It's Fantasy Baseball Season: Batter Up

Most boys would rather be Giancarlo Stanton or Clayton Kershaw, but since that’s such a longshot many have decided to become Pro Fantasy Baseball Players. No, I actually didn’t flip my MLB fitted lid. Becoming a Pro Fantasy Baseball Player is probably the next best thing. It’s what modern adolescents have been pining for. Okay, so maybe some of them would like to slip into their Xboxes and splash onto the screen of their MLB 15: The Show. You do know that quite a few players participate in Fantasy Baseball too. Pretty cool if you asked me. How awesome is it that you can find pundits analyzing sabermetric data.

Yes, I know sabermetrics seems to have gotten out of hand, and maybe it’s not as sexy as a video game, but the growing popularity of this uber-geeky enterprise has been morphing baseball into something more like Big Bang Theory (the sitcom) than The Natural (book or movie). I can’t get enough of it myself and this season I’ve added a 3rd league. I’m covering all the bases, so to speak. I’m in a live auction/NL-only keeper league, a bare-bones autodraft on Yahoo, and a Mixed Keeper League/Head-to-Head format.

You may be asking, how do you hold down a job? It’s not easy. I try to pick my faves and apply them to multiple leagues so I can minimize my stat-scrutinizing, but that’s not always easy, especially since I am now in 2 Mixed Leagues.

What’s really awesome about Fantasy Baseball is not the vicarious thrill of logging dingers and RBIs as if you were notching them to your own major league record. Although we all know, at least, one or two guys in our leagues who fit that profile. Taking home the championship is pretty sweet, but even better than that is being able to uncover talent, hidden gems from nooks and crannies that others have missed. This is especially true in Keeper Leagues. You grow attached to your finds, nurturing them for seasons until it’s time to send them onto greener pastures.

Fantasy Baseball is scorecards on steroids. It’s the hypotenuse of homerun derby. It’s the ne plus ultra way to commit to the great American pastime. I am really looking forward to this upcoming season, and I’m beginning to break a sweat as if stepping into the batter’s box. See you at the cage.