Wisconsin Rapids Bro League
Bro...
None of the Bro League matchups were close this week. If you'd like further information on how week 4's results played out for us, just scroll past this week's monologue because I'm making a call to the 'pen and throwing a curveball this week.
I first joined the Cable Baseball League (I'll bet none of you have ever even heard of Cable, Wisconsin unless you fish) back in 2012, it's __th year of existence (formed sometime around 1980 when Father Todd met his college buddies) and the league's first season without one of it's main participants, who tragically passed. Another spot was open soon after in the league when one owner (Luke) bowed out for the reason of waning interest. The league had filled the deceased's seat in ownership and with one spot still open come March 2012, they decided to humor the league commissioner's fascination with statistics and all that camaraderie baseball and fantasy sports have to offer by drafting an 8th team that would essentially be a roster based on what the group thought the departed league members would have drafted given they had thirty years of proven biases and habits to look back on. After one awkward round where this vacant ghost team drafted Pitcher Zack Greinke, the commissioner offered the team to me as I think he noticed my frustration co-managing Father Todd's team, whose baseball biases are FAR stronger than his football do-not-draft lists. After a handful of seasons pushing my dad to take chances on failed names like Blue Jays P Marc Rzepczynski, Royals 2B Johnny Giavotella and Rockies 3B Ian Stewart along with my total disgust at his favoring of Cardinals 2B Skip Schumaker among other higher-ceiling value picks, I was ready to entertain the idea of running a team for a year. Now, I wasn't certain I'd keep up in this league with the most insanely in-depth rule book I've ever seen for a fantasy sports league but for whatever reason, I was thrilled to start a keeper team mostly from scratch and build something.
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| USA TODAY Sports For the entire span of my time in this league, I've only had legendary Closers carry my pitching staffs like Aroldis Chapman (above), Kimbrel, Jansen and as of 2023, Emmanuel Clase. |
I'm not sure how they decided on 31-man rosters with 11 protected players, then 2 voted off each team to keep the drafts somewhat appealing, followed by a final list of 17 keepers (or 6 in addition to those protected) but in an 8-team league, it's easy to see how fun it can be to field a full roster of quality talent. My original 2012 keepers inherited from Luke included names like Adam Dunn, Starlin Castro, a washed Jimmy Rollins, a more washed Mark Teixeira, #1 prospect Matt Wieters, the most disappointing hitter in Jason Heyward, Shaun Marcum for some reason and two dudes I relied on for much of the remainder of the decade in SP Clayton Kershaw and Closer Craig Kimbrel. I really only got anything out of those last two and maybe a year of quality Adam Dunn big boppers before the whiffs became too much. Back to the 2012 draft, I accepted the Greinke pick as he was a borderline ace and (Andy's) Luke's Flukes proceeded to have my strongest draft in the 13 years I've been picking for this team. My original pick for my team made without assistance? Paul Goldschmidt. I then took Jose Altuve, Jonathan Lucroy, Kenley Jansen, Jason Kipnis, rode those future all-stars (and three possible HOFers) to a 5th place finish. The Cable Baseball League decides its champion by final cumulative numbers at the end of the season with lineups only done on a ranked basis (1 through 21-or-so hitters and 1 through 10-ish pitchers) ONCE PER MONTH. It has to be insanely complex for the most dedicated league commissioner one could possibly imagine. At the end of each month, we are allowed one free agent pick-up as long as we cut somebody from our roster (unless it's April, in which we are allowed a free free-agent addition with no sacrifices needed). For instance, I once cut washed-up 3B Scott Rolen for flash-in-the-pan 3B Will Middlebrooks because they played the same position and my third base situation was bleak back in 2012.
After a stellar group of talent formed from the 2012 draft, I lost Zack Greinke through the free agent voting process and added 3B Manny Machado with the first round pick in the 2013 draft. Feeling overconfident in my ability to process the rules of the league's scoring (where stolen bases matter very little and you get defensive points based on a player's end-of-year Fielding Bible ratings) and in my ability to spot talent, I dealt Jonathan Lucroy and a pick for SP Matt Cain in addition to a blockbuster trade for Ryan Braun. Sure, there were nice seasons from Victor Martinez, Mark Reynolds and a young flamethrower named Matt Harvey but the result was a similar 6th place out of 8 teams for Andy's uhh... Team (my actual team name in 2013). 2014 was a disaster-class where I took the not bad(!) Yasiel Puig and Matt Carpenter in the first round but with Braun's injuries piling up and spots wasted on minor-league prospect 3B Miguel Sano and failed lefty starter Tony Cingrani, CarryOnMyHeywardSon finished dead last with the namesake of that year's team taking quite a chunk of the blame. 2015, I finally finished my identity crisis by settling on a team name that I just eclipsed ten seasons with... The Soler System. Outfielder Jorge Soler was a power-hitting Cubs prospect at the time and my #1 overall pick before I landed on other solid picks like Kole Calhoun and Brandon Crawford. It was a step in the right direction as I finished in fourth place and for the past nine seasons my offensive core has been built on the backs of these four men...
- 1B Paul Goldschmidt
- 2B Jose Altuve
- 3B Manny Machado
- OF Jorge Soler
Combine that with Clayton Kershaw transitioning into -insert Dodgers SP here- (Julio Urias, Tyler Anderson, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, etc.) around 2020 and you have a pretty decent picture of who I liked playing with in fantasy baseball. "Okay, but how did your team actually perform all these years?" asked the disembodied voice from the clouds. Well according to Yahoo! (which is not 100% accurate thanks to all of the commissioner's variables for counting stats)...
5th, 6th, 8th, 4th, 6th, 7th, 6th, 8th, 5th, 8th, 5th, 4th and this year? 1st.
Yeah about that last one...
I received the following e-mail on Thursday morning, three days following the conclusion of an intense month-long collapse that saw my team's depth land on the Injured List while the second place team had one of the deepest rosters I've ever seen as the rest of us had to MacGyver dudes like Sal Frelick (a .260 hitter with 2 regular season home runs and elite defense) into our lineups...
"The initial tallies are in and Jeff and Alex did overcome Andy in the last couple weeks to take the crown. Andy was really hurt with no backup 1B and (Brent) Rooker dropped under the 10% threshold in the OF thus only qualified at DH. And Andy has too many other DH only guys as well so did not get all his OFer games either. I will go back to each month and verify both these teams totals. So for now, congratulations to Jeff and Alex. This might be the closest finish ever."
sooo, THAT just happened... *audience laugh track*
My first second-place finish in an incredibly unsuccessful tenure as a Cable Baseball League owner. The most fun I've had in a season and the most work I've put into building a team. I traded multiple picks in next season's draft for multiple in-season pickups of pitchers like Clarke Schmidt, Kyle Bradish and Joe Ryan. All three of them were on the IL within two starts of me adding them, only Ryan can be kept into next season. How was I even competitive with a staff like that plus the Yankees refusing to call up Jasson Dominguez, the Bird Bats (™) of both St. Louis and Toronto going cold and after trading Wily Adames for Eloy Jimenez and a 5th-round pick? Well, there's a new core in town and the torch has been passed. That's why even though the end result isn't what the Soler System wanted, I have to dedicate this week's usual post to my baseball ride-or-dies over the past decade-plus. I don't have to announce my protected players or my cuts until next March but barring any injuries throwing wrenches into my plans, I already know that I will be moving on from Goldschmidt and Soler with Jose Altuve likely left unprotected only to be voted off my team. My team simply must rebuild despite their recent string of success carried by the new faces of The Soler System... SS Bobby Witt Jr., 3B Rafael Devers, 1B Vinnie Pasquantino and hopefully players like C Will Smith don't drop off as the second-half of '24 has suggested while Dominguez ascends into an everyday player. Throw in the power of DH Kyle Schwarber and the pitching staff that has seemingly finally replaced Kershaw with Paul Skenes, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Logan Gilbert and Emmanuel Clase plus Machado entering his twilight years? It's not like I'm the 1998 Marlins, we should be back. Unfortunately, I can't keep the midseason picks that kept me afloat like SP Ranger Suarez, 1B/OF/(apparent DH) Brent Rooker or SP Luis Gil as they enter the 2025 draft pool and lightning doesn't usually strike twice. The magic of my second-half lead seemingly went away on a technicality. It's called FANTASY baseball for a reason and my reason is that if in my fantasy, I'm fielding my own competitive lineup and I'm sticking Rooker at 1B or the outfield to keep his and Schwarber's bats both in the lineup no matter what. Does anyone actually believe a major league manager not named Pedro Grifol would use George (kind of washed) Springer or *gulp* Jose (nothing but glove) Siri in the outfield over Brent ".293 with 39 home runs" Rooker? I guess that's why they say "In your dreams!" mockingly because that's all this season's victory would turn out to be.
USA TODAY Sports
Brent Rooker: Designated Hero.
THIS IS THE PART WHERE I GET OVER IT AND TALK GENERAL SPORTS: I love how every team decided their quarterbacks were worth 5 times as much as the third and fourth best players on their 53-man rosters, only for those same gunslingers to no longer be able to throw for over 300 yards without major injuries to the opponent's defense (remember how Andy Dalton threw for the first 300-yard, 3 TD against the Raiders in the game where Maxx Crosby got hurt). Jared Goff's random 18-of-18 performance against the Seahawks this weekend was a prime example of the latter as he torched a defense missing their top FIVE pass rushers in Uchenna Nwosu, rookie Byron Murphy, Jerome Baker, Boye Mafe and Leonard Williams.
Props to Sparky on fearless lineup management this week, he started rookie QB Jayden Daniels over Patrick Mahomes and got a 22.1 showing from RB Chuba Hubbard starting over Najee Harris. Gabe needs to fix his TE-K-DF combo that I think we need a name for (the three combined positions in general, not just Gabe's). Alec should probably give up on Mark Andrews and I still have Hockenson, McBride and the rejuvenated Travis Kelce. Cole should re-open trade talks for Brandon Aiyuk. Hoefs saw how much he had scored at 0-2 and decided to keep scoring more so, don't be surprised if he just ends up winning this whole thing. Brett won by sticking with RB D'Andre Swift despite having no reason to and Nick was able to nap through Josh Allen's sleepy Sunday night performance because of his blowout win.
There's no reason for Devin Williams to not have already supplanted former Packer TE Brandon Bostick as the most despised Wisconsin athlete of the 21st century to not have won anything (you're safe with this caveat, Favre, Rodgers and Darren Sharper). First, he missed the 2020 postseason with an arm issue (understandable now that every pitcher is made of glass), then he broke his hand punching a wall after Milwaukee dealt dominating closer Josh Hader and they clinched a playoff berth anyway. Last season, he gave up 2 earned runs while recording two outs in a game one loss of a two-game sweep by the Diamondbacks and now the worst of it all, four runs and a blown save after leading the Mets 2-0 in the ninth of a winner-take-all game. They probably should have traded him before the back issues kept him out for the first half of 2024 with Trevor Megill filling in admirably and now, I'm banning Father Todd from raising his voice about the Brewers until they rid themselves of The Airchoker. The rest of the team was fine and I'm glad there was at least one three-game series out of all the wildcard round duels. Now, it's divisional rivalries in the National League between Phillies-Mets and Dodgers-Padres with the Yankees trying to fend off an AL Central team making the World Series with the Guardians, Royals and the Tigers somehow remaining in the American League. I am loving this playoff format and it's kept me from focusing on how much of drop-off my fantasy team had with Anthony Volpe, Nolan Gorman and Daulton Varsho needing to work on themselves as I work on this.
Official WRBL Standings
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| USA TODAY Sports Benchwarmer of the Week: WR Jayden Reed (Dad Weights and Protein Shakes) |
Brett v. Sparky
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