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Subject: RIBC 2012: Retrospective
Posted by: Guru
- [330592710] Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 10:05
Congrats to Tilt23, winner of the 2012 RIBC.
A few post-season duties remain:
1. RIBC managers may post a recap of their season, if they wish. What worked well, what went wrong, what would you do differently the next time, and what did you learn?
2. I'd appreciate it if someone from each of the qualifying leagues would post the final standings of their league. ( A separate thread has been set up for this purpose.) This will make it easier for me to locate when I go about deciding on qualifications for next season. (If your team names do not easily identify the related team manager, please provide those linkages as well.)
3. If there were any managers in any league who failed to live up to standards in behavior or activity level, I'd like to know about it. Bad behavior is never tolerated. Failing to follow through for the season can also be grounds for declining an invite to the RIBC or a AAA league, depending on circumstances. Rather than publicly "ratting out" any other manager in this thread, I suggest that you send me a confidential email.
Thanks to everyone for a great season. |
| 1 | Uptown Bombers
ID: 318502217
Fri, Oct 05, 2012, 17:21
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First, congrats to Tilt23 on winning. It was terribly disheartening to see his team so out in front once July hit as my team tried to rally from the middle of the pack. My team was making up ground in the standings against the other teams but always seeing a "30-40 points back of first" on the front page of Yahoo was morale crushing. In the last few days I felt like a football team scoring a garbage time TD against a defense playing prevent. Tilt23's dominance over the second half put him in that position, so kudos on a job well done and a championship well earned.
What worked? My pitching was fairly strong all season, even with disappointing returns from Hanson and Josh Johnson. The star pick was Gio Gonzalez in round 12. After ditching closers last year, my decision to go after saves worked as well, not only with a lucky grab of Casilla & Romo late in the draft, but also with a well timed trade for Jim Johnson, who carried me in saves over the last few months of the season.
I picked up Ike Davis just before he took off. My choice of Doumit late in the draft paid off. I worried about that decision on draft day, so I am pleased he provided a valuable return from a low investment. And Melky Cabrera worked out pretty well despite his shortened season.
What didn't work? My offense provided mixed results. The first half was pretty poor, resulting mostly from injuries to Utley and Worth, but also from first half slumps by Reyes, Lind, Maybin, and to a lesser extent Fielder. The only saving grace of my first half offensively was Melky. My hobbled offense and solid pitching kept me in the middle of the pack going into the half way point. In the second half, my offense rounded into form, bolstered by Headley's explosion, the return of Utley, and a bounceback from my slumping players. In the end, I didn't have enough time to chase down the offensive leaders enough, but over the last month or so, I was fairly confident I had done enough to secure a return invite for next year.
Anything different? Not at this point. It's hard to complain about second place, especially since for much of the first half I though I was going to be struggling to avoid AAA. Sure, I'd like to have my 3rd (Utley) and 7th (Worth) round picks play a full year, but every team has something similar like this to deal with over the course of the season.
Anything learned? After many years of playing this format, it's hard to say that many new things jump out. One thing that I was tracking was whether or not the punting of saves should be my go to strategy, having used that to win last year. In the end, I feel like I stood as much a chance to win this year as last year, but just had better luck in my draft picks last year. Going forward, I think both strategies are viable, so long as you hit more than you miss on your drafted players.
Thanks to all the managers one a great season. This truly is my favorite league of all fantasy sports and I am already thinking about next year. Last, thanks to Guru for putting it together.
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| 2 | Tilt23
ID: 280283018
Sat, Oct 06, 2012, 13:35
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Thank you everyone for another great year of fantasy baseball! While I was out front by a wide margin in the second half I rarely felt comfortable because I know the talent and persistence in this league is unmatched.
I found myself playing with a huge lead sometimes 30+ points ahead of 2nd. My strategy changed from pushing for every point and playing every position to the max to just not blowing it. It was hard to just sit back and let my lead hold instead of risking things for potentially bigger gains.
Obviously a lot of things went right for me this year. My draft strategy worked out well. Don't worry too much about position early, take talent over opportunity, and be flexible to taking value when it presents itself. I don't like having a set strategy going in like avoid SP early or worrying about runs, I just want value with every pick. This year I got above slot value on almost all my players that stayed healthy giving me enough depth to weather the inevitable injuries that affect your predicted starters. I also hit on my big arm "setup man" relievers in Chapman and Clippard making saves a strength instead of the weakness I thought it would be after brian wilson got hurt in April.
Not too much went wrong. Injuries hit me (B Wilson, Berkman, Cuddyer, Carpenter, Feliz) but this happens to every team and luckily my biggest injury risk, Josh Hamilton, put up a monster year and Miggy and Butler played all year at a high level to carry my offense.
This is my 4th year in RIBC. Winning AA, finishing 13th in the majors, winning AAA, and now winning the majors. I feel like the young player lucky enough to have success at all levels. I wasn't prepared for the level of play in the big league the first time. But I want to be a force in this league year after year, which is incredibly difficult. I cant wait to find out if I will continue to play well over the long run.
Thank you to Guru for another great year and thanks to all the managers who make this the most competitive league I play in by far.
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| 3 | Nerfherders
ID: 310111515
Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 15:47
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Even if you imagined everything going wrong with your team right from the start, you couldn't have imagined it as bad as I had it. I don't think anyone would have questioned my draft going into the season, but nearly to a man, they underperformed for the season, and in many cases were disasters.
Pujols: Good numbers but not top 3 numbers. Disastrous April.
Holliday: Exactly what I expected.
Lincecum: The worst qualified starter in the NL. Historically bad first half.
Weeks: Worst season ever: disastrous first half.
Upton: About what he did last year but worse OBP.
Latos: Bad first half, great second half. Was about what I expected.
Bell: Disaster from start to finish
Fowler: Pretty good, but didnt play enough.
Soria: Out for the season within 24 hours of drafting him.
Morales: Not bad, not great. Worse than what I needed.
Farnsworth: To make up for Soria, got hurt, lost his job. 0 saves.
You just can't win with that much disaster in your first ten picks. Some of my later picks were better: Jones and Furcal were high risk picks in the mid rounds that played pretty well. But there was no making up for the top 10.
All that being said, I didn't stop fighting. I got a lot of calls to buy low on my underperformers, but I stuck to my guns, and I was rewarded with improved play from most of them. I also revamped my terrible pitching staff and made some nice FA additions: Bailey, Billingsley, Chen, and Vargas played pretty well for me. All of that merely prevented me from finishing in last place. And even that was in question on the last day and I made some last day moves to make sure I kept it.
Even so, according to Guru's tracking page, I was 10th from May 1st on, and 7th from July 1st on, so I definitely improved, which as a manager is about all you can do when you start off as bad as I did.
There's always next year, and I'll be shooting for returning to RIBC in 2014.
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| 4 | kdl212
ID: 6941813
Mon, Oct 08, 2012, 14:47
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Happy to have survived. In mid-August, though, it didn't seem likely that I would be playing in the majors again. On August 11th, I was in 11th place with a grand total of 82 points. From there, I put on 32 points in the standings in the pitching categories, crept into second place during the last week of Sept and topped out at 120.5 points, only to fall back to 4th by the season's end. (Curiously, I did the same thing last year - adding 21 pitching standings points in September as I went from 9th to 3rd). I wish it was a reflection of strategoy, but it just so happens that Yu Darvish and Mike Minor pitched all of September like they were Fernando Rodney; and pickups like Wandy Rodriguez, Lance Lynn and Jaime Garcia turned nice matchups into 9 wins in 60 innings pitched.
I've learned that having high draft picks go bad does not sink you in this league, b/c it happens to everyone. Not one of my first six picks was worth the draft slot:
Longoria - missed half the year
Teixeira - passed on McCutcheon for him
Castro - tantalizing, but not yet elite
Pence - as empty as 100rbis can get
Kendrick - no more 5th round 2B for me (Gordon Beckham last year)
Gardner - almost as many rehab setbacks as games played.
But once again, it was the middle round that made my team: Darvish, Montero, Betancourt and Adam Dunn were roster savers in rounds 7-10. Alex Rios in 16 was crucial as well, as my doubling-down on White Sox who must have hated playing for Ozzie Guillen paid off big time. David Murphy and AJ Burnett were huge waiver wire pickups.
The worst day of the year? May 3rd. Frustrated with missing out on the crazy closer carousel at the beginning of the year, I dropped Rafael Soriano hours before Mariano Rivera hurt himself shagging pre-game flyballs (miraculously, Soriano came back to me on the waiver wire after Uptown dropped him). That same afternoon, I dropped Ernesto Frieri just hours before he was traded to the Angels. I also dumped Glen Perkins and Carlos Marmol instead of holding patiently.
In any event, I'm not sure there are lessons here. Patience could've paid off with those guys, but patience killed me with Brett Gardner and got me nothing with Josh Beckett.
The best recipe for success in this league? Get first-round production from your first-round pick, and get first-round production from 2 more picks. If you don't pull that hand, stay active and cross your fingers. If the imaginary baseball gods are nice, you'll live to play another year in the best fantasy baseball league there is.
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