Karma Kameleons 08 Summary

Blog regrets the delay in getting the season reviews up in a consistent manner. (Blog apologizes for nothing). Thankfully, we’ll be able to bump down that hideous picture on the last post quickly in the next week. ick. Without further ado…

Last year’s runner up found it tough sledding in their attempt to repeat or expand on their 2007 success. Generally, when a team changes their name mid term to “Slump Chumps”, you know that things may not be clicking on all cylinders. Despite those early struggles, mostly brought about by a pretty brutal draft, KK was able to finish fairly strong and had a brief chance to make the tournament in the end. Alas, 7th place and winner of the NIT is the best they could end up with. They are to be commended for making several moves, whatever the reasons for them, and they did get arguably the steal of the draft in Dustin Pedroia during the 8th round (Blog predicted this pick during the draft). DP ended up the 16th overall player and AL MVP. The fact that he’s a MI is real gravy for the production he gave at that pick. Now that is value.

- Best Move: So many moves involving big players… Blog did like the trade that brought Jose Reyes and Jenks on board (from Snot for Cano & Peavy), but both were flipped away shortly after. Blog thinks that getting Pedroia, a 2nd base keeper in the 8th round is still the best move of the year for KK.

- Worst Move: Very biased, but trading Nolasco and Valverde for Ankiel and Bush worked out very, very nicely for Regs, not so much for KK. Oh, and drafting mediocre setup man David Weathers in the 12th round and out-for-the-year Chris Ray in the 19th round were also really bad moves. In fact, probably worse than trade Blog picked, but hey, it’s Blog’s blog. You don’t like it, get your own.

- Biggest Surprise: Johnny Damon finishing 44th overall is a pretty big surprise. His 2007 was pretty darn bad, but his 2008 was high quality. Seeing as he was drafted in the 14th round, Damon actually ended up ‘more valuable’ than Pedroia. Cliff Lee was a pretty big surprise too, but he was already well into his Cy-Young season by the time KK acquired him.

- Biggest Disappointment: Fausto Carmona was really bad this year. Since he can’t even strike Jason Varitek out, he didn’t have huge fantasy value anyway, but KK saw something there to take him in the 2nd round, 12th overall, and he was thoroughly disappointed.

- Blog Would Have…: Not drafted Weathers or Ray, and kept Jose Reyes instead of trading him for Webb, Valverde and OC.

- KK Should Keep: Fielder, Pedroia, Pena, Webb, McLouth/Lee – flip a coin. Blog finds it quite an injustice for the Commish to leave Carlos Pena (33rd overall) off his potential keeper list. Shame…

- Final Draft Grade: 8 value picks, 6 top 100, 3 top 50 is good quality. Of course, some of that was negated by 7 non-value picks over 500 (see draft review), one of which for some bizarre reason was not Chris Ray. Carmona and Johjima in the first 6 rounds stings, but it was offset by Pedroia and Damon later. Overall C.

- Final Season Grade: Finished strong, but still 11 games under .500. Winning the NIT is good enough for a C.


- 2009 Outlook: KK should be very strong at 1B, CI and 2B. They’ve had a knack to get solid starting pitchers the past 2 years, so they need to hope that continues. If they can avoid drafting worthless players and put together a draft that at least includes players expecting to play in 2009, they could be a threat to finish 6th, maybe even 5th in 2009.