Pitchers and catchers are already back to work, with everyone else set to return soon as well. Spring Training will last 11 whole days before the Astros will play a living, breathing team in an exhibition game. This time of the year is like turning on Sportscenter because you heard a big time MLB star was going to admit steroid use live on the air, only to find that there are 45 minutes worth of hockey, badmitton and Tony Romo stories to wade through first.
We don't want to have to do that, right? Nope. We don't.
What can we do to pass the time? There's always the option of tracking all of our blue chip prosp....or we could discuss the big time free agent sig....at least none of our guys have been caught up in the steroid mes.....
Ok. Those may not be options for us, so here's one that could be. There are two intelligent, insightful, witty baseball writers on this blog. Then there's me. We've added a number of new faces in the past few weeks, and retained many commentors from this past season. How can we get some competition going between writers and commentators alike?
A lot of people like fantasy baseball. Everyone likes to make off the wall predictions. I suggest we combine the two.
I challenge my fellow writers and five readers to compete against me in a sort of fantasy baseball meets GM challenge. Assuming that DQ and Clack are on board, I'd like any and all readers who feel they're up to the task of taking us down, to sign on for this competition. Comment that you're in, and you'll get a chance to participate.
It'd be difficult to keep tract of an entire roster's worth of players (25), or even a typical fantasy roster (19). I suggest that each participant selects a player that he/she thinks will win particular awards: NL/AL MVP, NL/AL Cy Young, NL/AL Rookie of the Year, and NL/AL Most Improved Player. Results are usually released for top five in each category, so if your guy wins the award as you predicted he would, you would get five points. Second place is worth four, and so on down the line. Besides these categories, each participant may select two players of his/her choosing and predict their statistical line for 2009. Closest to the pin gets the same number of points as we have participants, second closest gets one less than the total number of participants, etc. Lastly, each must predict the Astros W-L record this season. Same scoring applies here as for the player stats predictions. 7 categories to determine who reigns supreme in the Crawfish Boxes community.