Tax Season Is Over.

Writing a blog is a habit. Not writing a blog can get to be a habit mighty fast. The poker boys have been complaining: "You're in first place, where is Sour Grapes?"

The toughest part of going for a run are the first 3 steps. For the 89th time (give or take) here are my first 3 steps.

I’ll write about the Giants and all of the BABI teams soon enough, but I just want to dip my toe in the water by making a few observations of your Pickled Pecklers. You’re all fans of the Pecklers, right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. We’re lovable losers who don’t suck too badly most of the time, and finish in the money pretty regularly. But we finish in that part of the money where you end up with a net loss. We’ve got a couple of seconds, but we’ve always been a little short in September.

Guess what, folks? It looks like we’re a condendah this season. We’ve been in the top 4 almost all season, and we started the day in first place, though the Mellonballers have passed us after the Giants/Rockies day game on Live Standings. We’re competitive in 7 categories, and are counting on our BA to improve as the summer gets warmer.

And yet, we sure made a lot of mistakes.

The first mistakes were keeper errors. We should have kept Rauch at $5. Even with his recent broken knee cap, we should have kept Keppinger at $5 as well. And we should have thrown back Nick Johnson, even though he’ll probably end up ok if he actually comes back this year. We would have had $26 extra dollars (we would not have bought Lidge, even though he’s been great) and could have used that money to buy Kent instead of Nix at 2nd base, and still had a bunch of money to buy another banger or a better starter than Villanueva (there is a long list of guys that meet that criteria.)

It’s not clear if $35 for Taveras was a good deal or not. He’s got 18 steals, but he’s in the .230’s. Plus our old fave, Scott Podsednik, is stealing his at bats. If he gets the 45 steals we were projecting, and gets his BA above .270, it will be an ok purchase. We’ll see.

We paid $23 for Chris Duncan. We were pretty sure he’d hit 25 homers. He’s not getting enough at bats to do this. This is a disappointment, and we need him to start playing every day. It’s not clear that his defense or his BA will allow it.

Jayson Nix, $13. Nuff said. Lou thought he’d be ROY. Lou, come trade for him, please.

We paid $28 for Jason Bay. The jury is out on him too, but he does play every day, he’s hit 10 homers and has a surprising 4 steals. Remember 3 years ago when he was a top ten combined league draft pick because of his steals? We’d be thrilled with 10 steals this season. We’re pretty thrilled with the 4 we’ve already got.

Our cheap hitters, Hu, Castillo and Castro haven’t done much, though we still like them all.

We did buy 2 pretty good hitters at keepable prices: Soto at $11 and Jacobs at $18. Soto looks like the real deal, doesn’t he? And if Jacobs could stay healthy, maybe he’d finally reach that 30+ homer potential he’s been touted for.

Villanueva was a disaster, and now he’s history. It reminds me of a great line by Robert Wuhl about President William Henry Harrison, who didn’t wear a coat to his inauguration, and he caught pneumonia and died 30 days later. “On Inauguration Day he’s making history, and a month later he IS history.” Maholm isn’t much better, but at least he’s cheap. We’re counting on Pedro to come back soon and bolster our starting pitching staff.

My point is we made about equal numbers of mistakes and good calls in the draft, but there we are, back in first place at this minute according to Live Standings. Given the inflation we have, maybe a 50% hit rate is all you need if you’ve got a good keeper list. You have to do better without one, which reminds us that our new owner, Thornton Melon, did a heckuva job putting his team together. Hey, and the Lickers, too, sitting in 4th place with that crummy keeper list. Good for them. Meanwhile Mr. Leaguer and the Champs are sucking hind teat, in front of only the worst team in BABI history. Hold on, the Bums are now in 8th place according to Live Standings. Watch out, boys!

So our new drafting mantra is “Don’t screw it up too bad.” That’s all you need. That, and a $19 Brandon Webb.