As my Raleigh Monkeys finished 2nd to Taro's Juggernaut, I'll add that this was NOT a case of a guy getting lucky with a good draft. Taro *WORKED* harder than anyone I've ever seen in any league to wring every possible point from every possible source from day one until the end.
He just about lapped the league in total moves, and was offering trades more often than Charles Schwab. And his trades were by and large ones that were win-win. A significant number of his trades were with teams that he'd eventually smack in the playoffs.
On a personal level, I was pleased with my 4th place points total, (even though I missed the playoffs). My team slogan "Just trying to hang around" was prophetic on every level.
But, I haven't seen someone dominate like this in anything since John Wooden. Congrats, kudos and applause for Taro on his perfect season!
Congrats to Taro, our resident NPB expert, who had a real fantasy baseball season in 2011. That is, he had the fantasy baseball season of everybody's fantasies.
He took on an imposing 12-team AL league including Sandy, SABRMatt, many-time DOV champion Justin Smith, Rick the editor of Caffeinated Confines, Jon Wells editor of Grand Salami, as well as Dr. D and others. In a double-round robin he ran the table, going out 11-0 on the front nine and coming back 11-0 on the back nine:
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As you can see, his points margin was also vast. He threw in a playoff sweep for good measure and lived the dream: complete domination -- of expert rotisserians, we might add -- from wire-to-wire.
The only other year that Taro played, he competed in twin DOV leagues comprised of a 12-team AL-only and massive 20-team mixed league. He finished baaaaarrrrrely 2nd to Justynius in the AL league and baaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrely second to Cool Papa Bell in the other.
This earns Taro my nod as co-champ of all time, along with Mikey Jay. As for me, I've finally run into a bit of fantasy-sports burnout, and probably the only way I'll ever play again will be if somebody can get a league with both of those two roto colossi. I owe them both a cyber-knuckle sandwich or three.
Congrats Taro :- )
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=== All Apologies, Dept. ===
BABVA finished 8 wins, 14 losses, which I'll grovellingly protest as the only time I've finished below .500, any year, any roto sport. We drafted bats and the value rotation turned out to be, um, prophetic: Phil Hughes (mysterious circulation injury), Dallas Braden (DL for year, week 2), Francisco Liriano (injury-marred 5+ ERA season), Jeff Neimann (missed May and June), and Erikkk.
So, obviously, time and chance happeneth to every man, even to the inestimably great Dr. D.
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Dr. D can afford to smile a bit, though, since his other league was Justynius' 7th-year 20 team mixed league. The rookie BABVANs waved a cheery hello to the vets and then crushed that league like a pop can, finishing easily #1 in points and losing the playoffs only in the final game. We rarely even checked our team the last two months.
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=== Back On Topix, Dept. ===
Be that as it may, Dr. D has never in all his born days seen a performance like Taro's in the 2011 SSI AL Smackdown.
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Aside from laying the SSI league waste, Taro's second-most-important project in 2011 was to try to convince us that the 2011 Mariners should resign, tip over their King (not that King!) on Opening Day. "The Rangers have both the arms AND the bats," he insisted time and again.
Now that the Rangers are headed to the Series, I'd say he's earned a second golfclap on that 3-iron as well.
All Hail MegaTaro:
Comments
Not easy to miss the playoffs with the 4th-best team.
Ya, Taro combined work ethic and talent, great point. Bob Costas once said that Michael Jordan was what you got when you combined supreme talent with "overachiever." :- )
Ichiro might be another good example of that. Pound-for-pound.
Interesting that the two most successful rotodweebs I've run across, also lead the league in elbow grease. Mikey is always first to the trough when a AAA prospect comes available.
A certain minority fraction of roto success seems to be in attention / concentration. About two months in, most leagues see 50% of the owners lose their will to win and that's when the lead can grow larger and larger...
Not that Mikey (e.g.) couldn't win in other ways. I always tried to lobby for a Free Agent Acquisition Budget (FAAB) so that once a week I could bid on the guys I hadn't paid attention to that week. Mikey was no worse in that format.
I used to hop online, chat live and talk guys into trades :- ) but nowadays seem to be distracted by a weird little baseball site the Klat guys put up.
Winning used to be easier :- )
And don't forget the call on Napoli.
He'd have been a nice DH/Job share with Olivo.
Makes me a little more concerned about Smoak's future (Champ's assessment on him is not so rosy IIRC).
...though I'm still bitter about losing the league by THREE FRAKKIN' POINTS! *sigh*
I hadn't done a fantasy league since 2008 and I hadn't competed with as much zeal and time spent since 2006. I was rusty early on though my draft was OK. My offense was old and aged poorly so I had to trrade out pitching depth to get better there and it cost me in the end. I made five trades with taro...I think I won 4 of the 5...but both fo us got pieces we needed and he could afford to let the rest of us win some trades because he was so far ahead of us to start with abnd then he was grabbing all of those juicy morsels off the wire that I kept missing by a day (I'd hear news about someone, go "oh let me go grab him..." and taro would have gotten him 12 hours earlier. Maddening. :)
I worked hard in that league, but my team wasn't built for flexible trading schemes...too many one-position players to start and most of them were old and unappealing to trade.
And it's tough to play ping-pong without an opponent. So. :- )
Don't recall Taro's specific reasons for bidding low on Smoak, but they'd be worth revisiting.
From my end the hedge bets are due entirely to Smoak's rather fragile self-image. Such athletes tend to get off to false starts, as it were, and then to gradually realize that they can play...
As Hans Kmoch said after a Bobby Fischer perfect score ... he congratulated Larry Evans for "winning the tournament" and then congratulated Fischer for "winning the exhibition."
:- )
Or the call on Colby Lewis. Nice.