Because of our changes to the structure of Fantasy Juice, I will be reposting my some of my former entries so that they are accessible in the new format. This is both for your enjoyment and so I do not have to re-explain myself every time that I post about The Season.

Here is a reposting of Entry Two, with the other entries to follow.

Turning Two – Entry Two: My 2007 Season Part 1

This entry is Part 1 of my recap from 2007 with my beginning and ending rosters and how I got to them. As I wrote about in HREF="http://www.fantasyjuice.com/blog/arc/06050817.php">Entry One of Turning Two, last season I took over a team in a head-to-head dynasty league.

I, along with my friend Dave, each took over a team to manage through

the 2007 season.

The league is a 6x6 (OBP and Holds added) head to head rotisserie league.

Because there were two teams, and both had placed at the bottom the year before, Dave and I agreed to do a mini-draft consisting of those two teams and anyone else not currently on a roster.

We were provided a list of all the available players, along with their 2006 stats to aid us in the draft. I don’t think either of us really had any idea what we were doing; I didn’t even know how scoring worked.

I assumed it was somehow similar to football where you just try to get more points than the other player (which I was sort of right about, but this was a H2H roto league, not a points league).

My strategy going in was to just try to draft the best team possible and had no real idea how the stats worked or about any strategy dealing with drafting a team. It wasn’t until after I had drafted that I really started studying the game (because I am stupid like that).

Dave won the coin toss and picked first, being fortunate enough to get Vladimir Guerrero to build his team around. I took the Texas Rangers’ first baseman Mark Teixeira as the cornerstone for my team.

This ended up being a bit of a disappointing pick for me, due to Tex’s slow start, followed by injury (although he was on an absolute tear after being traded to Atlanta in July). Nonetheless, I don’t think I could have made a better pick there.

My second pick was Jason Bay, outfielder for Pittsburgh. I was pretty happy with my first two picks. Unfortunately, Bay turned into a pretty big bust, especially with the lofty expectations he was given at the beginning of the year.

My team really suffered from not having a top-ten hitter for the majority of the season (and from having both of my first two picks struggle early). I didn’t have a winning week until the 7th week of the season, which is no way to start the year. In hindsight Ichiro would have been a much better pick there.

My third and fourth picks were starting pitchers Roy Halladay of the Toronto Blue Jays and mega-hyped Boston “rookie” Daisuke Matsuzaka, whom I had a nice man-crush on heading into the season.

I might have gone a bit too pitcher heavy to start out with but looking back the only player that I didn’t take ahead of them that I know I would have surely taken ahead of them was Angels speedster Chone Figgins, whom Dave took with the next pick.

I went for youth in some later picks, including two highly touted prospects at second base and shortstop: Cleveland’s Josh Barfield and Arizona’s Stephen Drew. Both turned out to be major duds in 2007 and my inability to find the right replacements hurt me for the majority of the season.

My Opening Day roster was as follows:

C: Johnny Estrada 1B: Mark Teixeira

2B: Jeff Kent SS: Stephen Drew

3B: Adrian Beltre OF: Jason Bay

OF: Josh Willingham OF: Coco Crisp Util: Jim Thome Util: Willy Taveras

BN: Josh Barfield

BN: Ryan Freel BN: Chris Burke BN: Bobby Crosby BN: Jason Veritek BN: Mark Teahen BN: Ryan Shealy

SP: Roy Halladay

SP: Daisuke Matsuzaka

RP: Todd Jones RP: Scot Shields RP: David Weathers P: Adam Wainwright P: Jon Garland P: Kei Igawa P: Empty

IR: Francisco Liriano

This is not a winning roster.

In fact, this team blows. Hard.

I hadn’t heard of several of the players and did not know what stats to look for. I was more concerned about filling out positions with whomever that I felt was the best overall player.

As you can see, I didn’t even have enough pitchers to fill the max spots, much less have any reserves.

I learned quickly that this team was not going to get me many wins.

Here is my final roster, so that you can compare it to my beginning team:

C: Jarrod Saltalamacchia 1B: Mark Teixeira

2B: Chone Figgins

SS: Ryan Theriot 3B: Aramis Ramirez OF: Torii Hunter OF: Jason Bay

OF: Josh Fields Util: Jim Thome

Util: Chris Duncan BN: Adam LaRoche BN: Kazuo Matsui

SP: Erik Bedard SP: Tim Lincecum RP: Jeremy Accardo RP: Joakim Soria RP: Pat Neshek P: Joaquin Benoit P: Scot Shields

P: David Weathers

P: Chad Billingsley BN: Joe Blanton BN: Braden Looper BN: Shaun Marcum BN: Micah Owings BN: Curt Schilling BN: Adam Wainwright

IR: Francisco Liriano

This is not a championship roster either, but it is heading in the right direction. At the end of the season my team was performing much better and I had a chance to try to make the final spot of the playoffs.

My team finished 8th in the regular season but won the Consolation (that is fancy for "Loser's") bracket to finish 7th and end strong. If I had started the season with a roster similar to this, I feel that I would have at least made the playoffs.

You can see that I made several changes throughout the season. In fact, I made 126 of them, all of which were made with varying degrees of success and knowledge as I tried to figure out how the game worked.

The only players from my original draft that I kept throughout the season were Mark Teixeira, Jim Thome, Scot Shields, Francisco Liriano, and David Weathers (I had dropped Adam Wainwright early on and picked him back up in August).

The rest of the team I had either picked up or traded for.

My next article will show how I came to get my final roster and my reasoning for why I made the moves I did. Soon after that I will write about the upcoming redraft and my strategy going into it as well as the results and my analysis of that.

Ryan Luby