Strat-o Press International

Brassworld's inaugural season was my first attempt to play in a computer based or salary based league. It certainly was immensely entertaining. What a learning curve!!! Before I delve into my BW educational experience, let me first thank Mark, Corey and Daniel. Kudos to Mark and Corey for everything that is Brassworld, the setup and execution of our first year was phenomenal. It was smoother than some 6 team face to face leagues I've played in.

Now to my new Canadian friend, Daniel..., thank you "big D" for your unending patience for my inane questions in the middle of the night. Thank you for hosting Rene and I when we scurried to Montreal pre-season to get an incredibly thorough tutorial on how the computer game works. And finally thank you for keeping me sane when my brain scrambled with no sleep and inundated with mass doses of caffeine just refused to work logically or coherently. Enough of the smarminess, now onto the Island's first season.

In all of the leagues I've played in before, players were judged like commodities but never had I seen anything like this draft. In the past my homework had always given me an advantage over my fellow GM's but in Brassworld I quickly found the playing field to be quite level. There were several surprises (at least to me) in the first few rounds of the draft but my hopes of certain players falling to me turned out to be mere pipe dreams. I did get Mark "Agent" Mulder in the 2nd Round and Carlos Zambrano in the 5th but other than that it was a scramble every time Daniel yelped 'you're up!!!". When all was said and done, I felt pretty good about my squad. It wasn't comprised anything like my pre-draft dream team but I liked what I had found.

The Greenhead's started well and stayed pretty consistent all year. My apparent inability to forge a good Hal hurt my team on the road. At home we always seemed to come through with the key hits. Alfonso Soriano (115) and Cliff Floyd (104) both drove in more than 100 runs. Many league observers felt our consistency was directly attributed to our aggressive approach on the bases. The team stole 228 bases and always took the extra base whenever possible. Juan Pierre lead the league with 93 steals. However the real key to the team was consistent starting pitching. "Agent" Mulder won 15 games with an E.R.A just over 3.00 (3.09). Javier Vazquez also won 15 games with a 3.34 E.R.A. and "Captain" Kirk Rueter won 12 games (E.R.A. 3.31). Young starting pitching was a focus of our draft and with Mulder, Vazquez, Ponson, Zambrano and Escobar in the rotation for 2004 we should see a repeat trip to the A.L. playoffs. 

During the season we took a couple of chances by trading for stretch drive help in Mark "Liberty" Bellhorn and Kenny "The Gambler" Rogers. They both helped immensely during the final month and performed very well in the playoffs. As for the rest of our team, the postseason is a painful nightmare still too vivid to revisit just yet. Look for that in S.P.I's. next issue (Plum Island's Postseason Egg).