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| Cutch's rebirth this season helped lead Ray to the title. |
We hope you'll all be back next year! Please alert us if that is not going to be the case.
2018 Draft Order
- Reid
- Bill
- Rick
- Tim
- Rich/Brian
- Scott
- Henry
- Matt
- Adam
- Ray
Let's enjoy some stats and wrapup from this season first, then we'll talk about the 2018 season.
Leading hitters
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| Clean-shaven and holding a fish. Yes, that's FBLG's leading scorer this year. |
- Charlie Blackmon (BM) 582.5
- Giancarlo Stanton (M) 548.5
- Nolan Arenado (PYB) 535
- Paul Goldschmidt (AL) 531
- Joey Votto (LGM) 520
- Marcell Ozuna (LGM) 499
- Anthony Rizzo (FF) 479.5
- Christian Yelich (PYB) 461
- Daniel Murphy (FF) 441
- Andrew McCutchen (CB) 437.5
So, it turns out this was a good year to have basically any Marlins outfielder. Anthony Rizzo outshone his teammate, top overall pick Kris Bryant, who finished just outside the top 10. 18 errors, Kris? Really? Even Euengio Suarez laughs at that. Nice bounceback years from Ozuna and McCutchen, and I guess Murphy is a legit hitter now? LOL Mets.
Top hitters by average: Blackmon, Bryce Harper and Adam Eaton averaged 3.7 points per game. Ray's clutch acquisition JD Martinez averaged 3.5.
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| We really hope that's chocolate. |
- Max Scherzer (R) 474.7
- Clayton Kershaw (CB) 410
- Zack Greinke (R) 409.3
- Jacob deGrom (PYB) 406.3
- Stephen Strasburg (CB) 393.3
- Robbie Ray (PYB) 388
- Gio Gonzalez (BM) 371
- Carlos Martinez (AL) 366
- Jimmy Nelson (LGM) 348.3
- Alex Wood (R) 328.3
Lefties! Lefties everywhere. Yes, Henry had 3 of the league's top 10 starters, and he, Ray and Scott combined for the top 6 pitchers on this list. The top 5 are pretty unsurprising, but Ray, Gonzalez, Nelson and Wood came out of nowhere to dominate. Ray (7th round) and Gonzalez (11th) were at least drafted, which is not true of Nelson and Wood. Who was drafted? Such luminaries as Brandon Finnegan, Bartolo Colon, Chad Kuhl, Brett Anderson, Jered Weaver and Matt Harvey. And that is why baseball is amazing and stupid.
Top closers were Kenley Jansen (R), Corey Knebel (LGM), Raisel Iglesias (PM), Wade Davis (BM) and Felipe Rivero (PYB). Again: baseball=stupid.
So thank you all for a fantastic season. We always appreciate how engaged you all are, and everyone always seems to have fun.
Now, let's talk about the issues we ran into during our first season with ESPN.com.
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| You think you've got the new ESPN.com system all set up and then WHAM there's Brandon Phillips' ass. |
- Injured players in lineups. We didn't realize that locking lineups on Monday really meant LOCKING lineups. That's ridiculous. Why would you design a system that leaves injured players in all week? 2018 proposed solution: Changing from a weekly lineup to daily to give owners flexibility. If you want to set your lineup Monday and forget about it, that's fine. But if you want to get injured guys out and shuffle around, that's fine too. Once a pitcher has pitched, he's locked in for the rest of the week - otherwise, we'll free up roster flexibility.
- Waiver order. No offense to Ray, but there's no way he should have gotten JD Martinez. Ditto Matt and Yu Darvish and Henry and Jose Quintana. ESPN defaults to a weird shuffling waiver order that gives no credence to your place in the standings. 2018 proposed solution: We're fairly certain we can lock in a waiver order that is based purely on point totals. If not, we'll come up with some sort of solution that helps the teams at the bottom of the standings when it comes to waivers.
- Too much crap on the waiver wire. With the loss of our manual roster ability came the loss of one of our more innovative systems - the UFA. The ability to stash guys on the bench without penalty meant that the waiver wire pickings were slim all year. 2018 proposed solution: We're thinking of going back to a 3-man bench and adding more transactions. We gave everyone 30 transactions and a 4-man bench this year; what about a 3-man bench and 40 transactions? Let's get nuts.
Those were the biggest issues we saw and complaints we got in the inbox. We also miss hitting points for pitchers and a few other quirks, but there's not a lot we can do about some of those. With these few tweaks, we hope to greatly improve the experience for next year.
What do you guys think? Any other major issues that we didn't address here? Any thoughts on our proposed solutions? Please send any feedback to the FBLG email account, and check your email for news about your winnings or about the fees you owe the commish.
With that, we bid the 2017 FBLG season adieu. We'll try to get the blog rolling again next season in some format that doesn't burn out both the commissioners. That format is still TBD. Thank you all again, and enjoy the playoffs!
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| Rich's reaction when Deka brings up Shane Victorino. |
