COAFA: Hello, My Name is…

By Greg Wiley

Confessions of a Fantasy Addict is the Phanatic’s blog documenting the 2008 Fantasy Baseball season of an obsessed gamer with weekly, if not more often, updates. “Greg” doesn’t claim to be an expert. As a matter a fact, it’s advised that you do the complete opposite of him if you want to succeed. Basically, the idea of this blog is to let you inside the world of a fantasy addict.

I have a problem.

I’m an addict.

There, I said it. You happy?

I’m addicted to fantasy sports. But guess what? I like it!

I’m not looking to get reformed. I’m not looking for help. I’m here to tell you, I’m a fantasy sports junkie and no intervention is needed.

Like millions of others in this country, my vices are fantasy football and fantasy baseball. Just to clarify, I’m not an addict in the sense that I join dozens of leagues and drop thousands of dollars. Actually, in recent years I have averaged only two baseball and three football leagues per year, which is about the average amount of leagues for most fantasy gamers I know.

However, the leagues I am in, I go in 100 percent and become completely obsessed – most times to the point where I physically lose sleep at night and family trips get planned around certain dates like drafts, playoffs and trade deadlines. I’ve toyed with the idea of asking my family doctor for a medication to help overcome this, but I have shied away from that -- for now.

It’s the first week of March and you know what that means – it’s time to buckle down and focus on my fantasy baseball draft. It’s time to cram (Mets might be moving Jose Reyes to the third spot, which would hurt his value). It’s time to track any injuries (Vernon Wells is hurt… again). It’s time to look for any sleeper starting pitchers (I really like Mike Pelfrey this year. His second half stats last year were good and he throws a lot of groundball outs).

I have been researching players since January when my big-money fantasy football league season ended abruptly in the semifinal round to my brother-in-law (that’s right, I lost to family) all because I played Devon Bess instead of Bernard Berrian, Donald Driver or Hines Ward at my second WR position. Had I played any one of those other three, I would have won and then had won the championship game (I know this because I tracked the lineup I would’ve played the next week and I scored more points).

Oh yeah, and to make matters worse, I made a side bet with my brother-in-law the championship week – and lost $50 in that as well.

What can I say? I had an itch.

However, I did win one of my three football leagues, earning me enough to lose minimal money for the football season.

Anyway, back to baseball. Here’s a little background. I’m in a 12-team keeper league. We get to keep four players and one rookie/late round pick from the season before. My keepers are Mark Teixeira, Chase Utley, Carlos Lee, Dan Haren and Jacoby Ellsbury (rookie).

Last season it was a 10-team league and we recently had our expansion draft, which didn’t play out in my favor. I lost Brandon Webb in the expansion draft and I was not happy about that. The dude took Webb over Ryan Howard and I couldn’t understand why. It really bothered me and took me about a week-and-a-half to get over.

Now that I have finally put that behind me (kind of, I’m still trying to trade back for Webb), I am concentrating on the draft. I have the top pick after failing to make the playoffs last season, but winning the consolation bracket (you’ve been told I’m addicted, not necessarily good).

So who am I going to pick? It’s between Jake Peavy and Nick Markakis.

I’m leaning towards Peavy because he is the last of the top tier pitchers on the market. This is partly due to the two expansion teams taking a pair of starters in the expansion draft, which is unheard of. Nobody really keeps two pitchers in this league.

I’m thinking Markakis because I see plenty of rankings that have him slotted higher, and I usually tend to lean toward the hitter over the pitcher because hitters play every day, as opposed to once or twice a week for a pitcher.

I have also floated some trades out there, trying to trade out of the first pick for a keeper-level player, the other’s team first-round pick and an extra second-round pick. My thought process behind that is that there are a couple of teams out there without a starter and Peavy would fit their team. I am also trying to trade up in the second round.

None of this is going real well. I had a few trade possibilities fall through, including one that would have seen me land Lance Berkman and the eight overall pick in exchange for Teixeira and a third-round pick.

Since there has been a lull in trade talks, my mind is going crazy. I’m not to the point that I’m over-thinking things, but I am thinking of ways to acquire the players I want (which is not always a good thing for me).

I’ll run down those scenarios for you later this week.