A Moment of Fantasy Indulgence: Killed by Chris Davis

(Illustration courtesy of Fresh Doodle)

I'm very superstitious when it comes to fantasy. To me, the first step in winning a league is picking a good team name -- it's a demonstration to the fantasy gods that you're in it for the long haul, that you've put some thought into even the smallest aspect of your roster. Two years ago, I was "Disastrous Recipe," a so-so name that had very little to do with baseball -- and, no surprise, I lost that year. Last year, I was "Backstop Messiahs" in honor of Seattle Mariners catcher Jesus Montero, and I won the league. This time around, my team is called "Reliant" in recognition of the ship Khan Noonien Singh hijacked in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, a movie so freakin' good that I don't even really like Star Trek and I love that movie.

I picked the name, honestly, because an artist named Fresh Doodle granted me permission to use his work on this site, and I was absolutely entranced by his portrait of Khan. Seriously: tell me the image above isn't one of the coolest things you've ever seen in your life. It just oozes with awesomeness, and I assumed -- foolishly -- that the incredible awesomeness of this illustration would supersede the fact that Khan and Reliant have nothing to do with baseball. So I made the portrait my team logo, called myself "Reliant," put a nifty Khan quote up as my slogan ("I've done far worse than kill you. I've hurt you. And I wish to go on... hurting you."), and entered the fantasy season believing that fate would be with me.

Oh how wrong I was -- so wrong that if things don't turn around soon, like... this week, I'll scrap the name and the art and completely rebrand myself, because just one week into the season, I'm already in a bit of a hole.

How did I lose 2-8? Well, it's a combination of factors. For one thing, I was facing Chris Davis this week, and Davis produced maybe the greatest opening week in the history of fantasy baseball: 5 runs, 4 home runs, 17 RBI. It wasn't even that my hitting was terrible; the Davis buzzsaw was so dominant that Giancarlo Stanton, Jose Bautista and Adam Jones combined for just 2 home runs and yet "Beefy" crushed me offensively anyway.

For a while though, it looked like I would at least salvage a few pitching categories. I had envisioned -- or maybe hoped -- that in the weeks where I'd struggle offensively, Team Reliant would still come away no worse than 4-6 because of pitching. It's the whole reason I invested in studs like Cole Hamels, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner and former stud Roy Halladay. But oh my god, the pitching was a disaster. And I don't mean that in an, "Oh, my ERA was 4, woah is me," way. I mean: "Holy crap, my ERA was 6!"

It began innocently enough. Cain and Bumgarner threw back-to-back shutouts for me, and even though Halladay and Hamels struggled, my pitching stats were still more than respectable to be competitive with Beefy. And then something amazing happened. All of my pitchers started to suck simultaneously; they may as well have all met in a room with candles and chanting for a Skull & Bones meeting, where they then agreed to sabotage my team, because it was eery how awful everyone was. On the final Sunday alone, I watched in horror as Matt Cain and Cole Hamels got walloped for a combined 17 earned runs. And to add insult to injury, one of my closers -- Greg Holland -- practically threw up on himself and had to get yanked before he could blow a save. So on top of some terrible performances from Cain and Hamels, and a dishearteningly bad outing from Halladay -- who looked dreadful in his first start -- I probably lost a closer as well.

LOOKING AHEAD

To some extent, last week was an aberration. My elite pitchers can't possibly be that dreadful again, and I can't imagine I'll play anyone again who'll have a player with 17 freakin' RBI's. Still, I felt the need to shake up my roster, and shake it up I did. For one, all of my young prospecty players (Mike Moustakas, Domonic Brown, Starling Marte) are gone. I've dropped them all; none of them appear ready to take the next step, which was no good for me, since having three players who contribute practically nothing in the box score wasn't paying dividends. Considering where I am in the standings, I couldn't afford to wait around for them to hit their stride -- and it's certainly possible at least one of them could still have a good year.

Filling their places are Lance Berkman, who moves into a regular role on my roster after an excellent first week; Kevin Youkilis, who was graciously dropped, which allowed me to cut ties with the unimpressive Moustakas; and Chris Young, who should still have 20/20 potential even though he has to work for playing time in Oakland.

On the pitching side, I added James McDonald, who was an excellent pitcher for the first half of last year before he utterly imploded in the second half. But that's about all the pitching I plan on adding. In fact, I have a deal in place -- as I'm writing this -- to send one of my aforementioned elite pitchers to a team for a similarly struggling elite hitter. It may turn out to be an unnecessary move, and I'll certainly write about it in detail if the trade goes through, which I suspect it will. But I needed to do something after a shellacking this bad. 2-8 is simply unacceptable.

THE STANDINGS:

This week I face "night job," a fellow struggling team that I hope to beat up a little. I have five pitchers going on Monday (today), which gives me six pitchers in total who'll start twice this week. In other words, something is seriously out of whack if I lose wins and strikeouts. Hopefully that'll lead to me winning overall.