Our fantasy football drafts are getting closer and closer. We have our auction draft Saturday night and then are snake league draft is Sunday night. Mr. Fantasy and I also have our money league draft Sunday morning. They auction draft isn’t so bad as it’s just deciding on how much you want to pay for a player and hitting on that player. Oddly I always seem to think that I got a deal on a guy and he ends up having a terrible season. The money league Mr. Fantasy and I share a team in is also a snake style draft. In case you don;t know snake style means your rounds go from the 1st pick to the in our case 20th pick and then the 20th team gets the first pick of the 2nd round. It goes back down to the team who draft first overall which is the end of round 2 and then they start round 3 with the first pick and so on until the draft is done. There’s a little more on the go strategy in the snake style draft because if you get caught on a run of a position you can get stuck with a lesser player at that position. If you play your pick right in a round you can actual start the run which is where you’d prefer to be. I know Dan the Man and Mr. Fantasy prefer the auction draft over a snake style draft, but I still like the snake style draft better. In our two leagues we run through Yahoo it can be tough to get your draft strategy set up as you don’t know were you’ll be drafting until 30 minutes before the draft starts. That situation is much tougher for first time player to handle; so luckily I’m not one of those this season. As the draft gets closer I look more and more forward to it and hopefully I’ll land a good draft position and hit on my players.
I mentioned that we run our leagues through Yahoo and they set up a ranking of players for you to use as a guideline. This season their Top 5 picks are all running backs. Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings is ranked #1. Marshawn Lynch of the Seattle Seahawks is ranked #2. Jamaal Charles of the Kansas City Chiefs is ranked #3. Eddie Lacy of the Green Bay Packers is #4 and Le’veon Bell of the Pittsburgh Steelers is ranked #5. Don’t forget that Bell has to miss the first 2 games of the season. He is suspended for violating the NFL Policy and Program for Substances of Abuse. I downgraded Bell for this, but I guess Yahoo doesn’t feel the same way. As four the other 3 running backs I think you could pretty much put their names in a hat; pull one out and be happy with that pick. There’s almost no way to decide between those 4 players. Peterson did miss almost all of last season; so will him be rested or rusty. I do wonder if Jimmy Graham will take away some goal line attempts from Lynch. Not that Graham is going to run the ball, but would they throw a jump ball to Graham instead of handing the football to Lynch. Who else just had a Super Bowl flashback? With the season ending injury to Jordy Nelson Lacy might be the guy to go with out of this group. Charles has had his share of injury issues and the Chiefs also signed Jeremy Maclin to help the receiving game and that may hurt Charles overall touchdowns. Now there aren’t really huge negatives with any of these players and that;s why their ranked where they are going into this weekends drafts. It really boils down to who you happen to like and then you’ll have to see how the pick works out for you this season.
The San Francisco Giants lost a tough game to the Los Angeles Dodgers last night (Tuesday) 2-1 to fall 5 1/2 games behind the Dodgers in the National League West. I think the Giants need to find a way to win these next 2 games against the Dodgers or I believe they’ll miss the playoffs this season. Zack Greinke picked up the win for the Dodgers pitching 7 1/3rd innings giving up 5 hits; allowing just 1 run while striking out 5 and walking 1. Greinke also lowered his major league leading E.R.A. to 1.59. Madison Bumgarner started for the Giants pitching 7 innings giving up 8 hits; allowing 2 runs while striking out 8 and walking 1. Adrian Gonzalez gave the Dodgers the lead by singling home the 1st run of the game in the bottom of the 3rd inning. Joc Pederson gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead by hitting his 24th hoe run of the season off of Bumgarner in the bottom of the 7th inning. Matt Duffy drove in the Giants lone run of the night with a single to centerfield in the top of the 8th inning. Kenley Jansen got the Giants 1. 2. 3 in the top of the 9th to pick up his 28th save of the season and give the Dodgers their 2-1 win. It’s not going to get any easier for the Giants to make up any ground on the Dodgers tonight as Clayton Kershaw will be the Dodgers starting pitcher tonight. San Francisco will counter with Mike Leake. Kershaw is 11-6 with a 2.24 E.R.A. in 26 starts this season. Leake is 9-6 on the season, but 0-1 with the Giants. His season E.R.A. is 3/53, but it’s 3.38 with the Giants. Leake has made 24 total starts this season, but only 3 of them have been with San Francisco. The Giants traded Keury Mella and Adam Duvall.to the Cincinnati Reds for Leake on June 30th. While it’s difficult to say that tonight is a must win for the Giants, but it would be nice if they could take at least one of these 3 games against the Dodgers. Don’t forget that the Giants lost the 1st game of the series 5-4 in in 14 innings on Monday night. The Giants have 30 games left while the Dodgers have 31 games left this season. These two teams do meet for a 4 game series at the end of this month, but for the Giants to still have a chance to win the N.L. West they’ll have to cut into that 5 1/2 game lead the Dodgers have by the time that 4 game series rolls around. San Francisco is actually a game closer to catching the Dodgers in the N.L. West than they are catching the Chicago Cubs for the 2nd wild card spot. We’ll have to watch and see how the last month of the season plays out.
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