Fantasy baseball: bragging and more

[Note: if you're totally unfamiliar with fantasy sports, you may want to check out this article from the free online encyclopedia.]

Fantasy sports aren't for everyone.  You need to follow a certain sport, enjoy making predictions, and have some free time on your hands.  If any of those three ingredients is missing, I'd say it's probably not for you.

If, however, you like at least one sport, cherish the fine art of prognostication, and are looking for ways to kill time, then fantasy sports -- and this blog post -- are for you.

I'd like to accomplish two things today in regards to fantasy baseball: brag about my domination in my current league of friends, and argue for the particular type of fantasy baseball we play.


1. My fifteen minutes of glory

One of the exciting but frustrating parts of fantasy sports is that you can destroy your competition all season long then have one bad week in the playoffs and finish in 2nd, 3rd, or 4th place.  So, if you're destroying your competition all season long, as I'm now doing in my league, you have to enjoy it while it lasts.  I've thus decided to brag now, in the event that I lose my bragging rights when push comes to shove.

All I'm going to do to brag is proudly display a graphic I've made to illustrate how far ahead I am of the competition.  In case there's any confusion, I am the blue dot all the way to the left.  The chart indicates by how many games each other team is trailing me:

2. Two types: Head-to-head vs. Rotisserie

While anyone can enjoy a good old bragfest (umm... now that I'm reading that statement...), this point will probably appeal mostly to fantasy baseball veterans.  But in case any brave cool person is still reading, I'll explain the two main types of fantasy baseball leagues.

In a rotisserie league, each team accumulates the stats of its players all season long.  Then, at the end of the season, you just look at where each team ranks in each important statistical category (e.g., for baseball, Runs, RBI, Batting Average, ERA, etc.).  The team that ranks highest in the most of these categories is the champion.

In a head-to-head league, you instead face off against one other team each week.  At the end of the week, each category you win counts as a "win" for your team, and each category you lose counts as a "loss."  So, if at the end of a week I've outscored Scot in 7 of the 10 categories, my team's "record" is 7-3 while his is 3-7.  In such a league, you have 1-3 rounds of playoffs to end the year, and whoever goes undefeated in those rounds is the champion.

The common aphorism about the two types is that rotisserie is more fair, but head-to-head is more fun.  This is because the best team always wins in "roto" leagues, but they mostly lack the excitement of 1-on-1 playoff matchups.  I've always accepted this principle (and chosen head-to-head accordingly, because if I'm not trying to have fun then what am I doing pretending to be a baseball manager?).  Until now.

I now think that head-to-head is more fun and more fair.

Well, "more fair" might not be completely true, but I think head-to-head definitely better represents actual sports.  Which (I think) is the aim of fantasy sports.

In real baseball, we don't wait til the end of the season and compare home run and ERA totals and crown a champion based on the numbers.  No.  We take the top teams and they square off 1-on-1.  While we'd like to think that the best team generally wins, with so many crazy factors (weather, injuries, distractions), there is a definite element of luck.

So even the undesirable parts of head-to-head -- like the seemingly arbitrary strike of a "bad week" that ends your season -- are part of the reality of professional sports.


If anyone made it this far, please comment!!!

Comments encourage me to keep blogging.

Are you currently being dominated by me in fantasy baseball?  What are your thoughts on fantasy sports?

Jon

August 2011 Grammar Tip

Homophones will get you every time.

It almost isn't your fault, right?  I mean, the words sound exactly the same, and for you to spell the correct word, you'd have to do all kinds of extra steps.  Study the context, contrast definitions, match spellings to meanings, and pick the correct one.  Who can be expected to endure 4 mental processes in a pinch?!

I expect you to.  All of literate humanity should be held to this level of communicative passability.

And while there are so many pitfalls we could address today (there, their, they're, whose, who's, Jon, John), let's go straight for the jugular.

It's and Its

I'm just going to offer you one straightforward test you can apply each time you attempt to use ITS or IT'S.  Noting that the apostrophe in IT'S stands for the letter i ("IT IS"), just ask yourself -- does this word stand for "it is"?

It's that simple, every time.  So if you're typing a slide for a song at church and see:

I'm coming back to the heart of worship

And its all about You, all about You, Jesus

You just ask yourself two questions:

1. Is this song retired into the worship hall of fame, never to be played again?

2. Does the its/it's word stand for "it is"?

In this anecdotal example, the song is, in fact, retired, and so the correct move would be to delete those slides and insist on a new worship song that hasn't been played 300 million times in our lifetime.  But, for the sake of grammar, let's move to question 2.

Replacing "it is" for "its", we get "It is all about you, Jesus."  Yes!  That's what we're trying to say.  And so, we know we need the apostrophe to represent that extra letter i; we go with IT'S.

One more example.  Let's say you're writing a children's book and you've just penned, "The cyborg blasted it's laser."  Firstly, that's too scary and futuristic for a kid's book.  Secondly, applying our ITS/IT'S Test, we get--

"The cyborg fired it is laser."

As this clearly makes no sense, we do not have an extra letter i, and thus do not need an apostrophe.  So "its" it is.  (<-- Yeah.)

It's its or it's, is it?

Thoughts, questions, stories, ideas for future grammar tips?

Jon