Preparing for Maryvale Martycohn & Fantasy Baseball War

Tomorrow is my 2nd fantasy baseball draft for the ‘Summer of Sizemore’ league in Canton, Ohio. If you read about last year’s episode–that team finished 9th out of 10. It was embarrassing, frustrating, traumatizing disaster for me. Everything went wrong from Adam Dunn to Hanley Ramirez to Josh Johnson to Jason Heyward to Pedro Alvarez to Chase Utley to Joakim Soria to everything in between. I came away that day feeling like I had constructed one of the finest drafts that I’ve ever assembled and I ended up barley avoiding the league’s basement.

My struggle was also a testament to the quality of the league. And in that league, one man reigns supreme.

In the move Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood said it best:

“Ever noticed how sometimes, you come across somebody you shouldn’t have fucked with?”

I’ve played fantasy baseball since 1999. On average I’ve been in about three ROTO style leagues a year. I would guess I’ve tangled with some 300 fantasy baseball owners give or take a few. In Summer of Sizemore there’s a guy–we’ll call him Maryvale Martycohn–who has won the league just about every year and finally finished 2nd to his brother in our league last year. He’s one of the best, if not the best I’ve ever seen at this. He has the equation figured out. Everything he does seems to work.

He waiver wires low profile guys I consider to be trash. Said player ends up providing Maryvale with his best 4 to 6 weeks of his season. For every 2011 Mike Morse I find–and I am always confident in my ability to find guys like that every single year–Maryvale will find three to four guys you wrote off as waiver wire to ride to similar production over the course of several months.

This draft, and Maryvale have been lurking in the back of my mind all week long. While I was on the phone making sales calls. While I drove home from work. I knew I had an exam coming, and I needed to put in my time studying. I needed to prepare to run down the best I’ve ever came across.

A couple of things on that; for all of the strategy you might consider and employ, there is a fair degree of luck involved. There’s also no sense in cramming for this exam. You know what you know, and there’s not a lot you’re going to learn that doesn’t already exist in the fantasy baseball compartment in your subconscious mind. Maryvale has a recipe that’s worked against this group of guys, and I need to find the secret ingredient.

These players are merely assets I have no emotional value towards. I will only ride them so long as they provide me some value. As I sit here tonight and I stare at these endless names on spreadsheets and jump through one FanGraphs rabbit hole to another, I know that the answer I’m looking for will likely elude me before the hands of time arrive at launch time.

But I’ve got a feeling this year. I’m not due as bad of luck as I had last year, and I’m going to find the next coveted gem this year on that waiver wire. I’ve been doing this all my life. I know it, I live it. I am not the salesmen I pretend to be. I was born to run you down, Maryvale. And this fate awaits us both tomorrow.