Ahh, the joys of not being able to see a computer for days and days...Welcome to the difference between a fantasy player who's on top of things vs. a fantasy player who can't be on top of things. After hitting the manic highs of third place, I'm now in 8th, and all my guys are hurt, my lineup has only a couple of guys who were there from the beginning (Smoltz, Rhodes, Pedro (on the DL), Oswalt, Wolf, and Benson...pitching's about the same, but the hitters--Glaus, Posada, Aurilia, Alou, and Hidalgo (on the DL) are the only ones left from the original team, and I threw out a bunch of guys today. I have issues with the way this draft went. It seems like last year if you had filled a certain position then the auto-draft would then try to find other positions to fill--not so this year. I had three 3rd basemen when I know if the auto-draft had skipped over that position after taking Rolen then I would have gotten some better players at other positions. That why you also got three 2nd basemen and so forth. The key to my draft last year was a boon to my existence this year, probably due to lots of factors including filling that new IF position. Next year I'm doing the draft differently to avoid that clog at one position caused by the way my rankings were. I also have issues with there only being three possible spots to put relief pitchers, and I think there should be at least 4 so that you can get an even-number of closers and "hold-ers" Otherwise, if you run into a guy with two closers and you only have one, then there's an unfair advantage there. And you could argue that I could therefore take holds, but holds is not a stat that is as often recorded as saves (percentage-wise). I also think that the elimination of walks from the stats is a bad move, I actually think the on-base percentage stat should be used, so as a batter is rewarded for getting on base.

I was listening to Tony Kornheiser the other day and they were talking to a guy who does sabermetrics, and it was highly interesting. I believe you've talked about this before. Apparently, Billy Beane of the A's uses this in order to draft players (there's a great SI piece on Beane and this technique, and I also think a book just came out). I've always heard of the TA stat, but the most enlightening stat I heard about was the one for pitchers--Defensive-Independent stats or DIPS. This one guy wanted to know what a pitcher's strength was when the ball was unable to be defensed, since he figured a batter is always going to find a way to get lucky and find a hole and get a hit now and then--so he came up with a stat that only took into account strikeouts, walks, and home runs, and once calculated, the pitchers with the best DIPS were also the best pitchers in the game--Schilling, Johnson, Mussina, Maddux, etc. I think that's incredible.