By Robby Wellington – Staff Writer
A couple of days after finally pulling Garrett Anderson and Chris Burke out of my starting lineup, I’ve taken a long look at my team and wondered what I needed to do to get back into the thick of things and, more importantly, is it worth it?
In years past, our league has been an hour-a-day commitment, minimum. With no games cap for position players, savvy owners sought to move extra, marginal players for the increased flexibility of starting a full roster on Mondays and Thursdays. Midnight was the premiere time to add favorable spot starters for the next day or grab a guy who may get extra at-bats in a double header.
This year we’ve tried to dial down the intensity by instituting a games cap for all position players and have tried to keep everyone engaged by increasing the buy-in and using a scaled payout system that differentiates all the way down to the bottom. For whatever reason, however, that hasn’t really helped me.
For years I’ve been in school or, even better, worked at a job where I could spend hours a day, unsupervised, combing the waiver wire and offering lopsided deals to fellow owners of my league. Heck, I’d even print out everyone’s rosters and go to the bathroom a few times a day, marking up the pages and working out blockbuster deals that “benefit all teams.” Alas, in my new job, I sit in a fairly high profile cube where the owners of my company can walk up behind me, unannounced, at any moment of the day. Additionally, my job actually requires me to do a fair amount of work, and I am compensated and rewarded largely on my effort and performance. Imagine that!
So now I’m one of those half-assed managers that I’ve always loathed (especially when they won’t trade with me), and the only solutions I can possibly think of for next season are joining a head-to-head league or finding a co-owner. The co-owner idea really intrigues me, as having someone else vested in the team would add some incentive and competitiveness, and I could take breaks every other week or so. Actually that sounds pretty good. But until then, I’m stuck with a mediocre team, a mediocre attitude and more than three months to wait for football to start. Until then, don’t trust a word I say about baseball. And, if you can, “buy low” with Alex “The Hammer” Gordon. He’s about to burst out of his slump in a major way…
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