After a brief foray into second place over the weekend, coming within one point of the lead, my team dropped back into a dogfight for first place this week:

Todd Zola continues to pace the field, though he has most definitely come back to the pack. Pete McCarthy of MLB.com has surged into third place, and Perry van Hook of Fantasy Baseball.com has dropped from second to fourth.

We have a $1000 FAAB budget, and as you can see the bid amounts were all over the map. After being relatively aggressive the first few weeks, my only bid this week was a token bid on Yankees’ reliever Alfredo Aceves. I am annoyed at myself for not bidding on Jose Mijares, as the astute Adam Ronis of New York Newsday snagged him for a cool $1.

On the other end of the spectrum is the $111 bid on Jason Vargas by Perry Van Hook. His unchallenged bid makes a good argument for instituting a Vickery bidding system, wherein the winning bid gets the player for $1 more than the second place bid. I faced a similar scenario earlier this year, when I bid $60 on Luke Hochevar, with no other bidders. Boy, that one worked out great.

Clearly my problem so far has been Wins and WHIP, a problem that will hopefully be rectified with my trade this week, the first one of the year. I traded Matt LaPorta and Hank Blalock to three-time Tout Wars champ Mike Lombardo for Joba Chamberlain and Daric Barton. Blalock was off to a hot start in the power department with 10 HR, but a BABIP of .219 has hurt his BA. BaseballHQ projects him, going forward, with 18 more HR, a .278 BA and a $13 value.

Joba has some of the best skills of any pitcher in baseball, and will definitely help across the board. As compared to Blalock, BaseballHQ gives Joba a $22 value going forward, with a 6-4 record, with a 1.14 WHIP and a 3.19 ERA. If he hits those targets this trade will be a win for me, but both teams got what they needed.

The standings show that offense has been my strength so far, but my team’s performance has been buttressed by a few fluky performances:

--Jason Bartlett: .384/.418/.587-he has been worth a cool $40 so far (!)
--Curtis Granderson has ten home runs already-a number that no one thought he would do so early. Will he stay on a 30 HR pace or cool off? Either way, his low BA of .259 should be on the rise.
--Jack Cust has been surprisingly good in the BA department with a .270 mark.
--Joe Mauer with 6 HR already?? Thank you very much. Let’s hope he is going to put together a career year in HR.

One of my credos is that May is the Great Equalizer and all things regress to the norm in May. Stats start to have statistical significance near the end of May, and those fast and slow starts begin to normalize. That is what is happening here, and making it out of the month in solid position to win is all I can ask for.

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