Tarrell ... And you are still full of shit. Ha ha! Glad you could recycle my comments and put them to good use. Haven't read through all the articles, but great job. John, the site looks awesome!
Breakfast of Champions
By Tarrell Graham
Sunday, February 14, 2010
So, its Valentines Day and I get a break from the grind of rankings. You know, sometimes I am really overwhelmed by the commitment it takes to churn out these articles all the time. The first year the site was up I produced roughly 8,000 words a week. I googled what writers are supposed to make and the average is about .26¢ per word. At that rate John Thornton owes me roughly $31,000.00 – of course we are in the same long term keeper so I would definitely be willing to forgive the writing debt in exchange for Ryan Howard on the cheap. After all I am now the official full time write for the site so I deserve something right? I think 40+HR for a CI would be a very fair price to pay. So what will we talk about today? Well, I have a couple of ideas… I keep oscillating between bullet point random twitter like thoughts and the ten commandments of trading. I am not sure I have the energy to do justice to the 10 commandments of trading tonight so we are going to do bullet points with some trading thoughts sprinkled in.
•Chosen what bullet points to use is pretty hard. I really wish there was a baseball choice – I know it would be hokey but still…
•If I was to write the first commandment of trading it would have to be – don’t get offended. I am going through my old trade offers from last season and I am completely shocked to see how many times I got really aggressive responsive from other managers. It is so silly to get angry at another manager or be dismissive over a trade offer. I mean, it’s a trade offer not a picture of your wife with Joe Francis. Honestly its just lame to whine because you got too many offers or offers that insult your vast and superior fantasy baseball knowledge. What is really funny is the offers that illicit the most ire would have been great for the guy bitching. For instance, last May I got an email stating,“I am tremendously upset that you continually send offers when I have told you multiple times to stop. This offer is horrible. I will not be insulted and will not respond to this anymore.” So what was the offer that illicted this response? What was the terrible offer? Well, I offered him Kendry Morales/Verlander for Bruce. Now, that wasn’t a bad offer in May but I can understand why he turned it down at the time. But seriously, in retrospect how ridiculous was that overreaction? Was it worth quitting a league? Well, that’s what happen. This offer actually lead to a manager quitting a league. Now, I am not saying I don’t send some pretty terrible offers from time to time, but come on. You don’t have to be an asshole in order to get your message across. During May last season I was shopping Morales to everyone that would listen – while the guy above decided to be a baby others had much better responses. For instance, Iwas me harassing the heck out of Elite leaguer Cory Channell for CJax because I love my DBacks. He wrote me the following, “You always say that potential trade partners can tell you you're full of shit on certain trade offers and this is one of those times. "You are full of shit." LOL”….what was the offer? I gave Morales/Hermida for Dotel/Connor Jackson. About a week later CJax was done for the year. Hey, you can’t blame Cory for turning this down but it is funny now and just proves that indignation is often times looks pretty silly in the rearview mirror. Just a thought.
•I don’t know anything about Abel LeBlanc’s politics so I am not going to give him the Elite seal of approval. But, THIS is one of the most bad ass things I have ever seen. Almost as good as Michael Barrett bitching the petulant little punk AJ Pierzynski.
•For some reason I feel like a really bad person for this but Ellen Page is very hot.
•So I don’t post on forums very much but I do peruse the major ones. Pretty funny that today I ran across my league mate and much respected Elite member Czar giving me a little ribbing. For the record I stand behind everything I said about Wood in 2009 and will reiterate it to anyone who will listen this year. My back and forth with Czar was pretty funny, but Larry – I promise you that once Wood hits 30 and qualifies at SS that #3 prospect title will be earned. I mean the guy is just now 24 and has never had a real shot – the issue last season wasn’t his ability but his managers philosophy. Just saying…thank you for the shout out in the thread, I look forward to revisiting it in 2011.
•So while on Rotoworld I went back to my old threads – like I said I rarely discuss things on forums but I was curious. Man, I have said some stupid things but I would like to point out that in December of 2008 I posted on the undervalued player in 2009 thread. The players I listed as steals? Kendry Morales, Adam Jones, Ian Stewart….Okay I also missed on a several but I want a little credit damn it! I have to say this though, one of my misses on that same thread was Wladimer Balitien….for the record he is also on my list for 2010.
•On that same thread there is another great argument between Czar and myself about Loney vs. Votto. That is hysterical. Probably a little less right on this argument…hmm…well maybe not…..I predicted Votto as 25/8 and was only off by 1 SB. Of course Loney did let me down on the power.
• Guys, we are on Twitter now so if you use that service please add us….we are list as EliteFantasy. Thanks.
RESOURCES
2009 ELITE FANTASY MANAGER OF THE YEAR
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
Jeffrey Barker
Justin Dalia
Sean Scampton
Jamey Reeder
Chris Gerber
Jim Botsch
Tim Taylor
David Fairchild
John Macleod
Toheeb Taiwo
Paul Skupen
Michael Winpigler
David Dalrymple
Peter Kim
Bryan Wackler
Benjamin Richards
Luke Malmborg
Chris Meek
Ryan Collins
Chapin Cole
20
19
26
15
60
30
8
21
22
16
6
9
3
14
29
17
41
5
25
136
1
4
6
13
3
10
31
19
26
39
59
51
100
71
57
93
56
109
95
12
5455
5176
5086
5044
4998
4945
4900
4888
4812
4715
4658
4656
4473
4434
4384
4265
4245
4231
4197
4188
2008 FINAL STANDINGS
Comment on this article
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(Posted on 2010-02-19 06:02:00 by )
Tarrell,
I just put a bid in on the real life Wily Mo Pena on ebay. I will ship him to you with a load of cloth diapers. You also shopped mOrales to me last year.....and I rejected you repeatedly...my bad :-0. I also seem to recall telling you that Verlanders arm would fall off by the allstar break. Definatly not my year.