Desperately Needed All Star Break

Nobody ever advises writers to start a story from the middle, but that is where this story must begin. I conceived this blog several weeks ago but my internet mysteriously vanished before I had a chance to resume it. Service has resumed without explanation, but my fantasy baseball team has not made a miraculous recovery. I'm out of the basement, but barely, and the purpose of this blog will be to chronicle the rest of this disastrous (so far) season and possibly gain some insight about fantasy baseball and maybe even the "real" world in the process.

My fantasy baseball season began with an auction draft in the middle of March. It took all day, and I thought I came out of it pretty well. Most others in the league thought that I would at least have a decent season. Two days into the official baseball year, my team was in first place. Downhill from there, and sometimes steeper than the slope of the mound.

The league that this blog will be about is a keeper league, which means that each returning player can keep at least three players on this virtual team from their team from last year. I came in tenth last year out of twelve, one place better than I am in now, which meant that I could keep the minimum of three. These keepers are based on which players you think will be worth more in this year's draft than you got them for the year before, and one such player that I kept was Yovani Gallardo. He's a second year pitcher for the Brewers who was believed by many to be the best bet out of all the Milwaukee starters. Injury-prone Ben Sheets started the all star game, while the previously sturdy gallardo recovered from a preseason knee injury only to tear his MCL in a base-covering accident and he won't be playing again this year. Ryan Zimmermann was underachieving somewhat when a shoulder injury that he considered to be minor turned out to be a labrum tear (not minor) and he's been on the DL for months. Curtis Granderson, signed to a long-term contract on my fantasy team, has had a solid season so far but that may not last and I had wanted a little better than solid from him. One player, who I could have kept for the same price as Gallardo, is having a better than solid season. His name is Josh Hamilton.

Going over all the problems that my team has had may take forever, so I'll just mention a few more players that I drafted and invested too much in to drop. Travis Hafner, Eric Byrnes, Phil Hughes, and Aaron Harang. Read those names and weep...for me. Add Gallardo to that group and assume the existence of fantasy baseball poker, and you've got one of the most dominant fantasy baseball razz hands in the history of the nonexistent game. It's a miracle that I'm not in last, but the last place team (projected by many to win) has Tulowitzki and countless other huge fantasy baseball disappointments. My pickup of Carlos Quentin didn't hurt either, but it hasn't helped me out of the bottom tier. Maybe that'll change by October. This blog will keep the record of whether the fantasy nightmare ends this season.

I hereby wish myself luck. I'll need it.