At this Point in the Season it Could Still go Either Way

I was talked, against all my judgment, into playing fantasy baseball again this year. At least I had the sense to avoid any league that might involve the Goldman brothers, whose sense of perspective has sometimes been called into question. I had every intention of maintaining fantasy abstinence, until Ryan came calling. It's extremely difficult to say no to Ryan. I distinctly remember one occasion in 1998 when he came by my dorm room to talk me and Erin into a couple of Monday night beers, and, foreseeing our complete powerlessness to refuse him, we hid in the bathroom. Then a couple of alumni came by on a tour and we tumbled out, giving them much to ponder.

Ryan's is a head-to-head league peopled mostly by Harvard scientists. I constructed a dataset and came up with my very own metric of fantasy value. I determined that the peak age for a player's fantasy value is 31. Then I ran my regression models, and determined that last year's fantasy value is a weak predictor of this year's fantasy value, as is performance history of any kind. So I was forced to abandon that strategy, with a hearty cry of "Crap! I know nothing about baseball!"

I played Ryan last week. Yahoo offers a smack-talk feature, which Ryan used to send me the message, "So glad that we play first - I like your team. Thanks for joining the league!" I lost 1-12-2. Damn that kind, supportive reprobate.