A New (Old) Champion/State of our League

Congratulations to Jason. He joins Dagan as the only three-time champions in the history of the league. A truly remarkable feat. Say what you want about his trade offers, his aggressive approach has paid off time and time again and this year was no different. He began the season in a bit of a hole, ranked dead last (by far) in draft pick value, having sold-off to make a run last year. He also severely overvalued Xander as a keeper, who was essentially useless all season. He then traded away guys like Felix and Cueto in exchange for subpar seasons from Braun and Kipnis, leaving his staff to be lead by a group of mid-rotation stiffs. But the beauty of Jason's approach is he doesn't bother worrying about balance or positions as long as he's getting enough value, and he usually does. As expensive as they were in terms of picks, his deadline acquisitions played great down the stretch.  Meanwhile, he squeezed tremendous value out of waiver pickups and late draft picks like Todd Frazier, Charlie Blackmon, Corey Dickerson, Phil Hughes, Jesse Chavez, and Drew Hutchison -- even squeezing some value from the likes of Clay Buchholz. Yes, he certainly benefited from matchups in the final three weeks, but you need some luck to win in this league. The bottom line is Jason is active and courageous and has earned all of this success.

He also earned half of the pot for the year, which comes out to $587.50. Gibby gets 25% along with the $100 for second place in the regular season, totalling $393.75.  I get 25% for the regular season championship and $40 for best second half, totaling $333.75.

Gibby's team just picked a bad week to have a bad week. Despite the significant challenges like overcoming a Pap crotch grab, he still remained within shouting distance going into the last day. Regardless of the outcome, Mike's turnaround of Troy's shambles of a roster in two years has been remarkable. He found a number of key contributors late in the draft or on the wire, including Brian Dozier, Dee Gordon, Brandon Moss, Yovani Gallardo, Zach Wheeler, Alfredo Simon, and Sean Doolittle and put up a great fight in the regular season and in the championship.

Overall, it was another great season for High & Tight. We added another great owner in Chris Shomphe, who started off a little rough but remained active throughout and made a great run into the playoffs. Trade activity was at an all-time high, most noticeably in the two-week open trading period and the offseason, which is a great thing to see. I hope to see another eventful offseason with even more activity. I continue to believe the trade restrictions in place have been very effective in maintaining balanced rosters until the end of the season, which helps remove the imbalance that once existed. That said, I think there is room for flexibility if the league is interested in loosening up the rounds available for trade during restricted periods.

Offseason items:
- Update and refine the league constitution - Housekeeping item, but should try to update this every year.

- Consider changing the saves category to saves plus holds - I've heard this from more than one manager and it is worth consideration as a way to de-emphasize the need to ride the closer carousel. In terms of their statistical representation of value, I hate holds. That said, saves aren't that much better. Perhaps by making the category easier to achieve, we'll effectively give it the correct amount of weight. I'll put together a statistical analysis to consider before spring.

- Change the playoff DL exemptions -  This simply is not working. As of now I propose that teams can apply for an exemption if a hitter sits for three days due to injury or a pitcher misses a start due to injury. The bottom line is teams dont place guys on the DL after rosters expand. We may consider including suspension.

- The NA slot - Did you all find it helpful, worth keeping? Didn't seem like many guys made much of an  impact. Top guys like Buxton, Bryant, Bradley, Guerrero, Bundy, Taillon, Appel and Syndergaard didn't even get near the major during the reg. season. Gausman and Baez may have been the best, and they weren't that good. Still, its fun to dream about drafting Mike Trout for your NA slot. Its also not harmful to keep.

- Getting ahead of an issue - It came to my attention during the open draft period that we really don't have a means of controlling two teams from making a trade with the understanding/agreement that the team receiving the player will trade said player back to the original trade in the offseason for a certain amount of picks. Essentially, they could borrow a player. While it could potentially be a fair exchange, I could see this being a big problem that throws off the competitive balance of the league. I also don't want to out-and-out prohibit a team from re-acquiring a player. A simple solution may be just to make any trade in which two teams are exchanging the same player subject to veto. It hasn't been an issue to day and we can talk about it later, but I do want to get ahead of it.

- DL slot - Comes up every year, but always worth considering.

- Draft order - This one was on me as I thought that Yahoo had a losers bracket, which they did not. So, we'll go with a straight forward lottery for this year, but maybe there is something else we can try in the future.

- Meet-ups - I'd like to try to organize an occasional meet-up during the season if people are interested. Even if its just meeting at Mike's Clam Shack for a couple beers and a few innings of a Sox game. If there's interest, maybe we can do something in Boston.

The last bullet brings me to my final point. It's obvious fantasy baseball has become less of a priority for everyone since the league started 10 years ago, myself included. This is natural as our careers become more time consuming and as many of us have children who consume much of our time.  I certainly don't have extra time, but as the real world has continued to demand more of my time, I have found the time I have in the fantasy world all the more valuable. I hope you share this feeling. If not, in time, I think you will (it does get easier as the kids get older). As we enter our second decade as a league, I hope we can collectively commit to continually improving the league each year so that we're still active and engaged in 10 more years. Maybe some day, our sons will be playing fake sports together. We've got a great league with great people and a great history -- that's something worth hanging on to.

Final Real Rankings

NOTES
- Congratulations to, well, me for my regular season championship. I take home 25% of the pot, plus $40 for best second half record. Gibby gets $100 for his second place finish.

- Though it didn't seem that way, probably because he had little competition, my season was equal to Russ' dominant 2013 regular season. Our Real Rankings were basically identical. He finished 2013 at 5.30 and I finished at 5.31 this year.  His closest competition was Chris Shannon at 6.38 while I had Gibby nipping at my heals most of the season at 5.98. 

- In the actual standings, my .664 winning % came in well above Russ' .631 last year. The135 wins I accumulated during the regular season was good enough for fifth all-time and the most since we expanded to 14 teams in 2011.

1.  Casten (2007):  141 2.  Litchfield (2005): 140 3.  Oullette (2008):  138 4.  Leech (2007):  137 
5.  Leech (2014):  135

As Russ has asserted many times and I can attest, having won three regular season championships, it a lot more difficult to win a regular season than a championship.  Of course, that comes from two guys who have never won a championship...  

Anyhow, congratulations to me! And good job to Gibby too. Congratulations to all the playoff teams as well. It was a fascinating end to a great season.

- But we play for the glory of the championship tournament. Here are the hottest teams over the past 4 weeks

One Nut Wonders	5.30
Keepin it REAL...	5.33
Montezuma's	5.63
Ring of Fire	5.93
Urban Achievers	6.08
Sexual Napalm	6.68

- Obviously, I'm a little late this week and we've already got some upsets brewing. It would be very much like me to lose in such epic fashion to a team that sold off most of its best players. But that's what makes this fun, right!

- On another note in the regular season, its hard to see Moose and Cowhide decide not to sell and still get shut out of the tournament while Urban and Anal sell hard and get in. A half game kept Dave out, which is why it is important to never take a win for granted. It could make all the difference.

- Unless there is some serious objection, I'm going to impose a new rule related to our injured player restriction in the playoffs. Its been three years and its never been used because rosters expand right before the playoffs start, thus negating the need to DL a player. I'm thinking if a position player sits for three games in a row or a pitchers misses a start due to an injury, a team can apply for an exemption. We'll see.

- Regarding the consolation bracket, I have no clue why it didn't show up. I've scoured the Commissioner tools and can't find anywhere that listed it as optional. I have an inquiry into Yahoo. Unless the bracket suddenly appears to start next week, we're going to have to scrap that idea for next year and just go with a straight lottery.

-