Eerie Symmetry

This has been a rough season for both my UPL Team and my favorite team, the Chicago White Sox, and it strikes me that its just about do-or-die time to make some trades for both teams but the question is the same - Contenders or Rebuilders? Buying or Selling? Neither I or the Sox have figured it out yet. Ok, maybe Kenny Williams already made up his mind, but I haven't yet.

While technical difficulties have plagued me this spring - an internet that would work slow one week, fine the next, but not at all the following 10 days led to an angry call to Comcast and cancelled internet service - what's really killed me were the mistakes I made in the draft. In that draft, I overdid it on starting pitchers but failed to pick up closers, figuring that I could trade off some of the starting arms for the saves I'd need once they got rolling. And then the season started and my starting pitching got murdered, just about every one of my guys got roughed up and that plan ceased to be viable.

So with my team's spot in the bottom 1/4 of the standings all but assured, the question comes up of what to do with this team in order to not be so far down in the standings next year. If nothing else, I think that the UPL's inaugural keeper league year will yield even more unique and interesting trade offers as time goes by. So I'll put out the question - are you buying or selling? Is this the year, or is it time to stock up and wait for the moment to get your 2010 champs ready?

Draft Order

I just realized that I haven't made an official ruling on the draft order for future seasons in our keeper leagues. We're still a ways off until the UPL Basketball draft, and I'll post a list of current rosters so that people can make their keeper decisions 1 week before the draft in October. But we need to figure out this drafting thing pretty quickly.

Some options:

a) reverse order of finish (i.e., last place picks first, 2nd to last place picks 2nd,..., first place picks last,)
b) order of finish (i.e., first place picks first, 2nd place picks 2nd,..., last place picks last)
c) winner picks first, followed by reverse order of finish (i.e., winner picks first, last place picks 2nd, 2nd to last place picks 3rd,..., 2nd place picks last).
d) random order chosen by Yahoo!
e) weighted lottery with high finishers getting better odds.
f) weighted lottery with low finishers getting better odds.

Please, comment on what plan you think we should go with. If we go the lottery route, we'll have to figure out a fair way to do things, in terms of what the odds should be, and how we actually run the lottery, but I've got an idea in mind. In any case, let's get some discussion going, and I'll make a formal announcement by the end of July for both baseball and basketball.

-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)