Roto Robbery

Be careful what you wish for. It might just bite you in the arse.

There I was, circa two weeks ago, with the grin of a 5-year-old who had just snagged the missing link to his McDonald's Happy Meal Toy collection. Enjoying a third-place standing at the time in my Yahoo! Sports Plus 12 Team Head-to-Head Fantasy Baseball Keeper league, I was stoked to have dealt the slumping Grady Sizemore for Ryan Howard. I was even more stoked to find that this deal was made just prior to Mr. Sizemore's trip to the disabled list, a bullet I actually did not see coming but am nonetheless happy to have dodged. Don't get me wrong, I don't live for these kinds of trades. I just don't ... well, mind them so much if they drop into my lap. I suppose the moral of the story is that if a player is dealing with a troubling ailment, go ahead and move him before it gets worse ... because once it does, THEN and only then are you truly at fault for passing that hot potato to your fellow owner.

You might think this all seemed fine and dandy at the time, and believe me, it did. You have to ask yourself, how could a team with the likes of Pujols, Pedroia, Rollins, Cabrera, Howard, Soriano, Granderson, Peavy and Billingsley ever lose? Throw in my two all-beef patties (Broxton and Sabathia), and I have one heck of an attack on my hands.

Fantasy baseball is a unique blend of instant gratification with a touch of measured patience. It is one thing to want to win this year. Pardon the boast, but I have won the league the last three years, and not so much on account of skill as some really good fortune and a few savvy deals. If I am going to make a play for a long-term dynasty, I had better take a look at my impending third base vacancy next year. This was my train of thought at the time, and indeed, with Miguel Cabrera moving to first base in fantasy next season, I would be left with three stud 1Bs in Pujols, Cabrera and Howard. Nothing wrong with that, but it's kind of a logjam. It just so happened that another owner had possession of David Wright and Evan Longoria. In no time flat, I sent him an e-mail floating the idea of trading my Howard and Rick Porcello (a recent waiver wire pickup) for his Evan Longoria. It seemed like pie in the sky kind of offer, and the owner admittedly had to think about it over his weekend camping trip.

Things must have been pretty good and trippy for him that weekend, because sure enough, I received a trade proposal that Monday morning with the exact same terms we had discussed. After screening the deal on my favorite message boards, I clicked accept and once again grinned at the prospect of having three of the greatest studs under the age of 30 in Pujols, Cabrera and Longoria. The icing on the cake: Longoria was not kept last year and so he could be a keeper for my team through the 2011 season as opposed to 2010 with the rest of my studs.

They say lightning can't strike twice, right? Yeah, well, that doesn't mean you should dance outside under a tree in the middle of a thunderstorm ... I think I may have done that in the mind's eye of the baseball gods. No sooner did I click accept than a message popped up on Longoria's tag a day later stating he had suffered a tweaked hamstring and would hope to avoid the DL. Being the optimist, I figured this would sort itself out by the time the trade processed. WHAM -- that same 24-hour period, my current third baseman, Miguel Cabrera, pulled his hamstring and was given the similar outlook by trainers and staff. In a similar vein, Milton Bradley suffered a strained calf, Sheffield's knee started acting up, and Mr. Pujols decided to take a 1/12 vacation at the plate over the weekend. To make a long story short, what was a 14-3 lead on Friday turned into a 12-4 loss by Sunday night.

At the time of the posting, my team is once again down 12-4 and the outlook is not great for turning that around this week. The moral of the story is NOT necessarily to refrain from trading players with mild ailments, because if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, well it sure isn't a golden retriever. The advice is simply to make such moves with your eyes open. Karma's a bitch, and a very jealous and vindictive one at that. Should this happen to you, keep your head up, click your heels together twice, and think happy thoughts.

If it's any consolation, I would have been no better off with Ryan Howard's 3-15 over the weekend.

Happy hunting, my fellow roto warriors.

--- Pedro.