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0 Subject: RIBC 2013: Retrospective

Posted by: Guru
- [330592710] Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 10:40

Congrats to BMD, winner of the 2013 RIBC. He took over the lead during June and never looked back

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.
1JeffG
      ID: 2654157
      Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 14:31
Thank you to Guru for keeping this site going, and thanks to all the RIBC managers for a competitive and fun season. Congrats again to BMD on his impressive win.

My team eked out a 7th place finish after a slow start and then fluctuating between 4th and 8th for the last half of the season. I add/dropped for steals on the last day of the season which was the only place I could still catch two people ahead of me in that category in one day, and two steals on the final day of the season gave me a +1.5 to jump from 8th into 7th.

Draft - What went right – My first and third round picks had 2013 NL MVP candidate seasons - McCutchen (1.09) and Goldschmidt (3.09). Both ended up in the top 5 of the ESPN player rater and both may have killed blue hen’s season before it started as he was ready to pick both those players right after me according to his rationales (and in rd 3 because Goldy was not available took BJ Upton... ugh). Me not grabbing any SS/2B until late could have cost me more, but the trio of Kendrick (11.09), Hardy (16.08) and Daniel Murphy (18.08) all were serviceable picks who exceeded their draft slot relative to their position and two were in the lineup every day for me, Kendrick got hurt mid August. Third baseman Chris Johnson (24.08) was a platoon player on opening day and was drafted just to fill out my roster and ended up being in my lineup all year and was great for the ratios. Coco Crisp (13.09) was a mid rounder that did not disappoint and came up big in terms of steals, SLG, and runs scored. Evan Gattis was technically not drafted by me but picked up I believe before the season started and played about half my games for me ‘off the bench’ adding some good production numbers. Also a great draft pick was Uehara (17.09) who was drafted solely for killer ratios and K/9, but contributed even more as he closed for just under half a season.

Draft – What did not go as right – Starting pitching had me in bad shape for the first half of the year. David Price (2.08) had a horrible start and Ian Kennedy (9.08) and Edwin Jackson (21.09) may be two of the worst picks in our entire draft. I called Kennedy my favorite overall pick in the draft recap thread . Yikes! They killed my ratios, and combined with a slow start from my starters and my closers Perez (10.08) and Rodney (8.08) it left me with 1s and 2s in wins and my pitching ratios, and low in saves deep into June. Other draft choices where I burned a couple of high picks and could have done as well at third base and catcher if I waited were David Freese (6.08) and Miguel Montero (7.09).

The luck factor – checking my rationales and draft lists/queues, I see I was hoping to grab Josh Hamilton, Pablo Sandoval, Ike Davis, Jedd Gyorko, and Melky Cabrera only to have them picked off my queues when my turn came up. Things would have been much different, and much much worse, if I got my wish.

In season – One thing that went right for me was a lack of injuries, which kept most of my core players in the lineup all season. I was never playing with a short bench or debating whether to throw back a good player who was going to miss significant time. That, and some good offense, helped me stay on the top end of the hitting counting numbers and kept my team afloat. Pitching - I kept Kennedy too long, grabbed Masterson but then saw how great Phil Hughes was doing so dumped what would have been a good thing in Masterson, and had Hughes kill me for several starts. I thought starting pitching was going to be my team’s downfall but I got things straightened out just enough by picking up mid season guys like Chatwood, Kelly, Wheeler and Oberholtzer who helped get me into the middle of the pack in ratios and wins, which considering where I was in late June was huge. I drafted two closers by round 10 because I am never going to beat some of the RIBC managers with the quicker triggers after closer change announcements, and Perez and Rodney had their share of drama but ended up keeping me in the middle of the saves standings.

Overall I can say I certainly wanted to do better than 7th, but compared to my prior three attempts at RIBC this is my best finish in "the show" and the first time I will not get relegated. I will look to make more of an impact next season.

I also want to close by saying that even though I initially wanted to stay on Yahoo where my office league plays, I am now an ESPN convert. I pretty much no longer use a desktop PC for personal or home use and most of my Internet usage is on my smartphone, and the ESPN mobile app is far superior in terms of getting starting pre-game lineup information, setting lineups, seeing daily stats, and computing real time standings. I think both sites need some work in the ‘search/add player’ filters and I find myself launching their ‘Desktop Site’ in my smartphone browser to do research for that function. My early vote is to stay ESPN for future seasons.
2blue hen
      ID: 4739168
      Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 15:01
As JeffG mention, my team was killed in the first three picks of the draft. I hate picking near him (or a lot of you other good managers). This was one of my most frustrating finishes in any league.

What went right? Well, 24th rounder Billy Hamilton stole 13 bases in two weeks long after my team was still in the running. Looking back at my draft, I can't find a single player who had a season without warts of some sort. To wit:

1. Jose Bautista: missed most of the second half with injury. Also had a slow start.
2. David Wright: missed a lot of time late in the year.
3. BJ Upton: worst season by any player in baseball.
4. Jered Weaver: had a down year and a few injury issues.
5. Eric Hosmer: had a monumental slump before turning it around.
6. Zack Greinke: started the year on the DL
7. Mariano Rivera: blew most saves in a season, also I traded him for Dom Brown.
8. John Axford: first closer to lost his job.
9. Everth Cabrera: missed the entire second half.
10. Jayson Werth: slumped early and was dropped before he picked it up.
11. Derek Jeter: played only a handful of games.
12. Cameron Maybin: injured basically the whole year.
13. Bobby Parnell: injured and lost the job, missed a ton of time.
14. Jonathan Broxton: never got the job.
15. Jose Veras: traded and lost his job.
16. Carlos Quentin: big injuries and a long suspension.
17. Oscar Taveras: bad year in the minors.
18. Frank Francisco: injured and never closed.
19. Brandon McCarthy: terrible in April, never really made up for it.
20. Jemile Weeks: never a factor.
21. Brett Wallace: didn't break through, though did have some nice stretches.
22. Cliff Pennington: never hit or stole bases, Didi'd.
23. Tyler Flowers: Phegley'd.
24. Billy Hamilton: team MVP.
25. Rex Brothers: closed maybe 1/3 of the season.

Is that the worst draft you've ever seen?
3SZ as ComicBookMan
      ID: 3310162612
      Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 17:21
Worst Draft Ever
4artofmonk
      ID: 40825312
      Tue, Oct 01, 2013, 09:59
I did not like my draft to begin with. I also basically disappeared for 3 months of the season. Not a god sign of a manager. I lost a job, moved across country and found a new job. Very crazy. I also made plenty of mistakes for the year. with the 3 month vacation, I didn't have enough games played. 1573 compared to most teams with almost 1900. I am 300 games down. I think that would have made a huge difference in my runs, rbi and sb.

what went right with the draft: Kershaw (1), Longoria (2), Andrus (5), Minor (11) might be the best pick in the draft, along Jose Quintana in the 25. How many other teams can say they kept their 25th rd pick on the roster all season. I did look at his spring training numbers and thought he had a chance to do really well. I was also a fan of Minor, He might have gone a rd early but I wanted him. I don't need to mention anything about draft picks int he first 5 rds because you expect them to produce.

What went wrong in the draft-Rizzio (3) I was really hoping for Ellsbury and Goldschmidt. Rizzio was a mistake and I knew it after I drafted him. Cain (4) his numbers are not horrible, but I could have used a better bat. Prado (6) was also a mistake and I knew it at the time, I thought he had more position eligibility. I also had two players get suspended Cruz and Peralta for 50 games each.
5Guru
      ID: 330592710
      Tue, Oct 01, 2013, 12:58
My team synopsis
Hitting: 47 out of 80 possible ranking points
Pitching 55.5 out of 80 possible ranking points

Even though I deferred on drafting starting pitching, my pitching was still a strength and my hitting was only mediocre. Injuries played a significant role, although I don’t know if I got hurt more than the average team. My top three picks all missed a material number of games: Stanton (round 1 pick – 116 GP), Reyes (Rnd 2–93 GP), Craig (Rnd 3-134 GP). And of those three, only Craig played at or better than his pick status when healthy.

Hitters who I feel like I got good value from (draft round listed)
Allen Craig (3)
Yadier Molina (5)
Manny Machado (13)
Omar Infante (17)
Stephen Drew (21)

Guys who underperformed their draft position:
Giancarlo Stanton (1) – missed more than 50 games
Jose Reyes (2) – only 15 SB
Michael Bourn (4) – only 23 SB, 315/338, missed about 60 games
Adam LaRoche (7) – 332/403 ratios
Nick Markakis (11) 325/353 ratios
Mark Reynolds (15) – but he was great for the first two months

Free agent pickups who really kept me in the running, especially in steals:
Leonys Martin (36 SB)
Eric Young (40 SB)
Alex Avila (324/422 while Molina was sidelined)
Gordon Beckam – filled in 49 games with OK stats

The five starting pitchers that I drafted performed well as a unit:
CJ Wilson (round 9)
Doug Fister (10)
Matt Harvey (12)
Trevor Cahill (16)
Andrew Cashner (24)

Collectively, they provided 863 IP, 3.29 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 728 K (.84/IP), and 53 wins. Cahill was the weak link, but he was jettisoned midseason when injured. Harvey was obviously the “genius” pick of that group.

Here are the free agent starting pitchers that I added during the season:
Chris Archer
Jonathan Niese
Ubaldo Jimenez
Jennry Mejia
Stephen Fife
Henderson Alvarez
The latter three only combined for 4 starts, but they were effective (including the final day no-hitter from Alvarez). As a group, they gave me 234 IP, 2.54 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 216 K (.92/IP), and 16 wins.

My relievers were OK but not spectacular. Papelbon and Rafael Soriano stayed relatively healthy and effective, but were not stellar. Because I had to carry so many injured hitters on my bench during the season, I wasn’t able to deploy as many relievers as I typically do – but as noted above, my fill-in starters provided ratios more like relievers.

Perhaps my worst pick was Ryan Madson in round 14. He never pitched, but I didn’t jettison him until August 6. And I could have drafted Ernesto Frieri with that same pick. At the time, Frieri was having a tough spring, and Madson was presumed to be ready to assume closer duties by early May. What a bust that decision turned out to be.

I started the season very slowly, ranking as low as 15th in late April. I surged back in May, and then managed to slide around from 4th-8th for most of the second half. So I’m quite happy to end up the year in 4th, given where I was for most of the season.

I wish I could get better value for my hitting draft. That seems to be a chronic shortcoming for my teams over the years. But my pitching always seems to be solid, in spite of drafting starters later than most other teams. At least that allowed me to avoid many of the busted SP picks early in this year’s draft.
6Uptown Bombers
      ID: 81262014
      Wed, Oct 02, 2013, 18:34
Congrats to bmd on a great season.

This is the second year in the last three that I have devalued closers in the draft and the results have been interesting. I'm not smart enough to run any advanced stat analysis, but I added up just the pitching points for the past three seasons for all teams, ranked them, and found the mean.

In 2011, I had 59 pitching points, second most of all teams (8 behind the leader) and 12 points more than the mean of 47. I won the league this year, punting saves, and sweeping all the offensive categories.

In 2012, I had a league best 75.5 pitching points, 35.5 points more than the mean of 40.5. I came in second place overall.

This year, 2013, I had 65 pitching points, 3rd highest (and only 2.5 points behind the leader), and 23 more points than the mean of 42. No closers this year either. I finished middle of the pack in the league overall.

Honestly, I don't know exactly what to make of that. There are far sharper minds on the boards that will make better sense of the numbers than I can and I'd be interested in hearing their thoughts. Looking at the results, my takeaway is that punting saves has been a viable strategy and has helped me concentrate on the other pitching categories. I suppose I should run a similar breakdown in the hitting categories to see how my drafting of closers has affected my offensive output. Likely, I should look back through all my years in the RIBC to provide a larger sample size, but since I only started punting saves in 2011, I got lazy and started then. My inkling is that punting saves will be my strategy moving forward, as it seems you can do just fine in pitching without them.

That said, it only works if you do well in drafting offense and that was not the case for me this season. I had a disappointing turnout from my round 3 and 5 hitters (Cespedes and Ike Davis). That they were my second and third offensive picks makes it worse. Rounds 7 (Wieters), 8 (Espinosa), & 9 (Neil Walker) were likewise disappointing. Five of my first seven bats, then, performed worse than expected. That's how you finish middle of the pack while finishing top 3 in pitching.

My best value picks came, not surprisingly from pitching. Iwakuma in round 19 was a steal and Buchholz in round 21, despite his injury, served me very well. Offensively, I couldn't have asked any more from Carlos Gomez as a 12th rounder.

I'm already looking forward to next year, as this format is my favorite of any fantasy league. I just hope I do a better job of picking hitters. Thanks to Guru as always for running the game and site.
7Tosh
      Leader
      ID: 057721710
      Thu, Oct 03, 2013, 00:44
Worst season ever. It seems every player suffered injuries, or played much worse than the 2012 season. The suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.

But the entire season can be summed up by repeating what I said in my draft recap back in March ... "I fear that every time I see a Rotoworld update on Braun, my heart will skip a beat ...hoping that the word ‘Biogenesis’ does not appear in the blurb as well."

Yeah. Ryan Braun. You suck the most.
8kdl212
      ID: 431462014
      Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 14:08
Having finished second, I can't complain about anything this year. Sure, it would have been nice for my pitchers (who finished 1st in strikeouts, 2nd in Whip, and 3rd in era) to have done better than 13th in wins, but that's the way it goes with that category. And I didn't expect Prince Fielder to finish 7th on my team in slugging percentage, and just barely break 800 in OPS. But that's about all that's worth a complaint. It was my own fault for drafting Mike Moustakas and Corey Hart.

Almost everything else went well. I got top 50 player rater value out of my top 4 picks, and 4 draftees gave me round 2 production (Cuddyer, Lee, Darvish, Beltre). The combo of Cliff Lee and Yu Darvish was phenomenal. Draft day bargains included Victorino, Brandon Belt, Jed Lowrie, and Shelby Miller. Waiver wire pick-up Mujica provided much more value than I thought he would, and waiver wire claim Victor Martinez was absolutely insane - when I picked him up on June 30th, he had an OPS under 700. He put up 424/521 with 38 runs and 43 rbi the rest of the season.

I still haven't gotten round 1 hitting production from a hitter ever in RIBC, and I'm just waiting for that to happen.

Absolutely love this league.
9beastiemiked
      ID: 3910223
      Sun, Oct 06, 2013, 00:39
Had a completely insane draft. None of my top 5 picks(Harper, Posey, Hamels, Lawrie, AJax) exceeded expectations but none of them bombed. After round 5 I seemed to hit just about every pick right. Scherzer, Nathan, C Davis, Matt Carpenter, and Fowler were my 6-10th round picks. Had another pretty nice mini run with Bailey, Marte, and Dom Brown in round 13-15th.

Things I liked
-Played the Puig shuffle for the 1st 2 months of the seasons. I drafted him but dropped him 3-4 times before scooping him back up right before his callup in June. I was very lucky that no one stashed him when he was on waivers May. Without him who knows where my team ends up.

-Dom Brown for Mariano. This was during Brown's week of terror. Needed a 3rd reliever and managed to get one of the best.



Have a few regrets.
-Drafting Simmons and Dunn over Segura. I remember wanting Segura real bad but ultimately was afraid he was going to get buried in the 8th slot.
-Not scooping up Mujica. He was still a FA when I decided to pick him up in Gurupie 20 league. By the time I tried to pick him up here he was already picked up(props to kdl there).
-Dropping Dunn. He was killing my team in OBP when I dropped him and I had huge cushion in slg %. As soon as I dropped him he went on a tear. Looking back on my transactions I ended up with Rajai Davis so dropping him might've actually helped my team.
-Not trading Rajai Davis for Jose Fernandez late in the season. Fernandez was approaching his innings cap and had at most 4-5 starts but potentially less. Should've rolled the dice especially considering where I was in SB's.


All in all had a great time. I got very lucky with a ton of picks and pickups. Hoping to ride that into next season.
10Tilt23
      ID: 5729510
      Sun, Oct 13, 2013, 12:01
Congrats to BMD!!
I want to mirror a little of what JeffG said and talk about luck...He mentioned that at the draft he wanted some players and they were taken just before him and he was upset about it but lucky it happended cause they were trash. Well I was "lucky" to get some of that trash in Hamilton and Gyorko who I was counting on to play a big part in my offense. Everyone has those players though that dont perform like we think at the draft and I believe you have to draft well enough minimize the misses and maximize the hits.

However luck is not what ruined my year, bad drafting and worse bad managing sunk me.

In the draft I neglected front line starters and regretted it all year. I think I dropped all but 2 of my original drafted starters. If you arent going to take starters early then there is very little margin for error and I had plenty of errors some from injuries some from lack of talent. I also neglected middle tier closers and never found one during the season due to the stellar ability of managers in this league to not let anything slip. As a result I was one of the worst in saves and the worst in ratios.

During the season I was unable to find ANY saves hardly a single save actually, as previously discussed and then at one point had Leoyns Martin and Rajai Davis both for steals only to lose patience and drop them both right before they took off. What a shame cause I am normally patient to a fault but I panicked trying to dig out of my hole. I found myself in last place after the first month and I deserved it. I recovered to 10th which was lucky and was actually up to 6th at one point but my performance was embarrassing. I should of traded Chapman way early for anything and just admitting defeat in saves but I kept thinking I could pick up someone that would step into some saves, filling my roster with middle relievers who proceeded to offer me nothing and even hurt my ratios. Blah. Saving grace is there is always another season.
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