Fantasy Baseball: Play Ball!

The long winter is over, and spring has begun.

The 2007 Major League Baseball season began with Jose Reyes grounding out to first, and the first hit was grittily recorded by a tenaciously hustling David Eckstein as the Mets went on to pound Chris Carpenter for the win last night.

I can't tell you how excited about this season I am. I've drastically reduced the number of leagues I'm in this year, and I feel good about all of them. (Last year I was drawn entirely too thin, and suffered a bit of burnout by August.)

I've also become a bit of a stock-watcher over at RotoHog. The prices are fascinating to me. Who would have thought that Albert Pujols would have skyrocketed that much overnight? Why haven't people caught on to the fact that SP-eligible Jonathon Papelbon is the most valuable player in the league (it's a points league, folks - you want to maximize the number of points per inning pitched, and with the scoring setup, closers dominate from the mound. You want as many relief innings pitched as you can possibly get, and Papelbon gets you an extra arm to do so. This is why I creamed the opposition back when Danny Graves was an SP-eligible closer.).