after this week. It’s just the end of the contest for the best cumulative result for the 9 events between the Masters and the U.S Open.

6/3 - If you are planning ahead for your TSN pitching moves, next Wednesday shapes up as a very crowded day. Currently, the following guys are projected to start next Wednesday: Pedro, Santana, Willis, Halladay, Vazquez, Carpenter, Hudson, Capuano, and Chris Young. Those guys all show up on a fair number of TSN teams – and some are very widely owned. It’s hard to efficiently manage a pitching staff when all of the popular options pitch on the same day, but managers are going to have to figure it out over the next week.

Frankly, I haven’t worked it all out for my teams yet, but at least there is no temptation to include some closers in the mix for now. Lately, it seems that closers are imploding left and right, with B.J. Ryan being the most notable example. In yesterday’s game against Boston, his final pitch knocked 85 TSNP from his potential output, when David Ortiz hit a 2-out, 3-2 pitch for a 3-run home run, turning a 4-3 Oriole win into a 6-4 Red Sox comeback. My plan had been (and still is) to turn Ryan into Roy Halladay on several teams today, but trying to squeeze one final save out of Ryan turned out to be costly. I have no qualms that it was the correct tactical decision. But sometimes correct decisions blow up. Oh well.

In GuruGolf, Jack Nicklaus had a very nice round going until he bogeyed 3 of the last 4 holes to drop to +3. Even so, he did much better than such notables as V.J. Singh (+5), Davis Love III (+6), and Fred Funk (+6). I noted a few days ago that the reduced field this week means that a higher percentage of golfers will make the cut. But it looks like the small cut list will still include some big names – although a Friday recovery is always possible for any of these guys.

6/2 - I hadn’t really noticed until the last few days, but somehow Brian Giles has moved into the top three outfielders in year-to-date TSNP. Evidently, a few others have noticed, as he’s gained a couple hundred grand over the past four days. Of course, ever since I noticed him, he’s put up a grand total of -3 TSNP over the past three days, so I don’t expect him to be an imminent price train. But until a few days ago, I hadn’t paid any attention to him at all.

Speaking of Giles, Gurupie rockafellerskank figured out a TSN Ultimate roster that could have been drafted and left dormant since opening day – that would currently rank #1. Here’s a forum link to that roster, which would be worth a little over $55m today, but would have a boatload of trades (27P/27H) available to screw itself up.

There are a few afternoon games today, so plan your trading and lineup-setting accordingly.

6/1 - Kenny Rogers has suddenly become Mr. Consistency. In his last seven starts, he’s averaged almost 110 TSNP per start. Admittedly, he hasn’t been facing any offensive juggernauts. His next start is against Philly, and while the Phils may not conjure up images of firepower either, they actually have been the sixth toughest team to face over the last month, and the second toughest over the past two weeks. So it may be about time to disembark that train, rather than climb aboard. It’s a train that I missed altogether, I’m sorry to say.

Among active TSN Ultimate teams, Rogers was on about 20%. Jake Peavy was probably on at least twice as many contending teams, but he struggled, throwing almost 100 pitches in 4 innings, escaping with -1 TSNP, only 126 behind Rogers.

“Jack’s tournament” tees off at 8:20am tomorrow. It features a smaller than normal field, as only 105 golfers are entered. Theoretically, that should mean that making the cut will be easier, since roughly two-thirds of the field will be playing on the weekend. But the last time that was the case (two weeks ago), my top team managed to have only one golfer at the finish, which dropped my ranking from top ten to around 40. Brutal.

2005: May . . . April . . . March . . . February . . . January

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