9/4 - Are you ready for some football?

The NFL season opener is at 7pm tonight, presumably pushed up to the earlier time so that NBC could show McCain’s convention speech after the game. If you plan to play Football Pickoff this season, you have until 7pm to lock in your pick for tonight’s game. However, you can wait until 1pm ET Sunday to lock in your picks for the rest of the weekend.

A.Rod finally seems to be heating up. It’s probably way too late for the Yankees’ fortunes, but the Red Sox couldn’t be happier, as the Yanks have now taken two from the Rays, and the A.L. East margin is down to 3 games (4 in the loss column). Boston seems to be gaining the upper hand in the wild card race, however, so maybe the Rays’ recent woes aren’t of much consequence. Still, anything can happen. Remember Colorado last September?

The BMW Championship – in St. Louis - was supposed to tee off this morning, but it’s already looking like the day could be a washout, if this morning photo of the arch is any indication. Tee times have been pushed back by 2 hours, and I suspect that will be the first of many delays – unless they simply give up quickly. When they do play, I’m guessing the greens will be really soft – assuming that they’re not submerged.

9/3 - I’m a bit behind the 8-ball today, as I’ve been banging my head against the wall to try to solve some thorny programming problems – without much success. Ugh.

In any event, don’t forget to set your GuruGolf rosters one final time. This week’s BMW Championship is the final event in the GuruGolf season. The scheduled tee time is late tomorrow morning – although that may be problematic, as the St. Louis area is expecting heavy rains from the fringes of tropical storm Gustave. But even if tomorrow is a complete washout, the weather should clear by Friday, and with a small field of just 69 golfers, they should have no trouble making up for lost time.

9/2 - Brandon Webb may be having trouble nailing down his Cy Young award early, but Cliff Lee seems to be having no such trouble. Lee hasn’t lost a game since before the All Star game, and since August 1st he’s won every game he’s started, never working less than 7 innings, and never surrendering more than 2 earned runs. His 20-2 record for the season surely has locked up his “Where’d that come from?” award.

Lee came to the Indians in 2002 as part of the Bartolo Colon trade. In addition to Lee, the Tribe also received Grady Sizemore and Brandon Phillips in that trade. If only Cleveland hadn’t given up on Phillips about one season too early…

Two players hit for the cycle last night - Stephen Drew and Adrian Beltre. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the last time two players hit for the cycle in the same day was in 1920.

Vijay Singh won his second straight tournament yesterday, this time obliterating the field with a -8 on the final day to win by five strokes. Two GuruGolf teams shared the top bestball score of -57. Worstball honors belonged to little moe with a +47.

9/1 - When I put a jinx on a pitcher, I don’t mess around. In my August 22nd blurb, I all but conceded the NL Cy Young award to Brandon Webb, who had 19 wins at the time, and whose historical record in September gave no reason to expect even a minor a meltdown (which I guess would be a “thaw”, not a “meltdown”.)

Then again, he had to get to September first. And in his final two August starts, “meltdown” is as good a term as any: 8 innings, 12 earned runs, and a BAA of over .400.

It was a tough day for more than one Webb. The official scorer for the Pittsburgh-Milwaukee game was a man named Bob Webb. Official scorers tend to toil in obscurity, but Webb’s ruling of an infield hit in the 5th against CC Sabathia turned out to attract national notoriety, and the Brewers have even protested the call. I don’t recall a team ever protesting an official scorer’s call, although I suppose it’s happened. While Yost was animated in his post-game comments, Sabathia was more reflective: “The ball was still rolling and I probably should have picked it up with my glove. We probably wouldn't be having this conversation. I think if I pick it up with my glove, I get him.”

8/29 - When key Tampa Bay Rays players started dropping like flies a few weeks ago, many thought the team would be hard pressed to hold on to their division lead.

Not so fast.

Since Carl Crawford was lost for the season, they’ve gone 11-5, during which time the Red Sox have been 10-6. Too bad no one is filling the seats in Tropicana field. The three game series with Toronto drew an average of 13,400 per game. If they do reach the playoffs, will anyone come out to watch?

The Deutsche Bank Championship is underway, and Ben Crane is still the popular favorite, although he’s now on only about one-third of all active rosters. Vijay Singh and Briny Baird also continue to hold down the 2nd and 3rd slots, so I suspect most current rosters look pretty similar to last week’s version.

8/28 - I guess Jimmy Rollins is officially “hot.” Santana, Schmantana… It doesn’t seem to matter who’s pitching against him.

RotoHog football begins live trading tomorrow at 9:30am ET. Final player prices have been released and the sortable stats have been updated.

The GuruGolf tournament of the week doesn’t tee off until tomorrow morning, as is customary for the Deutsche Bank event which spans Labor Day weekend. So if you forgot to set your roster, you have a 24 hour reprieve. And this will be the last tournament of the season with a cut after the second round. Next week’s tournament will have a reduced field with no cut.

8/27 - Jimmy Rollins has put together a nice week, going 8-10 with 5 RBIs and 3 steals in 2 games. Today will be a good litmus test to see how well he’s really swinging the bat, facing Johan Santana – against whom he’s 0-11 so far.

I may have put the jinx on Brandon Webb when I all but handed him the Cy Young award after his last start. He couldn’t even get through five innings last night, against a Padres lineup that’s usually pretty accommodating to opposing starters.

I launched Football Pickoff yesterday. You can now register and make your picks – for the whole season if you wish! (That would be an interesting approach.) Invite your friends and family to join. The game isn’t a money maker for me, so that’s not my motivation. But it does benefit from a larger enrollment, given the nature of the scoring system, which is stabilized if we have a large sample of picks for each game.

8/26 - Do you remember that Baltimore-Chicago game back on April 28th that was suspended in the 11th inning? It was completed last night. If you had any impacted players in your April 28th lineup, you may want to see if and how your league host handled the processing. It ended up as one of those rare instances when the two teams split the games (each winning one), yet the home team lost both.

For the record, in my sortable stats and related databases, I credited the stats generated in yesterday’s conclusion to yesterday. Stats generated on April 28 remain on that date, while only the incremental stats were attributed to August 25.

If you are GuruPatron (i.e., anyone who has ever financially contributed to support this site), you are invited to join my GuruPatrons division in the TSN Ultimate salary cap football game. Details are in this thread.

By the way, I know that some of the football players in my sortable stats show outdated team affiliations. I’ll try to get those updated shortly. Patience!

8/25 - No more Olympics. Now I can go to bed at a more reasonable hour.

I just looked at the YTD player points in the TSN salary cap game, and was surprised to see that the player with the most points is now Tim Lincecum. When did THAT happen? It’s pretty impressive that he has managed a 14-3 record on that team. Curiously, there’s only one hitter among the top eleven in YTD points, and that’s (still) Lance Berkman, who did most of his damage in the first few months.

Four GuruGolf teams tied for the top bestball score of -48. On the worst ball side, copper clippers posted a 3-stroke margin over the second best (worst) with a +45.

8/22 - A few days ago I commented that CC Sabathia could conceivably enter the NL CY Young picture if Brandon Webb faltered.

It’s not looking like that’s going to happen. Webb threw seven shutout innings, allowing just 3 hits in notching his 19th win. And in recent years, Webb has not shown any tendency toward weak Septembers. In the past three years, he’s gone 9-4 in September with an ERA of 2.96 and a BAA of just .220.

I did update the football sortable stats yesterday, adding in the recent player additions for both the TSN and RotoHog salary cap games. RotoHog has also published a list of tentative prices for rookies, which will not be formally released until next week, and are subject to change. I didn’t include those players in the sortable stats for now.

I stayed up late last night to watch the men’s beach volleyball finals in the Olympics. Those guys must have leather carbon fiber ligaments in their knees and ankles. I’m pretty sure I’d be on crutches early and often.

8/21 - Last night’s apparent marquis pitching matchup fizzled, as Haren and Peavy each surrendered 5 earned runs in an 8-6 Dback win. Go figure.

Meanwhile, Francisco Liriano continued his winning ways in a 3-1 win over Oakland, even though wildness restricted him to only 5 innings (107 pitches). No earned runs surrended, however. Makes you wonder what the Twins were thinking when they kept Liriano in the minors for so long while continuing to trot out Livan Hernandez.

I see that TSN has released prices on 100+ more football players, and I now have to add those plus the recently added RotoHog player prices to my databases. Hopefully, I’ll get that done in the next day or so.

In GuruGolf, Ben Crane is the holdover favorite, on a little more than 40% of active rosters. Briny Baird and Vijay Singh each appear on about 25%. 117 of the 136 entered golfers appear on at least one roster, so there’s a lot of diversity this week.

8/20 - I’m in the thick of several football drafts this week, and it’s really distracting my attention away from baseball. This morning, I also had to unscramble a process-related draft snafu that further chewed up my normal review time – so I have almost no idea what happened in baseball last night – although I do see that Shields beat Shields in Tampa.

If you, like me, are sidetracked with football drafting, don’t forget to set your GuruGolf lineup before tomorrow morning. There are just three more events in the GuruGolf season. I decided to end the season before the final Tour Championship this year, since that event doesn’t occur until after the Ryder Cup, when the football season will be in full gear, and baseball will be coming down the stretch. 136 golfers are in this week’s field, the first week of the FedEx Cup tournament. 120 of them will survive to the next round – so trade conservation should not be an issue for the next week, unless you have a disproportionate representation of the bottom 16. Choose wisely, grasshoppers!

8/19 - If the Brewers don’t advance to the post season, they can’t pin it on CC Sabathia, who threw his fifth complete game since the trade, and is now 8-0 in 9 starts with a 1.60 ERA and a BAA of around .200. Brandon Webb clearly has the upper hand in the N.L. Cy Young race, but in the unlikely event he implodes down the stretch, Sabathia could even get consideration. At his current pace, he could be 15-0 with the Brewers. And if you have him in a fantasy league which counts both A.L. and N.L. stats, he’s already got his ERA down to 3.00, which is pretty impressive, considering it was as high as 13.50 in mid April (after back-to-back outings with 9 ER surrendered in each.) Of the 65 earned runs he’s allowed this year, 27 occurred in his first four starts. Since then, he’s allowed an average of 1.65 earned runs per start.

It looks like Ian Kinsler’s season might be over. It’s been a tough August for key players in the state of Texas, with Houston’s Carlos Lee prematurely finished in what would have been his career year as well. Neither the ‘Stros nor the Rangers were going anywhere in October, but if you were riding either of those horses on your fantasy team, that hurts.

8/18 - Yesterday was a day for baseball extremes. Five teams won with double digit runs scored. But there were also two shutouts and three one-run games. So monster hitting and monster pitching results were certainly within reach of many fantasy teams.

The RIFC draft cleared the first two rounds over the weekend, and rationale postings have now commenced at the Football Forum. In addition, some of the qualifying leagues may also be posting draft rationales, and those will appear in corresponding threads at the Football Leagues Forum. The NFL season opens in just a little over two weeks, so draft activity will be pretty intense for the next two weeks.

I see that RotoHog has priced some additional football players, so I’ll get those loaded into the sortable stats in the next day or so. TSN will be adding players to their football database later in the week.

Plenty of teams shared the weekend spotlight in GuruGolf. Four teams tied for the top bestball score of -56, and four shared the top worstball score of +40.

8/15 - Are the Red Sox swinging hot bats, or did they simply feast on a horrible Rangers’ staff? They just swept Texas in Fenway Park, scoring 37 runs in three games. But the Rangers have a MLB-worst team ERA of 5.45, and are on pace to surrender almost 1000 runs this season. The next foe to arrive at Fenway is Toronto, whose team ERA is 3.66, tied with the Dodgers for the best in the majors. Halladay, Marcum, and Burnett should provide more of a challenge. Then again, Toronto is scoring only 75% of the Texas output, so the Sahx shouldn’t need quite as many wall balls.

The RIFC draft has started, and will be ongoing for the next two weeks. This league’s format is somewhat unique, as rosters include both a team defense slot as well as 6 individual defensive players, and also awards points for kick and punt return yardage (for any player). So you don’t necessarily want to use it as a guide for your own league draft without first considering any of these potential differences. As is customary for Invitational leagues, managers will be providing brief narrative rationales for each pick, although these will be lagged by two rounds. Those should start early next week.

8/14 - Back again! Thanks for waiting. It’s always with mixed emotions that a lengthy vacation comes to an end, but there is plenty to do, and it is always helpful to be able to focus once again – and to have my broadband connection.

Football begins to take control, and in the fantasy context, that usually means drafts and team formation. The RIFC draft is on the brink – more about that tomorrow. I just checked the two covered salary cap games – TSN and RotoHog – and neither appears to have added any players during the first half of August. I suspect some updates will happen next week. And, of course, Football Pickoff still has to be retooled for 2008. Fear not – it’s on my “to do” list - but that may be delayed until nearer the end of August.

In GuruGolf, the Wyndham Championship has already teed off. But before getting too far ahead, I need to announce and congratulate the prize winners for the PGA Championship and the four majors combined:

PGA Championship prize winners:
moe eagles (best ball: -35)
”A” game (worst ball: +72)

Combined Majors prize winners:
G BB 2 (best ball: -120)
clueless (worst ball: +228)

The last GuruGolf prize contest will cover the final four events - the "Final Four" contest.

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