Don't worry Coach. Giambi hasn't been any great shakes and Matt Morris only just came back from the DL this past weekend, with a freak hotel injury extending his downtime by an unexpected two weeks. In the meantime, the rest of my pitching has decided to either be hurt or uniformly suck while Schilling has been posting double digit strikeout performances worthy of a first rounder.

My offence has been raking with Piazza coming back, Giambi doing OK, Sheffield, Jones, and Ordonez doing what they do. And in particular late season surges by Carlos Lee and Junior Spivey to help.

But it's still only been gooding enough to keep me treading water with a .500 record the past two or three weeks. Chacon and now Foppert have hit the DL, Matt Morris is finally available to me, Joel Piniero has been spanked, Rocky Biddle has been sliding, and I'm not getting enough innings out of the rest of my staff to matter.

It's far too much to hope for challenging second place...I'll be happy if I don't fall out of a playoff spot at this point. I'm almost as close to 7th as I am 2nd right now. It all comes down to this last week and then of course, anything can happen in the playoffs.

Peaking too late ... after months of resembling a staff full of Tanyon Sturtzes, the Shockers have now put together two solid pitching weeks in a row. It probably won't be enough to get me into the championship round, but it bodes well for a strong finish in the consolation bracket.

Though they are increasingly painful for me to read, thanks as always to Jonny for compiling the Roto stats.

Scott's excellent list underscores how volatile the Head-to-Head format is and how competitive this league has been. Sixteen teams with playoff hopes in the final week is impressive, twelve with a shot at the championship round is simply amazing. Six teams that can still win the T-shirt could also miss the postseason entirely.

We'll be watching the box scores with extra interest this week. Good luck, everyone.

Mebion Glyndwr's staff put up an excellent week last week last week too we will need to carry it through to this week to match up with The Shockers.

My fingernails are getting mighty painful hanging on to the last playoff spot.

Here are the best and worst possible regular-season finishes for every team.

Holy Kristy McNichol! This league is insane in a good way. Great chart, Scott.

My second-half slump will apparently never end even when my offense performs relatively well (8th) I get spanked. I am still not sure if my team was just a first half team, or if injuries got the better of it. I had totally different expectations when June began and I was getting Randy back, then he delayed his arrival and Patterson, Griffey and Juan Gonzales all joined him on the DL for the remainder of the season. At the same time I made plenty of mistakes such as trading Ishii for David Bell who I held unto way too long, did not trade Byrnes when I could before he fell of the cliff (good pick-up though), trusted Graves, Lidle, Lilly for way too long (still do, I guess...). However, I can be proud of the trade that sent me Marcus Giles for Casey Fossum.

Even with five keepers will the last placed teams draft first or can we not change how the draft order snakes around?

And I can't wait for tonight where I will have my two great starters Lidle and Lilly battle it out in Toronto. They will probably provide me with a combined line of:
7 IP, 15 ERA, 3.33 WHIP, 0.50 K/BB, 0 W

will the last placed teams draft first...?

Yes. Five rounds will be devoted to re-acquiring your keepers. We will customize the draft to ensure that the last-place team has the first pick of the sixth round. So the draft order will exactly reflect this year's final standings -- that way, whoever Yahoo says has "first" pick (let's call him Snellville) gets the last pick in the sixth round, which is actually the first round for choosing free agents.

This is a much shorter list than moves I'm ashamed of.

Ditto. Best move was getting Dontrelle Willis as a free agent, worst was giving up on him after one bad start. Plenty of regrets; my Bernie Williams trade for Lo Duca, Boomer and K-Rod was supposed to turn out a lot better than this. I still like the Jason Schmidt deal but he hasn't helped as much as I expected. Same for Torii Hunter; I traded a guy I scooped on waivers for him (Borowski) but he's been inconsistent.

Excuses? Tony Armas was an inspired draft pick and was on his way to a great year. Matt Morris' woes doubled my bad luck and forced me to deal lots of hitting for pitching. I could have survived without Milton Bradley most of the year, but not any more. Jeff Weaver (7) + Travis Hafner (12) + Brandon Larson (13) = bad draft picks.

A lot of middle infielders, catchers and pitchers have gone through the revolving door; that's why I lead the league in transactions. It hasn't been all bad; Florida's Alex Gonzalez, a FA pickup, helped net me Orlando Cabrera. I got Marlon Byrd and Matt Kata at the right time and still think Laynce Nix might have a big September.

Pistol had a huge second half and is running away with the Roto league (no keepers, 6x6, not exactly the same categories as BBFL) run by Spicol, who led all year and is now second. I'm fifth of 12; didn't prepare well for the draft and was never in the hunt. Maybe Spicol will start a similar league next year, expanded and opened up to our waiting list.

Trading away A. Ramirez for Penny, which gave me the freedom to deal the way too hot Schmidt for a better CI (Huff) and a (now former) closer (Baez). Neither deals were "steals" (and I got a couple of "huhs?" from fellow players), but they were the right moves for the good of the team.

I complained about $#!@! Colby Lewis (I'm sure Coach can sympathize), but overall I am very happy with how my free agent pitchers have performed: R. Rodriguez (decent before injuries got the best of him), T. Redding (a good back-of-the- rotation kind of guy), W. Alvarez (very good since entering the rotation), R. Cormier (top tier set-up guy), and R. Soriano (who's doing a great K-Rod impression). It's been a lot of work keeping the Schmidt-less Baird Brain rotation afloat, but so far so good. Knock on wood.

Aside from Buerhle's bizzare stumblings and Berkman's early season injuries, I haven't had too much bad luck--other than both of my closers losing their jobs despite performing well. Some players, notably the killer B's, Boone and Burnitz, have been much better than expected (although they're both coming back to earth--albeit one much faster than the other).

Maybe Spicol will start a similar league next year, expanded and opened up to our waiting list.

Absolutely. Hopefully there won't be the problem we had this year getting owners. I had to settle for some people I didn't know and admittedly, some of the current owners in the Variety Meats League are a little less than active.

Good: Drafting Preston Wilson in the 5th. Drafting Tino Martinez 18th (very reliable, if little else). Drafting Mark Redman in the 19th. Picking Scott Posednik (28 steals! .381 OBP!), Alex Cintron, Jody Gerut, Jae Seo and Darrell May off waivers.

Bad: My 6-7-8 picks were Josh Phelps, David Eckstein and Rick Reed (though I doubt many people expected Eckstein to be THAT bad). My 11-12-13 picks were Joe Crede (who is FINALLY coming around), Alan Embree(Boston's closer for about one week) and Bobby Higginson.

Ugly: Drafting Jeffery Hammonds and Pokey Reese. Embarrassing.

Looking back, I'd say my draft was a dud, FA and Waiver claims served me well, and trades were mostly mediocre, probably on the minus side overall.

Good draft picks: Randy Wolf (5th), Vernon Wells (7th), Tim Worrell (13th), Jay Gibbons (14th).

Bad draft picks: Miguel Tejada (1st), Billy Koch (6th), and, without exaggeration, everyone from rounds 11 to 25 except Worrell, Gibbons, and Sidney Ponson (24th!).

Ah, but I got maximum value from those three good picks in 15 rounds as follows:
Traded Worrell for Mondesi immediately after Mondesi stopped playing well.
Traded Gibbons for Jorge Julio immediately before Gibbons started doing his Shawn Green impression.
Dropped Ponson after 1 start so I could pick up Jeremy Bonderman... who stayed on the K-Town roster for two whole days!

How did the Mashers stay afloat? Lots of luck in the Waiver pool and especially the FA pool.
Off waivers: Rocco Baldelli, Carl Crawford (laugh if you like, he's worth it for the SBs), Paul Wilson, Ryan Ludwick.
Free agents: Matt Kinney, Jeff DaVanon (in time for his crazy hot streak), Oliver Perez, Jose Lima, and enough good relievers to make JP cry.

I have some moves for the Hall of Shame as well. Most notably, getting Marcus Giles for a steal in something like the 18th round and then promptly trading him...for Casey Fossum. Let's also say that dropping Angel Berroa early in the season also didn't turn out for the best. That's a pretty productive middle of the infield which I basically had nothing to show for.

I managed to do a few things right, mainly on the waiver wire. Picking up Rocky Biddle early gave me a solid saves source for free, saves probably being my only real pitching strength. I managed to get very nice production out of an aging Gary Sheffield (including steals), a nice season from Andru Jones, and Mike Lowell.

Brett Myers was a very tough young arm to give up but I'm confident that a blue chip bat like Magglio Ordonez will pay off in the long run. Hopefully, I can find another Brett Myers, Adam Eaton, and Shawn Chacon in next year's free agent draft.

The second half has been a disappointment. The injury to Oswalt made him the highest drafted player on the DL. Cliff Floyd won't be helping me in the post-season, either.

Best moves: Picking up Javy Lopez and Brandon Webb as free agents.

I had intended on drafting Lopez initially, but he was drafted higher than I was willing to chance. After his series in Puerto Rico I picked him up. I saw Webb strike out 10 in his first appearance vs. the Mets, so I e-mailed the D'backs ESPN correspondent about him. Don't risk it, he said. Well, risk it I did.

Mark Tiexiera and Miguel Cabrera were solid waiver wire picks and will make keeper decisions more difficult.

Worst moves: Dropping Bill Mueller and not making a trade at the deadline. Mueller was the odd-man out early on, and I didn't believe the Sox were going to trade Shea. As the trade deadline approached, I believed my starting pitching would hold up enough that I wouldn't have to sacrifice key players to fix it. Well, the bottom has fallen out and I'm now relying on Webb and possibly a healed Eric Milton to keep it close.

My best move was picking up C.C Sabathia as a free agent. Worst move was the 2 seconds of draft day insanity that made me pick Mo Vaughan in the 11th round. I'm pretty pleased to be hanging in sixth given Vlad spent so much time on the DL and Vaughn and Dye left such big holes in the rest of my offense.

I'm having one of my best weeks of the season and still Scott is killing me 9-2. He's hitting 397/482/822 on the week. 822!

Outta my way. I'm gonna be sick.

"I'm somewhat tired, but basically if I were asked to play, I would play."

Boy, I'm sure glad to have this guy in the lineup.