2011 Cardrunners AL expert league – Team Carty

Last week, I participated in my first draft of the year, the Cardrunners expert league. If you recall from last year, Cardrunners was started under the premise of pitting gambler and Wall Street-trader types against fantasy industry baseball experts, creating “an interesting confrontation between the experienced experts and the sharp newcomers used to beating various games.”

As I’m sure regular THT readers will remember, there was a lot of interesting discussion both at the Cardrunners league site and here at THT. With another talented crop of participants, this year is sure to be the same.

The participants

In addition to me, we have Peter Kreutzer (Ask Rotoman) and Jason Grey (ESPN) returning on the fantasy expert side. Joining us are Tout Wars and LABR vets Dalton Del Don (Rotowire), Larry Schechter (Sandlot Shrink), and Shawn Childs (VuFantasyBaseball, and the most successful player in NFBC history).

Returning on the other side are World Series of Poker bracelet winner Eric Kesselman and a newly-formed team of Cardrunners founder Andrew Wiggins and Brian Hastings, who holds the record for most money won during a single day of online poker ($4.18 million).

Other additions to the league include financial analyst Scott Schaffran, NFBC vet and one-time LABR “regular guy” champ Trevor Braunig, and wildly successful fantasy amateur Clark Olson, who’s won two ESPN Uber Challenges and three NFBC leagues. (Oh, and he’s a rocket scientist who’s worked on the Mars rover.)

Rounding on the lineup is Chris Hill of PokerStars and his partner, Hollywood director Nick Cassavetes, who you may recognize from Face/Off, his cameo on Entourage last year, or from his directing of The Notebook, John Q or any number of other projects.

The results

Here’s my roster. Keep in mind this is an incredibly deep 5×5 AL-only league with a $260 cap.

Hitters

Pos     Player             Price
C       Mike Napoli        $20
C       Jeff Mathis        $2
1B      Adam Lind          $19
2B      Aaron Hill         $19
3B      Mark Reynolds      $19
SS      Jason Donald       $1
CI      Kevin Kouzmanoff   $9
MI      Maicer Izturis     $5
OF      Curtis Granderson  $23
OF      Travis Snider      $15
OF      Alex Gordon        $15
OF      Luke Scott         $14
OF      Gregor Blanco      $0
UT      Dan Johnson        $10
BN (C)  Robinson Chirinos  $0

Pitchers

Pos       Player            Price
SP        Dan Haren         $25
SP        Colby Lewis       $17
SP        Michael Pineda    $8
SP        Phil Coke         $6
SP        Sergio Mitre      $1
SP        Jeff Francis      $4
CL        Matt Thornto      $12
CL        Frank Francisco   $13
RP        Octavio Dotel     $2
BN (SP)   Luke Hochevar     $1
BN (RP)   Arthur Rhodes     $0
BN (RP)   Darren O'Day      $0

Full results of the auction can be viewed here.

Concluding thoughts

Let me know what you think in the comments. Also, by the time you’re reading this, I also will have completed the LABR NL auction. I’ll be posting the results of that here at THT Fantasy on Wednesday.