Revenge of Clucky

Well guys, it appears that you just can't keep Clucky down!

Rising from the ashes of a disappointing September, which put a damper on an otherwise fantastic 2007 HARL season, the Mudhens have taken over 1st Place after 2 weeks of the baseball season. Can they ride the momentum all the way to the playoffs? Umm, to be frank, I HAVE NO FRIGGIN IDEA! Two weeks does not a season make.

Plus, I haven't had the free time to sit down and run my top secret post-draft team projections yet using Rhino Baseball.

In my view, April is much like September from a roster management perspective. You go ahead and take care of your injuries and obvious roster problems and tweak here & there, but April is mostly an observation month. You can't afford to panic and make rash decisions about your key players.

For instance, two weeks of stats tells me that Shawn Chacon is far better than Jeff Francis right now. Anyone with 2 rotisserie-branded brain cells to rub together knows better. Chacon is back of the rotation roster filler, while Francis is a top-3 member of most fantasy starting staffs. Jeff Keppinger is not going to outproduce Jose Reyes and Jimmy Rollins. For countless players, their stats are a mirage right now. Water will reach it's own level. Patience grasshopper.... patience.

Still, it's frustrating to be way down in 10th place. After my pitching was totally torched last week to the tune of a 7.71 ERA and 1.75 WHIP, I figured that I'd be bringing up the rear for sure. But Richie Lemming is keeping me company and is sitting in 11th place. Meanwhile, our damn older brothers (Joey and Mike) are kicking our asses. But we shall have our day! The season is young!

Anyway... enough babbling. Here are this week's snapshot standings:

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Waiver Wire

I'm pretty sure that everyone knows how the Waiver Wire process works. But to help out Mayer, I'll say a few words about it here to reinforce how everything works.

Whenever a HARL team waives (drops) a player from its roster, that player immediately goes on the Waiver Wire. These players can be picked up for FREE every SATURDAY night by whoever claims them. But there are rules in place regarding how picks are submitted and awarded, how many guys you can claim, and how long a player stays on the wire.

1. Each HARL team may put in as many claims as it wants on waiver players (e.g. you could put in claims for 5 different guys), but can only acquire ONE (1) player off the waiver wire during any given week. So if you put in multiple claims, you must rank them from 1 to X in the order that you most want those players.
   
2. Claims are awarded based on the REVERSE ORDER of the current HARL standings. So if two teams put in a claim for the same player, the one ranked lowest in the standings gets that player.
   
3. You may submit a claim for a player that YOUR TEAM DROPPED. When awarding players in that case, you can only acquire that player if no other team in the league claims that player.
   
4. It costs NOTHING to claim a player off waivers.
   
5. The Salary of a player claimed off the waiver wire is 25 cents and his Contract Status is set at MY2.
   
6. If a player goes unclaimed during his 1st week on the waiver wire, he remains there for a 2nd week. If he remains unclaimed after the second week, he returns to the Free Agent Pool.
   
7. Waiver Claims must be submitted to the league commissioner via email by 8 PM on Saturday Night.

And that's the scoop. If you want to see who is on Waivers this week, check the online report or PSR report (http://www.rhinosoftware.com/harl/linkrpts.htm) starting with the word waive.

Until next week... Sayonara!