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Gur-who?

Go forward to more recent blurbs.

8/31 - The weather claimed only one game yesterday, and the forecast looks pretty favorable for all games today. If you went after either Mark Teixeira or Jermaine Dye for their doubleheader yesterday, you got a very nice payoff, as both topped 80 TSNP. If you got them both, you should be dancin’ in the streets.

This week’s GuruGolf tournament doesn’t tee off until Friday, so you have an extra day to set your roster(s). And if you set your rosters early, be aware that some big names have already withdrawn, including Vijay Singh and John Daly. Probably worth another look.

8/30 - The weather was the big winner yesterday, claiming 2 games out of 12. As the storm moves inland, several games today are also in jeopardy. As you set your lineups, you may want to keep one eye on the weather map.

As promised, I have some delayed GuruGolf prize announcements to make:

PGA Championship prize winners:
wildyams (best ball)
Goldputts (worst ball)

Combined Majors prize winners:
rockafellerskank (best ball)
BooHoo2 (worst ball)

Emails were sent to all prize winner this morning with details on how to receive their prizes (GuruGolf logo golf balls).

There are five tournaments in September. The next prize contest will cover those five events weeks – the “September Swing” contest. The same rules apply as in previous contests – except that tiebreakers, if needed, will be based on cumulative price gains during the five events (rather than total team value).

8/29 - I’m back at the “home office”, where a lot of work has been waiting for me.

But while I was on vacation for two weeks, I certainly wasn’t away. The RIFC draft has been in progress for about 10 days, and is already in round 18 out of 21. In addition to the list of sequential picks, you can see a draft grid and rationales of each pick.

GuruGolf continues on. While I was away, I neglected to announce a few contest winners for the PGA Championship and the four majors combined. I’ll dig out those names and post them here tomorrow. Meanwhile, GuruGolf continues each week through the beginning of November.

The football sortable stats are now updated for all covered salary cap games – TSN, Swirve, and PSC. The Assimilators are also loaded, although you cannot copy in rosters directly from the game sites until after the first freeze. You’ll need to manually enter rosters for now. I’m sure there are some incorrect team affiliations in the sortable stats. I haven’t cross-checked them against current roster data. If you notice any, feel free to report them via email. I’ll get to it eventually, but it’s not on the top of my list yet.

I will be offering Football Pickoff again this year. That site has been deactivated for the time being while I gear up for the new season. I hope to have it launched by the end of this week.

Thanks for your indulgence during 2 weeks of blurbless downtime. Time to get back into the daily flow!

8/12 - Yesterday, I lamented that all of the leading sports news seemed to be coming from off the field. Sometimes, it’s not so good to get what you ask for. Yesterday’s big story (other than the early difficulties of Tiger Woods) was the train wreck in the Mets outfield, landing Mike Cameron in the hospital (and on the DL), and Carlos Beltran in a daze. I almost chose Cliff Floyd’s “I couldn't go over there, man. Once I saw the blood, I'm not good with blood,” as today’s quote, but I didn’t want to leave that one perched atop this page for an extended period.

Why an extended period? Tomorrow, I point the GuruMobile toward the southern shore of Lake Erie for the annual Hall family retreat. Weather permitting, I’ll be golfing, biking, and swimming, and not blurbing. I’ll also be drafting, as several of my football drafts, including the RIFC, will start next week.

If you are a GuruPatron and want to join the GuruPatrons division in TSN Ultimate Salary Cap football, the password is at the bottom of the GuruPatron validation page. If you can’t get that page to recognize you, try resetting your ID first, and if that doesn’t work, just send me an email.

8/11 - Maybe it’s the norm. Maybe not. But it sure seems like the sports news is being dominated by off-field activities. Rafael Palmeiro. Kenny Rogers. Terrell Owens. It’s getting hard to think of a recent compelling on-field story. I’m sure they are out there. But the off-field din is deafening.

The PGA Championship teed off early this morning, and as of this moment, Tiger Woods is already at +2 after 5 holes. He’s probably still the favorite, but it doesn’t look like he’ll run away and hide.

Speaking of favorites, in GuruGolf, there doesn’t appear to be a clear favorite this week. Of the 254 rosters with 4 active golfers, the most widely owned is Phil Mickelson, but he’s only on about 25%. Woods ranks #7, on 14% of all rosters. Mickelson’s high ownership probably owes more to his carryover status, since he played last week. Woods may be hindered by his high price tag. Regardless of the reasons, diversity reigns this week.

8/10 - A.J. Burnett was last night’s big kahuna, but rookie Felix Hernandez gets some serious props as well, blanking Minnesota over 8 innings in just his second major league start. Not bad for a 19-year-old kid.

If you are interested in playing in a qualifying league for the RIFC, there is a sign up thread at the message forum. The league is open to all, first come, first served. The current league has only 4 openings remaining, but another could be formed if there is sufficient interest. These leagues feature a “slow” draft, typical head-to-head scoring, and a lineup which includes several individual defensive players. There is no prequalification or cost. You just need to commit to participating throughout the season, and to “behave respectably”.

The PGA Championship tees off at 7:15am tomorrow morning. This is the final major of the PGA season, but GuruGolf will continue through The Tour Championship in early November, so the GuruGolf season is only about two-thirds complete. Keep on grinding!

8/9 - It sucks to be a Florida Marlin right now. They had to fly from Cincinnati to Denver for a make-up doubleheader on Monday, and then immediately fly back to Miami. And to make it all the more enjoyable, they lost both games of the twin bill, with one of them going into extra innings.

After a weekend of strong pitching outings, yesterday went pretty much as expected, with only one starter exceeding 100 TSNP – and congrats to you if you picked up Brandon Claussen.

Uh huh, I didn’t think so.

8/8 - A lot of pitching points were posted over the weekend. From Friday through Sunday, 21 pitchers turned in 3 digit TSNP outings, many who were widely owned. Today will probably be an off day for many fantasy pitching staffs, with only eight games scheduled, two of which are in Coors field.

Congrats to the two "Summer Heat" Contest prize winners in GuruGolf:
Footwedge (best ball)
Prime Suspect (worst ball)

As is usual for each major tournament, a set of prizes (best ball and worst ball) is offered for the PGA Championship. Standard rules apply. This week also completes the four majors, and a set of prizes is also offered for the best (best ball and worst ball) results for the four majors combined. Through the first three majors, the competition is very tight.

8/5 - Most of you know that I’m a Cleveland Indians fan, having grown up in north central Ohio. I don’t subscribe to any national MLB TV packages, so my opportunities to watch a Tribe game (from Connecticut) are generally limited to games vs. the Yankees and Red Sox. So when The Yankees entered the 9th inning last night facing the prospect of being swept, it was pretty cool.

Oh well.

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, perhaps Kevin Millwood should have been given the opportunity to complete the game. He had thrown only 94 pitches, and Bob Wickman had already saved three straight games. After the game, Millwood supported the decision to bring in Wickman, which may mean that he’s good at toeing the company line. And, of course, if Millwood had blown it in the 9th (and the margin was only one run), manager Eric Wedge would have taken heat for that decision, too.

But a sweep of the Yankees would have been sweet, especially since Cleveland hadn’t done it since 1970, when they were perpetually bad.

In golf, The INTERNATIONAL was a total washout yesterday. Round 1 did get started today, and although the weather outlook is iffy, it’s possible they can get the full round in. They would then play round 2 tomorrow, and then try to complete the 2 final rounds on Sunday. The weekend weather looks pretty safe, so finishing today’s round will probably be the key to completing the tournament on schedule.

8/4 - Déjà vu all over again. The INTERNATIONAL golf tournament has yet to tee off, and rain is forecast for the entire day and most of tomorrow. So we may not get any momentum going until Saturday. If so, who knows what scheduling adjustments may be made. This type of weather was common in the spring, but we have had a pretty good stretch of tournament weather lately, so perhaps we were due.

In spite of a full slate of 15 MLB games last night, no starter topped 100 TSNP. Only three pitchers managed to post scores in the 80s, and two of them faced each other - Carlos Silva and Rich Harden - with neither getting a win or loss. The other “octogenarian” was John Lackey, whose 82 TSNP did include 30 for a win. The most widely owned pitcher in the TSN game, Pedro Martinez, managed only 53 TSNP.

Today’s slate of games includes nine with afternoon starts. Make your roster moves early.

8/3 - Pitching choice is important every night, but especially on nights like last night. Carpenter, Carlos Zambrano, and Clemens all posted strong 3-digit TSNP results, and Peavy probably would have topped 100 if he hadn’t been involved in a laugher. Bartolo Colon and Dan Haren both came very close as well, if you were looking for the road less traveled. And then there was Jon Garland, the second most widely owned pitcher last night, who stunk it up with -48 TSNP.

In GuruGolf, The INTERNATIONAL golf tournament starts tomorrow. (Why is it that this tournament name is always in capital letters?) While this event uses the modified Stableford scoring system (eagle=+5, birdie=+2, par=0, bogey=-1, worse=-3), GuruGolf will continue to use standard scoring. Another unique feature of this tournament is that there is an extra cut which pares the Sunday field to the top 36 players (plus ties). So while standard scoring will apply for GuruGolf, tournament scoring will still be important as it impacts the cuts for Saturday and Sunday.

8/2 - With only 4 MLB games played, the off-field news (Palmeiro) dominated the on-field stories. But that would probably have been true with a full slate of games. And I’m sure that’s more or less the absolute truth.

In other off-field news, Barry Bonds has apparently thrown in the towel on this season. So much for my first round pick in the RIBC. Oh well,… if I hadn’t taken him, I might have picked Todd Helton, and that might have been just as troublesome. Then again, I might have taken Abreu. But, as someone famous once said, “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

Even though it’s early, I registered a team in TSN Ultimate Salary Cap Football, and set up a GuruPatron division. If you are a GuruPatron and want to join this division, the password is provided at the bottom of the GuruPatron validation page. If your ID isn’t recognized, try resetting it online, but if that doesn’t work, send me an email. And if you want to join and aren’t yet a GuruPatron, this page will tell you how you can become one.

8/1 - Some of the player uncertainty has now been resolved. There are still some key unknowns, particularly regarding the closer situations in Detroit and Atlanta, but those should become evident over the next week. For now, it looks like Baez, Huff, Guardado, Wickman, and (of course) Manny Ramirez – just to name a few - are all staying put. I realize that there are still ways to accomplish player movement after the trade deadline, but it’s more complicated, and certainly more limited.

So, now we settle down for baseball’s “dog days.”

Which means that many fantasy managers will shift their primary focus to football. By the second half of August – only two weeks away – football drafting activity is likely to dominate the RotoGuru forums. And if you are playing any of the salary cap games, the sortable stats have been updated with 2005 player prices for both the TSN and Swirve games. I can’t imagine that I’ll get immersed in those decisions until the beginning of September, but for those of you who need to start tinkering now, have at it. For a list of some of the idiosyncrasies of my stats compared to those posted at the game sites, see this forum thread.

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

Click here for prior daily blurbs, by month: