He did a little bit more than just read 2 poker books and put on sunglasses.

Then Texas Hold’em stormed it’s way into poker nights around the country. Dealer call it poker nights became $20 buy in tournaments with the losers fetching beer and watching porn until somebody won. Back then most people were still playing this new game like it was 5 card draw, specifically tossing chips into the middle with almost any 2 cards. The only strategy you needed to be a “good” player in these fields was a 80% fold rate.

But flash forward over 10 years and the games have tightened up. There are a ton of poker resources online and in dead tree form at Barnes and Noble. Most of the guys in your poker night have now played online, gotten their ass kicked, and decided to learn how to play the game a little. This does not mean that you’re staring at Phil Ivey across that home made felt cover to your dining room table, but it does force you to up your game. For instance, you now may have to learn how to properly play your position to gain that advantage.

It’s called the evolutionary arms race that Darwin wrote about and it takes place in any competitive system.

You gotta stay ahead of the prey, or you're gonna end up with that ACME anvil upside your own head.

The same thing is currently happening in your fantasy league. There are hundreds of resources where your competition is getting fantasy advice. You’ve seen the cheat sheets on draft day becoming more sophisticated and your opponents start spewing “conventional wisdom” like “draft running backs in the first two rounds”.

But the thing about “conventional wisdom” is that by the time it becomes conventional you better be figuring out ways to adjust away from them. You always need to zig when they zag. Stay a couple steps ahead of the pack. Predator and not the prey.

Many experts have been quietly suggesting for a few years now that the 2 running back strategy had run it’s course. Part of this is due to the viral popularity of the dreaded running back by committee, but it’s also because your entire league is following the same “wisdom”. It just doesn’t work anymore. Now there are still enough solid fundamentals behind it that you don’t scrap it completely, but you should already be tweaking the first couple rounds on your cheat sheet with some “Best Player Available”.

Every fifth day he gives us a reason to pay attention to the Royals.

And this finally gets us around to pitchers. Conventional wisdom has been giving them a bad rap lately. It says to draft the more dependable hitters first, fill in your roster with Low Investment Mound Aces (LIMA) later, never pay for saves, etc. Matt Berry’s take over at ESPN fantasy is a large reason that these strategies are getting more penetration lately. Enough years of seeing them in the Draft Day Manifesto and even the slower players in your league are starting to catch on.

So what does this mean? Well, you have to stay flexible. These strategies have some solid background but if you start to see more people on draft day following them, be prepared to zig. Grab Papelbon at $9 at that mixed auction if everybody else in your league is sitting on their hands not paying for saves. Don’t be afraid to grab a Greinke in the late 3rd round if everybody else is taking a pass on the Royals stud.

There seems to be some depth this year at a lot of offensive stat categories, so don’t be afraid to go after that ace at the right price. Just make sure you’re staying a couple steps ahead of the pack.

Download the data here!

Player Rater Projections

He's had a balky elbow for two seasons and you've seen how much that slowed him down.

We’ll start this season’s player rankings over in the land of 500 foot bombs and HGH suspicions. First base is long on homers, but pitifully short on steals. In fact only one guy, Mark Reynolds, is projected to swipe into the double digits. So that makes it important to make sure you get somebody who is very strong in the other 4 traditional offensive categories so you can fill in the steals with a cheap outfielder later.

While predictably deep in the long balls, it seems shallower than usual in dependable all around studs. The first tier is one man on an island, one of the best pure hitters in baseball history, and the perfect on field distraction to all the disgraceful Cardinals off field mess, Albert Pujols.

Tier 2 contains Prince, Miggy, Teixeira, and Howard who are all as close to sure things as you can get. Just put them down for 30+ HR, 100+ RBI, and 90+ runs. A great start to any infield.

Tier 3 goes from Joey Votto down to probably Kung Fu Panda. These guys are mostly the 3 category guys, who will be good to great in those power stats but with another weakness like batting average. A couple of these guys will probably perform up to second tier status so feel free to choose liberally from this group as well.

Then there is everybody else.

Just make it official and put your sign up next to these other scummy ticket scalpers

But this holiest of all holidays has been under attack from the likeliest of all foes, a giant corporation masking themselves as a baseball team.  This is way worse than Bill O’Reilly and some imaginary war on Winter Carnival.  These are bleacher seats we’re talking about.

The Cubs for years have been trying to come up with some way to get more money for their tickets, but without all that bad press that comes every time they raise ticket prices.  First they opened up their own ticket scalping business where they would funnel face value tickets BEFORE the public had a chance at them and sell them at 800% markups.  Still the gold standard in corporate douche-baggery and somehow was found legal by the corrupt Illinois court system.

Then they started offering a nine game ticket pack to buyers before the official onsale where season ticket waiting listers such as myself could purchase some opening day or Cubs / White Sox as long as we also agreed to buy the same seats at 8 other really shitty game of their choice usually on Tuesday nights in April and against the Pirates.  Not a bad upsale scam if the buyers let you get away with it.

But now, yesterday morning, I received an email in my inbox with the newest scheme to fleece more money out of us ticket buyers.  It’s the Mastercard First Chance Presale where we lucky devils get a chance to purchase whatever tickets desired before the official public sale date of February 19th, but at a 20% markup. Wow, thanks.

It’s enough.  I get it that you’re trying to compete with your own scalpers and get a piece of that big game pie.  But why all these schemes that only serve to insure more tickets in the hands of those scalpers and less tickets available to the public on the day you start selling tickets?  Why not A) take your lumps with the media, man up, and raise face value prices on those games or B) start auctioning off those seats directly to your fans?  Sell them to the highest bidder!

The placement of Derrick Lee's head makes this Anal, err... Annual oddly appropriate.

Is it not enough that you have given us fans over 100 years of failure, $7 Old Styles, Milton Bradley, and troughs in the very few tiny bathrooms?  Stop also back alley’ing us into paying huge ticket prices.  Stop saying you have a public onsale date when everybody knows that every seat will already be gone before then to every Saturday or Cubs / Sox game.

Stop making it so obvious that every single move is going to be a full on no lube raping of us fans.

I usually fall on the side that these pregame chants to psych up other professional athletes are at best a really stupid waste of time, but for whatever reason I think it’s cool that Drew did this for the drunken Saints fans at that bar.  New Orleans has to be a pretty cool town to celebrate a championship in.

Text of the chant:

Brees: “One.”

Team: “Two.”

Brees: “Win.”

Team: “For you.”

Brees: “Three.”

Team: “Four.”

Brees: “Win.”

Team: “Some more.”

Brees: “Five.”

Team: “Six.”

Brees: “Win.”

Team: “For kicks.”

Brees: “Seven.”

Team: “Eight.”

Brees: “Win.”

Team: “It’s great.”

Brees: “Nine.”

Team: “Ten.”

Brees: “Win.”

Team: “Again.”

Brees: “Win.”

Team: “Again.”

When I say "Fuck" you say "Katrina".

I may have been drinking a little too much last night, thank you Evan Williams and Squirt, but the Colts offense was very Chicago Bears like last night.  Conservative play calling, shoddy defense, and bad wide receivers.

How does Jim Caldwell concede the first half by trying to run out the clock and give the Saints another 3 points and confidence going into the locker room?  Did you seem to notice that the guy on the opposite side lines is going for it on 4th down, onside kicking it, and coaching straight from his nut sack?

Rewind a few hours and one of the best tidbits gleamed from the 28 hours of pregame nuttiness was that Sean Payton, while drinking last January, agreed to pony up $250,000 of his personal money to bridge the contract gap and sign defensive coordinator Gregg Williams as a fresh new voice for the team.  Good decision.  This guy is getting an entry right next to Bruce Campbell in my cool book.  A very un-Bears thing to do.

The best receiver in the game, Reggie Wayne, looked average at best last night.  It’s kind of like watching one of your favorite bands of all time show up 40 years older to play the Super Bowl halftime like a wrinkled karaoke version of themselves.

If Pierre Thomas would have gotten one of those late touchdowns he might have pulled down that MVP hardware.  Bookmakers put that at +800 ish before the game, could have been a big payday for some degenerates in Vegas.

Drew Brees is now in the Hall of Fame discussion.  With those big stats the last couple years and now a first ever Super Bowl for New Orleans, he’s building a bullet proof case.

So now everything football related is going to be retarded shouts of “Who Dat?” and fake creole accents.  Ugh.

Nine days until pitchers and catchers report.

Pretty much sums it up.