In the end, I had the right idea: wrong execution

Baseball pool disaster.

Remember how I was poised to make a miracle comeback in my buddy league?

I was. I did. At a certain point on Sunday, "Martok" (who has live Yahoo stattracker) text messaged me to rant about his team because they were falling to me. And then Jose Contreras stepped up to the mound...


At the end of the day, the scoresheet looked like this, and now I'm fighting for 3rd place:


Oddly enough I did take him in 4/6 offensive stats. In other words, had my ERA/WHIP lead help up, I would have won 6-5. This is how it appeared at approximately 4pm on Sunday. Remember when I said this?

Er, wait, Davis has already started! I guess that settles it: I need Contreras's recent K/BB production to beat down Davis

At that point, I had officially conceeded the playoffs, I just didn't know it yet. Had I pulled Contreras when I saw Davis was carrying a perfect game after 4.1 innings (when I had to go and leave the confines of MLB.tv), I would have benefitted from Davis' 2.57 ERA (actually lowering mine), and gaining on the K/BB category as well due to his numerous walk-free strikeouts. I definitely didn't need Contreras to get a 2.00 WHIP and 7.50 ERA.

However, there is still a chance I was doomed: Borowski got lit up while Mussina (who "Martok" had benched) did fairly well (3.00 ERA, high K/BB ratio). Its possible that Mussina would have improved his ERA enough to beat me: and highly likely he would have won K/BB. However, Borowski's 3 earned runs and 3 hits in 0.1 innings would have likely cost me the WHIP/ERA titles anyways. I knew I shoulda left him out! (It might have helped me too, since the ERAs and WHIP were so close). In the end, leaving Florida's crappy closer on the bench may have been the worst fantasy decision of the year.

Well, you can console yourself in your other leagues, right FACLC? Shut up. All of my fantasy baseball teams lost their playoff matches yesterday. This contrasts with last week, when all 3 teams won despite being underdogs.

The Edmonton Separatists are now playing in the 3rd place game as is my team in the buddy league. The Alberta Mariners, making a push for the consolation prize "7th place" are now playing for 9th. The only good news is that the team in my buddy league (5/6), the Edmonton Separatists (5/12), and the Alberta Mariners (11/12) are now fighting for spots where even upon losing they will improve over their seasonal record: 4th, 4th, and 10th.

That's not really that good a news, I suppose.