As we approach the All-Star break, it's time to check in with my fantasy baseball league. As you may recall, this is my first year playing fantasy baseball and it's been quite a learning experience.

Somethings I've learned:

1. You have to manage your team every day. Every day. Even on weekends. Somtimes this isn't very fun.

2. Outstanding defensive players are of zero use. There's no category that is tracked that gives you points for great defense. I'm not sure how they would implement such a system, but it's a major drawback to the game.

3. As the season progresses, you really need to stay on top of the categories that you earn points in. In my case, I'm doing very well with stolen bases but my relief pitching is abysmal. It's not that I don't have good relievers, I just don't have as many as the other players which has lowered the amount of saves my team has.

4. The major upside of the game is you become a fan of individual players in both leagues on a variety of teams.

5. I have been scolded several times when I'm at an Angels game with my girlfriend and I mention that the opposing player at bat is on my team. "You cannot root for him. That's not allowed." Hey, as long as the Angels win, and my guy on the other team does well, then I do not care. :)


Go Knockers!

In any case, I think I'm doing fairly well for a newbie. For the first couple of months, the standings would swing wildly about. I remember being in 1st place for a few days and then immediately dropping to 9th place. Now that the season is fairly far along, the standings have firmed up a bit, and I've been in 2nd or 3rd place for the last month. However, the 1st place L-ville Sluggers had a commanding lead of over 100 points at one point, but now has fallen off that pace and is now within my reach. *insert menacing laugh here*

I'm just as excited as I was at the beginning of the season to have Vladimir Guerrero on my team (.347 AVG, leads the league in home runs (20) and RBI's (72)). The man is just wrong. He'll swing at pitches that are 5 inches outside the strike zone and put them over the fence. Where in the hell are you supposed to pitch to this guy?

I'm looking forward to the rest of the season because I believe I have a solid team. The one sorely lacking area of my team (saves) has hopefully been fixed with a trade that was finalized yesterday. I picked up Octavio Dotel of the A's and Troy Percival of the Angels in exchange for Texas 3rd baseman Hank Blalock (who's had a tremendous year).

And yes, I know that I had O. Dotel at the beginning of the year. I traded him away early in the season to obtain Francisco "K-Rod" Rodriguez of the Angels and Matt Clement of the Cubs. I made that trade because all of my pitching was poor. Now that the starting pitching is forming up well, I'm getting O. Dotel back to help with the saves.