Fantasy conundrum

I resisted the urge to try fantasy baseball for years. I know myself well enough to know that once I started a fantasy team, I'd get hooked and spend way too much time on it. I was pretty much right.

And tonight, I am faced with a heck of a quandary with my fantasy team: I forgot to move Jared Weaver off my roster before he faced the Royals tonight! Now, the Royals are knocking him around a bit, which is great for me as a fan, but is doing horrible things for my staff's ERA and WHIP (which had been at an astounding 0.00 and 0.40, respectively, for the last day and a half).

I have been thinking all season that I don't always like the way my fantasy involvement makes me look at games. It works beautifully when Brian Bannister throws a complete game so I get a whole bunch of points, but what when a Royal opponent is a member of my team, like tonight? It's just kind of disconcerting to be watching any game for a reason other than enjoying watching baseball.

On the plus side, I have paid closer attention to some teams because their players are on my team. It's making it easier for me to work on paying better attention to the NL. But it still weird. What if I'm watching the Yankees and Red Sox? I always root for Boston over New York, but I have Mariano Rivera, so it helps my (fantastic) staff if he dominates. But I also have two Boston outfielders, so maybe it would help me if those guys got their offense going, at Rivera's expense. I don't like the relativity of it all; I'd rather just enjoy watching and root for whomever I wish.

I could just convert to an all-Royals team via some heavy trading, or go with a silly theme (bad facial hair?), to cut down on how much I am actually bothered by this discontinuity.


Meanwhile, in real baseball, Gil Meche has thrown first-pitch strikes to 13 of his first 16 batters faced. That's a good sign. He has also gotten rid of that silly triangular beard. Do you think those factoids are related? I tend to think so...

Also, I have some fairly large news that I will share in more detail later this week. It's pretty exciting for me though. Feel free to speculate, but I'll eliminate some possibilities: I'm not getting married, I'm not pregnant. The rest is fair game.

Go Royals!