Week 19 ass hDLes - The knee that launched a thousand tears

I have been doing a lot of prep work for the upcoming fantasy football draft season.  Strangely, I do a lot more research on the upcoming football season than I do when the baseball season rolls around.  Maybe that's because I have never had a reason to prep for baseball the way I do for football because there is always money involved in the football leagues that I play in...and I am guessing that I will be overly researched when the Tat Tot 2.0 draft rolls around next March (just a reminder about that...Tater Tot 2.0 draft will be a live event at my house in the first weekend of the NCAA tournament.  I believe that my wife is taking the kiddies out to Nana and Grandpa's place, so there will be plenty of hijinks Friday night for those who want to come and stay the weekend followed by boys doing silly things, video games, NCAA basketball and drafting in some order on Saturday, then more silly things, a bit more NCAA basketball and cleaning up before I boot whoever is left out on Sunday.  Maybe you can't tell, but I am already looking forward to this.  I havent figured out what to do if someone cant make the draft on Saturday, which is why I am putting this out there this far in advance.  Hopefully there is more than enough time to make/change plans and/or keep this weekend open.).  In football, I often try to come up with some unique formula that does the player rankings so that I am looking at a slightly different group of players than everyone else.  It usually works out and my teams are generally competitive.  What usually ends up happening is that I usually find 1 player who, for some reason, is either vastly overrated by my rudimentary formula or vastly underrated by the Yahoo and ESPN draft list...and that player ends up on ALL of my teams and I end up taking him in every single mock draft that I do.  This year, that has been made 2048378 times worse thanks to this.  It is a mock draft simulator.  If you hit the start over button, you can alter the settings, the roster sizes, the league size and set which pick you want.  Then it will analyze your roster against the rest of the league to see where you stack up in the projections.  There is a pay version, but this basic one is free.  You're welcome.  And I am sorry to your jobs/girlfriends/wives/children who you will see less over the next couple of weeks.
Anyways, back to the "Mine" player.  Remember in Finding Nemo, how all the seagulls think that whatever they see is theirs?  That is how I inevitably end up feeling about the player I was describing above.  For example, for some silly reason, over the past 4 or 5 years I have continuously end up with players like Kenny Britt and Andre Brown on my teams, depending on the year.  Now...Britt straight up sucks.  He often either isnt healthy or good enough to play, but he keeps popping up on my teams.  Brown is at least useful when he isnt broken, though it will be tough to have him this year seeing as how he isnt currently employed.  I have had a few decent calls as well, guys like Cecil Shorts a couple years ago.  I'm not gonna share who my guys are for this year, since many of us are playing in the horribly titled "Awesome Guys League" (good job Kyler.  I dont really need the esteem boost, but it is a nice feeling to, every time I log in to ESPN, see that I am one of the few, the proud, the Awesome Guys), but there are a couple who have again emerged from my magical (read: made up) list as targets and more will emerge as waiver pickups as the season gets underway.  I have found a similar phenomenon in baseball, only since I didnt prep much for the draft, it has been based on the performance of certain players on my team.  I know that a few of the rest of you have had a similar experience (Jimmy...TMGS.  Kyler...ManBearPuig).  Certain guys, like Adam Ottavino (until he imploded and stopped getting people out) have started popping up on my ESPN teams. The funny thing (or maybe its normal, I dont know.  I am not a normal person, so I have very little frame of reference for what constitutes normal) is that in football, I dont find myself getting attached to the players throughout the year.  In baseball...I have gotten very attached to them.  When I had to cut Ottavino because he performance was so far below replacement level that he needed a periscope on top of a periscope on top of the Sears (I refuse to call it Willis) Tower, I struggled to push the add button...and then I poured one out for my departed homie the next time I took a drink of water (its fantasy baseball...I'm not wasting beer).
So, suffice to say that on Tuesday night I was more than a little distraught when the news reports (and accompanying text message from Jim) about Garrett Richards and his knee implosion starting rolling in.  Before the season, I could not have told you a single thing about Garrett Richards other than he was a pitcher and he was on the Angles (I maybe could have told you he was mediocre last year).  When I heard the news (I refuse to watch the video), I actually felt empathy towards him; the first through I had was "what would I do if I were a MLB player enjoying a huge breakthrough season and securing myself many millions of dollars and it was cut short doing something that I have done literally several hundred times before?"  My next thought was, "Fuck, my fantasy team is pretty much boned even if I do make the playoffs", but that is not the important part.  Through having him on my fantasy team, I have become a Garrett Richards fan.  It's hard to explain.  I have Madison Bumgarner on my team (yeah MadBum) and I want him to do well so that his good performance helps my fake team.  I now have Anthony Rizzo, and I want him to do well because his good performance helps both my fake team and my real life favorite team.  I want Richards to do well because I want him to do well.  I admire the things that he is able to make a baseball do and that he seems like a generally decent person who is living out the best case scenario of his wildest dream (well...until Tuesday night).  Yeah, it helps my fake team and he generally doesnt play against my favorite team, but if he wasnt on my team and he was throwing against the Cubbies every day, I would still probably want him to do well.  I feel weird writing that, because its kinda "Hand that Rocks the Cradle"-ish, but it's true.  Were he to some how end up on the Cubs, I probably would have to go against every fiber of my being and buy an MLB shersey (though, if I can figure out how to make a MBHB shersey, I am totally doing it...I may end up with a couple of them - Richards 43, Springer 10 Joc Pederson - if he ever gets called up to LA).  Luckily, the Angels wouldnt trade him right now for anything short of Kris Bryant and Addison Russell and Jed Hoyer/Theo Epstein arent moving either of those two guys. So, with a heavy heart:

SP.RP Garrett Richards - MBHB - Destroyed Patellar Tendon - out 6 - 9 months
Richards has been one of the best pitchers in the AL this year, posting a 13-4 record with a 2.61 ERA, 1.04 WHIP and 164 strikeouts in 168 2/3 innings.  Opponents are hitting .201 against his with only 5 HRs.  He has the 10th highest WAR amonst pitchers according to B-R.com and is leading the league in lowest HR against per 9 innings (0.26) and also wild pitches (22!!!!).  He is all over the B-R leader page, even in some things that you would need a PhD to explain.  His loss to both the Angels and to MBHB is measurable (I was going to say immeasureable, but turns out baseball keeps stats on things) and mammoth.  For the Angels, it may well mean the difference between a division title and a wild card berth, which they would then need to win without their best pitcher.  For the Hitless Bastards, it means another week with only 4 SPs in what are the most critical weeks of the season.  Looking forward, the injury puts in doubt Richards status as a keeper.  For $4, a healthy Richards is a no brainer.  But if he is on the long end of the rehab schedule, he will not be ready until mid May 2015, and may or may not be back to full strength...and knee injuries to pitchers who throw hard and generate a lot of torque on their body tend to linger and flare up from time to time.  The list of starting pitchers who have catastrophic knee injuries and come back as strong as they were before is not terribly long (I cannot think of any off the top of my head), though the list of pitchers with catastrophic knee injuries is not terribly long either. 

That brings me to my next point...dont smoke crack when do we want to have keepers due?  I will send out an email to the league with a few options (at the end of this season, before spring training, 1 week before the draft, at the draft) and majority will rule the day.