NFBC Journal: Week One - Scutaro fills in nicely

Okay - one week is in the books and while a late week rally by my team dragged me up out of the cellar, the results were mixed. Here are the standings for my Main Event league after one week. In the quest for the $100,00 Grand Prize, I am sitting at 180th place (out of 390). The early weeks of the season see wild swings in the standings, but at least I am in the top half of the competition after one week.

It only takes a minute to see that my offense was seriously lacking in week one. While I managed to score runs at a good clip, my other numbers were off the pace by quite a bit. Horrible weeks from Jimmy Rollins (.083 , 0 SB's), Chris Davis (.045, 0 HR's) and J.J. Hardy (.087, 0HR's) hurt. . Rick Ankiel, Kevin Kouzmanoff and Cameron Maybin chipped in little. The bright spots were Nick Markakis, Matt Kemp, Ryan Doumit and my lone Week One waiver add Marco Scutaro.

Since Kendry Morales doesn't have his CI eligibility yet, I needed a two week fill in there. The choices were slim and I needed to cut Dallas McPherson to find a replacment. I will admit that my strategy early was to hold onto my FAAB dollars so I made a very small bid on STL David Freese and backed it up with a conditional bid on Marco Scutaro. I liked Scutaro's multi-position qualifications (2B, SS, 3B, CI, MI) . Emilio Bonifacio was available, but he didn't have the CI status that I needed. In the end I landed Scutaro for $2 of my $1000 and was rewarded with a team leading .385, 10 runs, 2 HR, 5 RBI performance.

On the bright side, my pitching was very good for the week. Johnny Cueto was my only starter not to record a W and my back end starters Jair Jurrjens and Paul Maholm had nice two-start weeks.

The only way to improve your team is through the once weekly FAAB bidding. There were no really intriguing bats available, with Marlon Byrd the most interesting. And I had the luxury of feeling pretty good about my starting pitching. Jorge De La Rosa was the player ticketed for release and I decided to speculate on Det RP Ryan Perry. I bid $59, $19 more than the second place bid and he is now a Mugger. I don't expect him to get any saves til maybe mid-season - but with only Lyon and Rodney ahead of him - I like his chances down the road.

I decided not to add any bats and go with what I have, while hanging onto AAA prospects Matt LaPorta and Pedro Alvarez. With weekly lineups and a seven man bench you can carry minor league players as long as injuries don't strike. We have no DL spots, so injured players must be carried on your active roster. With Andy LaRoche off to a dreadful start in Pitt, I am going to hang onto Alvarez a little longer, and I really believe that LaPorta will be up for good after June 1.

Heading into week 2 my only lineup change was to sit Cameron Maybin down in place of Kosuke Fukudome. I like the fact that the Cubs play at home all week, so I went with the upside of Wigley in April. Now - onto Week 2.