That's what I hate about autopilot

I never blog or even talk much about fantasy baseball because no matter how passionate as you about it, it's a fantasy, and no one really cares to hear about anyone else's fantasies of any sort unless there's some sort of personal involvement in it that wouldn't seem gross.

If you are not a team owner in "The BLS", the Bushe League Superstars, appropriately, BS.baseball.cbssports.com), I'll try to make this post not really about my fantasy, but about a frustration with algorithmns with some league history. But this post is really for my league mates - it was too long for the chatroom. :-)

The BLS has been a league since 1995 - a few months before the release of Internet Explorer 1.0, and traces further back to when people did fantasy by the U.S. Postal service. You'd wait a week for the report to come in the mail, it would cost about $50 per team per year. You wished it was only 2 days behind and not three, you kept up with boxscores each day in the NEWSPAPER- how quaint! Like many, I did it by hand in a Quattro Pro spreadsheet starting in 1991. I think there were about 500,000 players at the time. Enough to subsidize space on magazine shelves. My first league consisted of some workmates, close friends, two brothers, a wife that ran her own team (As one BLS owner says, "the only wife that knows what WHIP is!"), and some other guys that I found on internet message boards from all over the country and even the world (Australia, Japan, Denmark all hail BLS owners). Susan and I now co-own the The Crackerjacks, and the only other original left just last year.

The league is far more competitive now, but the bridge to the olden days is the way the BLS draft is conducted. It's done very slowly, enjoyed like a fine basket of fruit rather than an ice cream at the beach. The BLS draft is an extended draft of 336 or so picks (14 teams and 24 rounds), which occurs after each team "keepers" from the previous year. I say "or so" because an owner may decide to name anywhere between 3-8 "keepers" from the 30 person roster from the previous year, plus 0-2 form their minor league roster, none of which can qualify for the Rokie of the Year Award.

Most Yahoo or ESPN leagues do a draft 336 in an hour and a half. We do it over 6 weeks (Feb 15th to April 1st or so), 51 picks a week, 7 picks a day -a half a round a day. It can be excrutiating slow at time. There is no time limit at all until about March 1st, and owners will often take a day to think it over. Those are the most important picks, so we give more time for thought.

After March 1st, owers have 12 hours to make a pick, if they go over the time limit, their pick is skipped, but only until they get back to a computer and annouce who they want. Sometimes there are a lot of eyes on the page and picks go in mintues, though usually in hours, and then often hang for for the full 12 hours because we are all busy professionals.

In order to make the draft move faster, you can put the system on "autopilot" so that it pulls the next best player from your queue that is created by hand by dragging and dropping players in order.

(And now the story...)

When I woke up on Saturday, March 21st in round 13 of 22, the person three picks before mine exceeding the 12-hour rule and I skipped his pick (after a long hiatus, I'm commissioner again) .

It was near the "bench" phase of the draft but I still needed:
A relief pitcher
A starting pitcher
A middle infielder
Nice to have - a backup for some of my risky hitters (Travis Hafner)

I enjoy trying to figure out who will be the closer for teams that don't have a proven closer. It usually comes down to talent, temperment and strikeouts. My league requires exactly 3 relief pitchers. If you are going to win, you will need three closers for the season. Since there are 14 fantasy teams, that's 42 slots for "the closer" of each of the 30 MLB teams. Though you can take the risk, it's tough to win without the three closers, because you won't get enough points in the Saves category "rotissierre" baseball. If you finish low in one category (or "punt") you basically have to finish 1 and 2 in every other (and more 1's), to win. The good news is that half the league is playing with 2 closers.

I had two somewhat risky closers already, and almost all of the MLB team's closers were gone. I'm pretty sure in Oakland, that since Joey Devine's arms hurting, Brad Ziegler will get at least enough saves until I can find another one during the season. In Seatle, I love Chad Cordero, and nearly all my picks have been former keepers, as Cordero has been. I like the fit, and I like his talent. Chad has a weird delivery, he's about the only pitcher to nearly square the left side of his foot toward the batter, the toe pointing almost to the first base dugout, not right at the plate as they teach you in Little League. For him, I think it generates some special torque and his ball moves and hitters miss it even though he doesn't throw 95. The problem is that he had labrum surgery in July (injury that may be caused by the foots bad mechanics) and he won't be ready for Opening day, but I figure he'll eventually take the role.

I put Zeigler on top of the queue, then decided who my second pick should be. I was thinking of putting in Cordero, but it was possible that by the time I came back from Newport my other pick could come up. I wanted to make sure not to draft two closers in a row (I can't play a 4th closer), so I quickly put the hitter Troy Glaus second in queue. Determined not to let the draft interfere with my best attempt to be in unison with the cosmic vibration (i.e. - I don't like to do anything that requires such thought before mediation), I figured - "there won't be three picks in the hour it takes me to mediate anyway, I'll come back." I did get involved in a chatting with another where owner and as I went upstairs I thought "did I take it off autopilot?" "Yes. I think so." ,

Susan had to get ready after we finished meditation so I checked the draft web page. Zeigler was drafted (nice pick Peter!) during our meditation. The system picks Glaus for us and we wind up with NO THIRD CLOSER. Though we were able to pick up Cordero later, the way the queue works is sub optimal, unless there's only one in the queue. For most owners there may be 100 to 500 players. I regularly queue 60. An option for a "autodraftable size" queue would be nice.