It's Routine More Than Strategy by Jewell

I don't have a strategy about playing BBC as much as a routine or actually two routines. I work 3pm to 11 pm so I'm usually up at lock. I'm either doing my lineup at 2 am-3am or at 2:50 am too many times. I take a sheet of paper and start out looking for info and lineups at the CC. Always liked Mike C's cryptic lineups especially when he would say how many from each team. Made me study stats more to think like him. I'll check out JT's weather thread and google"Philadelphia weather" and it will have like a mini-forecast at top of google. Also like wunderground because I'm used to it although most don't like it.

After checking out the CC, I usually go to http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?page=mlbnotes090708 and check out ESPN's starting pitching and hitters. I usually just change the date in the browser instead of going to the site since I have it bookmarked. Sometimes their sleeper hitters are pretty good. Cockcroft is better than some of the other guest columnists. I miss the Insider Fantasy Power Picks since they stopped that.

My next stop is covers.com to check out the odds and the expert consensus. When Verlander faced off against Beckett, the consensus was 63%-37% Verlander and Beckett was 66%-34% and the expert picks. Verlander was 1-5-3-2 and Beckett 2-1-0-3 at the time. For Beckett 2 "experts" picked Oakland, 1 picked the Red Sox, zero picked the over and 3 picked the under. If I had saw Verlander home stats I would have taken him, but went with Beckett. It turned out to be a wash.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/probable_pitchers.jsp is a great site when you are trying to decide between two pitchers.

And of course I always visit Gomer's blog and when I have time, I write down his list of players at each position. This has been a great help.

It comes down to which position to get me under 50.0. Usually the guy I drop hits a home run. Lately been looking at last 5 game totals for my hitters. Also after lock, I study the great players teams looking for hints for next day. Certain players have tendencies. Pouliot used to pick Red Sox a lot, Babin the Dodgers, Anya the Angels & Dodgers.

This year I got a good backup system in case my internet is down. I can use a friend's dial up if my cable is down.

A new outlet I am using is twitter. Some good info on there such as following Matthew Leach, a Cards beat writer for mlb.com. http://twitter.com/MatthewHLeach Also the Red Sox Extra Bases blog at twitter and boston.com is very good as is http://twitter.com/Boston_Alerts for weather, when the game is in Boston.

Certain players that I won't pick anymore such as Gary Sheffield. Another I am growing to avoid is Ian Kinsler.

Ultimately I am a player that doesn't take chances. I don't pick hitters that well, so I end up with a bunch of 49s and sometimes thats good enough. And like I said earlier, I wind up doing a lot of 2:50 am lineups.

Jewel