I dropped David Weathers from my fantasy baseball team this morning. And I feel terrible for doing it.<\/p>\n
I’ve said before that I’m not a cut-throat team manager. And my record shows that. I’m now 85 points behind the leader and more than 50 points behind my nearest competitor. I am losing by so much that it’s almost (bitterly) laughable.<\/p>\n
My main strategy in fantasy baseball (as I’ve mentioned before) is to acquire as many Mets and former Mets players as I can and to create a team out of them. There are some exceptions. Pudge Rodriguez has never played for the Mets, but he seems like a nice guy and I have a thing for aging catchers (in this instance when I say aging I mean two years older than I — how sad!). Preston Wilson never played for the Mets, but his dad, Mookie, did. Livan Hernandez is my nod to the hometown Nationals (although if he doesn’t start picking up his pace a bit, or if he gets traded away, I might consider dropping his 5.87 ERA (earned run average) pitching arm from my team).<\/p>\n
Last year I managed to pick up lots of Mets. This year, they seem to be in higher demand (fair-weather managers!) and Yahoo picked some other random players for me, including a closer who quickly went onto the DL (disabled list). When they did that I consulted my magic list of “Mets who don’t play for the Mets” pitchers and came up with David Weathers, who was the de-facto closer for the Reds. It was rumored he wouldn’t stay in the position for long, but he started the season strong and I wanted to give him a chance. He’s always seemed like a player on the up and up, respected by his teammates and not dissed by the overly harsh and powerful New York City media and fan bases.<\/p>\n
Last year Weathers pitched a decent 3.94 with a 7-4 record and 15 saves. With him in the closer position, I hoped for similar or better this year. But with his ERA hovering dangerously close to 5, Weathers recently was demoted back to middle reliever. The Reds have acquired a new lefty who will replace both Weathers and Todd Coffey as closer, at least for the time being. Weathers is just pitching an inning or two a game thrice a week, which is hard on a fantasy manager, particularly when the pitcher also misses out on getting a notch in the hold category.<\/p>\n
And my original closer came off the DL to pitch two innings of shut-out ball.<\/p>\n
My heart broke a tiny bit when I clicked the “Drop this player” button. But I clicked it anyway.<\/p>\n
What does that say about me?<\/p>\n
I am sorry, David. You don’t know me. You didn’t know you were on my fantasy team, or, probably, on any fantasy team. And you’ve just been dealt a tough blow for a pitcher, being demoted back to middle reliever or, even worse, right-handed specialist. I didn’t make your day any better, even if you didn’t know it. Thanks for all the good memories, and I’ll be rooting for you. Good luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I dropped David Weathers from my fantasy baseball team this morning. And I feel terrible for doing it. I’ve said before that I’m not a cut-throat team manager. And my record shows that. I’m now 85 points behind the leader and more than 50 points behind my nearest competitor. I am losing by so much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\n