♫ Pitcher bunt attempts forever, for the union makes us bat ♫ – 2021 ILX Fantasy Baseball!

I made the thread on ILE, had it destroyed, and brought it back with the SAME dumb joke title because I can't do any better!

Hi everyone! The super bowl's only a week or so away, and you know what that means: pitchers and catchers report in two weeks!

Thermo's still commissioning (commissionering? commishing?) the league but I've been asked to take over "herd cats into picking keepers" duty, so here I am, making this thread that I regret the title of (as mentioned above). I love cats! This will be easy!

As a fantasy baseball GM, it is your duty to select up to five (5) eligible keepers:
• 2 of which must be 27, 28 or 29 yrs old
• another 2 players 26 or under
• one final keeper that can be either (basically anyone under the age of 30)
• age is calculated as of April 1
• for a player to be keep-eligible he must have been drafted on draft day by your team or traded to you by a team that drafted him. that means:
• free agent/waiver pick-ups cannot be kept
• if you have less than 5 keepers, you will get an extra draft pick at the end of the draft
• keep it clean (Will M's edit: alternatively, GET NASTY THIS TIME)

Looking at previous years, the draft's fallen on the Sunday before the Sunday before opening day, so let's put it at March 21, 2021 @ 4:00 PM Eastern (subject to change). I KNOW you don't have St. Patrick's plans this year, so don't even. That means keepers deadline is March 14, 2021.

If you're coming back, please let us know ASAP! If you aren't, please let us know ASAP! VORPed Minds is old enough to drink in Quebec now! How ridiculous is that! HELP US MAINTAIN THE TRADITION OF ROTISSERIE-STYLE FANTASY MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL COURTESY OF OUR FRIENDS AT SPORTS DOT YAHOO DOT COM SLASH FANTASY.

i'm down

I'll be back.

I am willing and prepared to defend my victory*

Also I'll kick off the keeper picking. Note that you can change these before March 14!!

Wander Franco (20)
Zac Gallen (25)

Luis Castillo (28)
Mookie Betts (28)
Nolan Arenado (29)

Also in my copy-pasting, I forgot to bold the dates --
DRAFT March 21 2021 (tentative)
KEEPERS March 14 2021 (mostly not tentative)

thanks again for getting the ball rolling dude. drinks in Quebec are on me!

Mad Boone Rising is back!

Acuna (23) lol
Luis Robert (23)
Yoan Moncada (25)
Rhys Hoskins (28)
Wilson Contreras (28)

I have 3 obvious keepers but the last 2 spots I have 4 different options which will be very tough, may need to hold out to the deadline before making a commitment.

here are the keepers for CORROSION OF CONFORTO:

Fernando Tatis Jr (22)
Yordan Alvarez (23)
Michael Conforto (28)
Xander Bogaerts (28)
Brandon Woodruff (28)

--------------------

I was tempted to consider Glasnow (27) or Ketel Marte (27), but I don't trust either after last season's abdications of fantasy baseball duty and I have trouble not keeping any of the other three players they'd replace. Might change my mind though.

question: is the thread title supposed to be sung? and if so, to what tune??

my most likely keepers this year (fingers crossed this time it will work out, happy thoughts version):
Kris Bryant 29
Francisco Lindor 27
Ozzie Albies 24
Nate Pearson 24
Mike Soroka 23

solidarity forever

He Ain't Javy (He's My Baez) tentative keepers

Javier Baez (28)
Aaron Nola (27)
Peter Alonso (26)
Lucas Giolito (26)
Chris Paddack (25)

do i have this right from last year?

CONFIRMED from 2020 to 2021:
NA
Will M
NoTimeBeforeTime
Thermo
Van Horn
Albert
omar

TBD from 2020 to 20201:
Jimmie Lovefoxxxxxx
X
bnw
j.q higgins
francisF
Andy K

Definitely in, thanks. Keepers TBD soon.

NP: Kaito - Peace of Landscape (Kompakt)

I don’t think there’s any rush on keepers. Season probably delayed again.

if anyone hears from the other 5 plz ask em to confirm their spot! delay or no, best to know if we need a replacement or something.

Communication is complicated because ILX webmail sucks, and some of these people like higgins & bnw (& Andy K) are OGs and have no doubt moved on from those email hosts. Is there any way to reach out via yahoo! league settings?

I'm in

ok, i'm back for more fantastical action. What are the odds we play 162?
will have my keepers in soon

Not sure who Jimmie Lovefoxxxxxx is (what's his alt?) but I may have ways of contacting bnw & j.q higgins via mutuals (those guys are OGs).

did a little poking around and jimmie is aka "this cannot be changed"

anyway they have plenty of time -- maybe they just haven't been active. i'll wait a bit before i try yahoo mail, but it should work i think?

Don’t sweat it. Lots of time, and we’ll probably get bonus time when things are delayed. Usually first week of March I will send out a reminder mail. But everyone knows the drill.

I am in. Had no idea you guys played last year tbh. I’m sure my keepers are garbage, oh well.

well you got about a week to let us know what garbage you want to keep!

Billy Childish Bambino tentative keepers:

Juan Soto (22)
Kyle Tucker (24)
Adalberto Mondesi (25)
Matt Olson (27)
Nick Castellanos (29)

impressed bnw managed to finish 7th, despite not touching his team all season!

so – i've officially moved the draft date on the league page to the afore mentioned 21st – for 4pm edt

for anyone who doesn't have their selects in by the 14th, i will let Will select their keepers – and he's *crazy*!
the sooner we get them in, the sooner i can post the draft order.

not as pure garbage as i worried. surely i will manage them worse then 7th now.

Julio Urias (24)
Shane Bieber (25)
Josh Hader (26)
Trevor Story (28)
Eugenio Suarez (29)

Snitker Conspiracy

Rafael Devers 24
Franmil Reyes 25
Austin Meadows 26
Noah Syndergaard 28
Mike Trout 29

keepers/who has responded tracker

i've sent a webmail to the two non-confirmed, hopefully they get those -- i'll also try yahoo to see if there's some way to reach out there...

(xp: will update with that one now!)

and sorry i've been so inactive. a combination of online exhaustion and valheim have made me extremely bad at everything. doing the work now tho!

Andy – Meadows is 25. you got him for another year!

I did a little websleuthing based on my longterm knowledge of higgins... he is on Facebook so I could try to ping him there if we get desperate.

Sorry for the wait! My keeper picks:

LuvWilTeheranUsApart

Alex Bregman (27)
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (22)
Bo Bichette (23)
Carson Kelly (26)
Jonathan Villar (29)

Villar is horrible but I literally don't have anyone else (all the other keeper eligible guys I drafted were dropped).

hi hi sorry hi hello i am 'any kestons?' this year

Keston Hiura, 24
Walker Buehler, 26
Cody Bellinger, 27
Tim Anderson, 27
Jorge Soler, 29

Jimmie Love – Bellinger is only 25!

Andy – Meadows is 25. you got him for another year!

Thanks for the correction. Firing my assistant.

https://cdn.mlbtraderumors.com/files/2018/10/dave-dombrowski-red-sox-1024x697.jpg

But other than my bad math, my list is still good, right Thermo?

yup!

https://i.ibb.co/z5x1LNd/Jeffress-Fire.jpg
BURN YOUR FIRE FOR NO JEFFRESS

FLAHERTY, Jack (<27)
MAY, Dustin (<27)
MACHADO, Manny (27-29)
GALLO, Joey (27-29)
JIMÉNEZ, Eloy (<30)

Hopefully my keepers are admissable! Pretty sure

finally - a reference i get!!!

ayyyy that's everyone confirmed! just need keepers from two teams (unless i missed em). the hardest part of fantasy baseball is almost done! wait what do you mean i have to do a draft

I did a little websleuthing based on my longterm knowledge of higgins... he is on Facebook so I could try to ping him there if we get desperate.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Saturday, March 6, 2021 10:35 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

they responded on the yahoo forums and will be returning!

Awesome! There are only so many ace surf guitarists in the DC area, I'll have to tease him when he shows back up.

ha!

also i was brainstorming new team names and decided to base it on the guy who might not even play this year, wander franco... i went wander... what sounds like wander... one direction? that's it! wanderection!

my brain vetoed this almost immediately, but then i came up with WanderVision so I'll go with that!

thought stacking my draft with youths would give me a better keeper than alex verdugo but here's alex verdugo:

Alex Verdugo (<27)
Corey Seager (<27)
Bryce Harper (27-29)
Aaron Judge (27-29)
Blake Snell (27-29)

emailed guns of buxton for keepers, that'll be the last list we need!

might need you to reach out after all albert, need those keepers from higgins

so sorry for spacing out

correa, berrios, turner, ramirez, laureano

All good m’dude. Still got it in on time.

ok gang. draft order is set and picks are in. please, for the love of all this is holy, double check i got your keepers right (it's easy to mess up this stage)!

you can view the order and selects HERE.

You got mine right!

Thank you so much Thermo for doing this.

I’m also doing weirdly better after trading my best hitter, starter and closer.

3-way tie for 1st at the moment!

My team had a day yesterday.

nothing Earth-shattering, but I finally cut ties with Dylan Carlson :,/

And I have finally been forced to end the Mike Soroka experiment.

Couldn't pry Corbin Burnes from CorbinBurneson, couldn't pry Soto from BillyChildishBambino

Like trying to get Lajoie from the Naps!

(The Naps did eventually trade Lajoie but only after he requested it)

just got this roster alert on my phone: "Your starting lineup has several potential issues you should review." no shit

Yes. Yahoo has been negging me for two months now.

couldn't pry Soto from BillyChildishBambino

― ✖, Monday, July 19, 2021 12:38 PM (four days ago)

Lol... you were offering me table scraps tbh.

I'd consider Vlad Jr. + Brujan if you're serious.

Adam Frazier (2021 All-Star 2B/OF from the Pittsburgh Pirates) is now on the fantasy trading block... he is on the IRL trading block as well. He will probably be batting leadoff for either SEA or CWS by end of month. Looking for a comparable 3B in return.

I was offering a better deal than what I paid for Vlad! Though I regret waiting until Soto got out of his slump to make an offer

If anyone else is interested in a package around Bryce Harper/Aaron Judge (+1 year of control for both), Carlos Rodon, Justin Turner and any of my relievers I am all ears. There's also a young keepable Zac Gallen if you're interested in him after last night's start.

Brujan isn't keeper eligible btw

Also pretty much anyone except vlad and Seager lol

Taking Frazier off the trading block as he is going to San Diego which is enough of a game-changer for me.

Well like I told you ✖ in the DMs, I admire you for trying to rebuild your team but I'm in the midst of defending my championship title (currently in 3rd, but should be 2nd by end of month). Perhaps it's a bit of a different mentality for those who play to contend... eg, I'm not going to stockpile borderline redraft OFs like Judge/Harper who wouldn't even be starters on my team.

Judge and Harper wouldn’t be starters?!

All OFs ranked season to date:

https://i.imgur.com/v3Ky5qG.png

The irony is that I kept Haniger for the 2018-2019 seasons (during his testicular trials & tribulations) only to finally release him and now he's a top 4 outfielder in MLB according to our metrics.

whoops, i was looking at the wrong team!

you don't need to have all of those at OF though? with the trade i offered, even after getting castellanos back your bench would be gleyber and adames

and harper is only that low because he missed time this year, if you sort by "season (avg)" he's the third most valuable OF in the league behind buxton and acuna. and judge is the 12th most valuable by average, ahead of everyone on your team except castellanos and JDM

francisf: i am considering your offer! i've been away all weekend so i haven't had time to really dig into it

k cool, no problem ✌️ lemme know!

i am also all ears if Vlad is back on the trading block!

uh vlad is definitely not on the trading block... my offer to broccoli was strictly a my-present-value-for-your-future-value kind of deal, same as the freeman/ryu for vlad trade, but i think i spent too much time talking about years of control on the guys i was offering and that sent a message that i thought he was trying to rebuild or something. (i was really just trying to soften the blow of losing all those future years of soto.)

i take back that seager is off the table though, i didn't realize he was about to come back and could reasonably help someone competing this year. it would take a lot though as he has 3 years of control left and i've definitely been planning on keeping him.

i honestly feel bad about the vlad trade, like it opened up a floodgate that wasn't opened before, and now these big kingmaker trades are gonna happen every year. it feels un-kosher, like the year end standings are going to be determined by whichever bottom-rung teams were willing to juice up whichever contending teams with uncontrollable stars. right now i have one of the best pitchers in the league, who will probably finish at least 2nd in AL CY voting, and he's completely worthless to me because i'm out of contention and he's unkeeperable. same with justin turner and bryan reynolds who are super valuable in this league. i'd feel pretty shitty if i was competing and all the teams around me were having all their holes plugged in exchange for a single young player, but there are so many game-changing players who just don't have any value to half the teams that own them. not that i was expecting broccoli to trade him, but even after soto finally got hot, a trade of harper/rodon/turner/a reliever would've been so completely lopsided in the short term it would immediately make broc the 2021 favorite, i would think. 7 years of soto is a lot to give up, but in the short term that seems unbalanced.

maybe something could be adjusted in the offseason to disincentivize blowup trades. either by expanding things to make more players keeperable, adjusting which players are keeperable, or adding an incentive for failing teams to keep trying to improve short term (might be hard to do without adding real life money rewards to the equation)

I think the trade market in our league was slow and boring over the past few years. The big trades this year added some much needed fun and excitement.

Since becoming a keeper league (10 years ago), team managers (much like real life GMs) probably overvalue their young talent and are reluctant to make big trades. Obviously I'm not excluding myself from these habits.

ya, you blew the doors off and i thank you for that! i like the big trades and they have been far and few between for most of the leagues history.

i honestly feel bad about the vlad trade, like it opened up a floodgate that wasn't opened before

my ears are burning lol

but nah even if you hadn't made that trade i would've been hustling like i did during that month anyway. i feel like it's really rare for a team to have as many good unkeepable players as mine did and somehow still shake out to be as bad as it was in the standings, but some enormously bad pitching in april and may kinda nailed my coffin shut. tbh the kingmaker trades have actually been around? i just feel like the first salvo just happened a little early this year.

maybe something could be adjusted in the offseason to disincentivize blowup trades

i feel like the most elegant fix (if it were a problem that needs to be fixed, which i don't think it is?) would be to limit the number of players you can keep via trade to 2 of the 5 or 3 of the 5 or something. but yeah in a roto i kinda like the buy-sell dynamic. i hate it in a h2h league because sometimes you get playoff-bound teams entering an arms race, to the point where... lower playoff-bound teams start to sell, which is just sad (see: my football league every year)

that said i uh i still have 6 top-60ish dynasty league players on my team so if anyone is interested in a 2 for 1 hit me up - turner (8), mookie (9), wander (22), bieber (24), eloy (28), castillo (60) per fantrax today (i picked their dynasty rankings arbitrarily)

that said the trade would probably involve castillo+1 out for a player better than the +1 and i doubt anyone wants to do that

team managers (much like real life GMs) probably overvalue their young talent

my ears are burning lol

tbh the kingmaker trades have actually been around? i just feel like the first salvo just happened a little early this year.

buuuuuuut if everyone's cool with it then that's cool. it does keep things a little more interesting

i believe the season i won (two years ago?) i made one trade? devers and franmil reyes for verlander. this season has definitely had more trades, especially of big names, than any since i joined ILX fantasy. i generally think it's fun, though i might find it more annoying if i was anywhere near contending.

Im already psyched for next season when i can unveil my amazing new team name

Great pennant race we've got going on here.

oh wow – you're right. I'd been so focused on my other team i hadn't paid much attention to our standings! i wish yahoo did like a visual timeline for standings.

oh they do!
https://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1/8949/viewstandingschart

pretty basic tho. animated would be more fun (like at the end of a game of CIV).

been a while, but i updated the 2022 keeper sheet with all of the adds/drops up until a few mins ago, probably the last update til the offseason! all of the trades included now as well.

Thanks dude

Thanks!

Two of my starters got shelled yesterday to the tune of 14 combined ER in 5 IP, and my team ERA went up by about .1. Still managed to move back into first place, somehow.

1.5 points separating 1st and 2nd with 6 days left!

I'm not posting anything (well, besides this post) for fear of jinxing my season.

Saw you making some lazy afternoon moves. Was expecting the both of you to be making some panicky early morning transactions!

for the record i don't think i've ever maxxed out any position and my outfielders and ss are done as of today. crazy.

I have been near the bottom of the league in #moves all season long. My middle name is "don't panic" ... but my first name is "I traded away seven more years of Vlad Jr. and if I don't win the season I will die".

Looks like yours to lose really, seeing how jq is maxed out in so many slots (just 7 innings left to use aswell)

Congrats NoTime!! Your insane gamble of trading away your home-team-superstar-best-hitter-in-baseball-and-also-only-22-years-old player paid off!!!

Thanks I know! (*laughs and then cries for the next seven years of keeper eligibility*)

congratulations to NoTimeBeforeTime!

I can't believe I finally won in our league after seventeen seasons of trying (and three second place finishes). I didn't have high expectations going into the season but had a great/lucky draft which really helped when injuries started piling up (not to mention the suspension of my perverted/psychopathic ace SP). It was one of those years where most of my roster moves worked out and a few key players overachieved (Ohtani!!).

Congrats again, dude.

A lot of my top players stank this year - Lindor, Yelich etc.
Was a seller this year for the first time in a while (I think I’d been second place two or three years in a row) and dealt Bryant before he became a FA, along with a few other deals and somehow my team started doing better after dumping talent?!

Congrats to NTBT! My big ol trade mostly paid off but it wasn’t enough. A relatively low OBP led to relatively low runs despite great hitting elsewhere, and like any good baseball fan I’ll also blame my starting pitchers for not WINNING despite great numbers elsewhere. I also mostly think NTBT was just too good.

most of the issues this season were in offense. i was particularly hurt by using early draft picks on DJ LaMahieu (who was bad all season) and George Springer (who was injured for big chunks of the season). at least i traded a non-keeper-eligible Aaron Nola for potential hotshot prospect Adley Rutschman, who is keeper-eligible.

forgot to wish NTBT a hearty congrats! hearty congrats to you NTBT!

also came back to say that i remembered to do the final update on that sheet with all of the september drops, here.

Thanks Will! And thanks again for your work on the keeper spreadsheet.

My keeper situation isn't as bad as I'd feared ... Dylan Cease showed legit #1 or #2 starter potential this year, so he and Bichette have me covered for solid <27 keepers. I doubt Ohtani will be as good next year, but obviously I have to keep him. That leaves five players (all of whom were really good last year) for two keeper spots. It's going to be a tough decision!