I Am a True Patriot

Alrighty then on to the.... Wait a minute....

Is that our nation's flag I see over there on the right-hand side of the blog-post? Well, I'll be damned.

In times like these, with July 4th around the corner, who cares about HARL? All I can say is this....

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Oh and by the way, the JOKERS are still in 1st place. For those who can pull themselves away from staring at Miss Liberty over there, here are the standings as of June 30th:

101.1 = JOKERS

92.8 = COBRAS

87.4 = GRILLERS

82.9 = RHINOS

82.8 = ASSASSINS

81.3 = MUDHENS

71.7 = GAMBLERS

68.4 = BREWSKIS

63.1 = STAMPEDERS

50.7 = MAYGAMERS

42.5 = LEMMINGS

I SMELL TRADING!

There was one blockbuster trade to report this week, which happened while I was away in Gaming Heaven. It was between the GRILLERS and STAMPEDERS.

GRILLERS swapped 1B-John Bowker, OF-Michael Bourn, OF-Brandon Jones, P-Max Scherzer, and SP-Anibal Sanchez to the Stampeders.

STAMPEDERS swapped 1B-Ryan Howard, 3B-Jose Bautista, and OF-Andre Ethier to the Grillers.

On the surface, this is very good "THIS YEAR" trade for Griller Geoff, who adds some much needed offensive pop to his lineup and finally fills his weak-link at 3B. For the Wild Horsemen, they got a windfall of inexpensive and up & coming talent for 2009. I'm especially high on the upside of Brandon Jones and Max Scherzer, and Bowker has done well as an out-of-nowhere rookies this year (showing good power). If Bourn could ever grow to hit around .270 or so, he could easily lead the league in Stolen Bases with his blazing speed. He's the next Wily Taveras, and that's not a bad guy to have for rotisserie purposes. Sanchez flashed his potential prior to getting injured, and may be back for a 2nd-half audition this year.

Interesting trade guys!

2ND-HALF TRADES

Now that June has passed, any players you acquire in trades will get that extra "Option to Extend" clause added into their contracts. So if you trade for a PF1 guy, he'll become AO1 for you. If you acquire a MY2 guy, he becomes an OE2 guy for you.

TAKING THE PULSE

Pretty soon, I'm going to followup on last week's overview of prospective rule changes to shake-up and re-energize the league. HARL isn't as vibrant as it used to be years ago. There are lots of reasons for that.

For starters, many of us have been playing rotisserie baseball for a very LONG time, and like anything else in life, enthusiasm tends to wane over time when things become too familiar and too routine. So I'm certain that change would be a very good thing for us. Bring back the excitement of new challenges and new twists to our favorite game.

Secondly, all of our lives have gotten busier as we've gotten older. Whether it's caring for kids, marriage commitments, job stress, or other extracurricular activities, none of us seem to have as much free time as we used to. Things change, that's life, and we all must learn to deal with it. While some members of HARL wish there was more trading activity, more interleague banter, and more roster changeover, I just don't forsee things returning to the way they were years ago (rule changes can improve this a little bit, but they can only do so much). I'm very accepting of all of this. With the current group of people in HARL, the days of rabid, uber-competition are probably not going to be seen again anytime soon. I think that everyone wants to win, and tries to dedicate time & effort to get there (as much as they can spare with everything else that's going on). And I'm well aware that the amount of time and effort spent on HARL varies from person to person. But hey, you pay your money to play, and you'll get out of it what you put into it. I've been in a lot of fantasy sports leagues, and not a single one was perfect from a team owner perspective.

Thirdly, I think the social dynamics of fantasy sports has greatly changed with the advent of internet-based leagues. There's much less face-to-face contact and verbal communication than in the old days when owners chatted over the phone and got together to talk shop. That tangible communication has been replaced by cold, impersonal emails. I feel that all rotisserie leagues have suffered somewhat from a social perspective as a result of that. Technology is great in many ways, but it's no replacement for live, human contact.

So what do we do to recapture the magic so to speak? Is it even doable? Your input and ideas are always welcomed.

I would still like to play in HARL next year. I've committed so much time and energy into doing this (making it part of my business even), that I can't imagine NOT playing. I've been playing ever since I graduated from college!

But what about you? Is there anyone who is seriously considering dropping out next season? If so, could you let me know fairly soon? Finding new people that we know to join HARL has become harder & harder each year, so I would really appreciate any heads-up if you're planning to bail out for whatever reason. Before I undertake a lot of work refurbishing HARL into something new & shiny, I want to be certain we'll have enough people to play in 2009.

So let me hear from you. I'm taking the pulse of the league. Your time to speak is NOW.

It's Alive!

What's alive? The MONSTER packet that is this week's set of PSR reports, that's what.

There are 30 reports in the file-set, including year-to-date HARL player values. So open up that monster and dig in!

Current HARL Dollar Values have also been posted online along with the regular stuff (rosters, team stats, point standings, HARL player stats, free agent list, waiver wire, etc.). You can find everything at HARL Central (www.rhinosoftware.com/harl/harl_main.htm).

Speaking of monsters, sometime next week I'm planning on publishing a survey regarding possible HARL rule changes & new additions.

Keeping the game fresh is a major challenge when you're talking about a rotisserie league that's 22 years old. But I think we really need to do something to spur excitement. While I believe everyone is still having fun, my Spidey Sense has detected a palpable degree of apathy amongst the team owners that concerns me. Joey calls it a general malaise. Perhaps folks are just squeezed for free time in this increasingly hectic world that we live in? Life certainly isn't the same as it was 15 or 20 years ago.

Anyway, my goal is to try and inject some new life into HARL, and spur more interaction among the group. Here's a quick rundown on some of the ideas I'll be sharing with you:

Two Halves of the Season = Play a 13-week mini season and count your Points (the top 5 teams win prize money). Then play another 13-week mini season during the 2nd-half of the major league season (the top 5 teams win money).

At the end of 26 weeks, each team adds its Points together from both halves to determine the Final Order of Finish (the top 5 teams win end-of-year prize money).

Mid-Season Reserve Re-Draft = At midseason (All-Star Break), we all get-together to hold a live draft called the Reserve Re-Draft. Prior to this draft, each HARL team is given the chance to protect 4 bench guys (this total includes both Reserve and DL guys). Everyone else from your Reserve/DL that was not protected gets thrown back into the Free Agent Pool.

The Reserve Re-Draft is then held to restock your bench. Teams get $5 to draft 8 free agents in an auction-style draft. This gives us some midseason draft action, which is nice since everyone really enjoys live drafts.

Trade Meetings = Schedule two (2) Trade Meetings during the regular season. The first one is held around May 15, and the second is held around August 15. The purpose of the meetings is to get-together, eat some munchies, talk trade, and hopefully spur some deals.

Franchise Players = On May 1st, teams may designate up to 2 players with MY2 contracts as "Franchise Players". You may only have 3 Franchise Players on your HARL roster (you could have players leftover from the prior year).

The contracts of these Franchise Players changes to MY3 -- so you are getting an extra keeper year out of them. In exchange for the longer contract, you must keep that player for all 3 years of his contract. If you waive him anytime during those 3 years, his Salary gets deducted from your FAD Balance and you lose 1 Farm Pick next season.

Trader Award = I'm still thinking about the specifics here, but the idea is to award a $50 prize at the end of the year to the team owner who made the most trades or best quality trades (with trades rated on 1 to 3 point scale as determined by a simple formula). The gist of this award is to spur trading since it will pay to deal!

Rookies Signed to 3 Year Contracts = This is Rich's idea. Any rookies signed by your club automatically get ML3 contracts.

New Definition of Rookie = To improve the quality of the Farm Draft, the definition of a rookie (Minor Leaguer) is someone who has never exceeded 100 AB or 40 IP during any previous season. In effect, we're doubling the AB and IP from their current values.

Expand the Player Pool with 4 AL Teams = In addition to the National League, players from 4 AL teams are now available to be drafted and used on HARL rosters. The teams would probably be the Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, and 1 other AL club to be decided. I would like to stick with historically good, high-payroll teams, or teams that are close by (eg: it's easy to go see the Orioles play).

While this is certainly a radical idea for HARL, the free agent pool isn't as interesting when it's comprised mostly of scrubs. So beefing up the available players pool would increase the talent level, but HARL still would not become an "all-star league" -- something I strongly dislike.

Two New Stat Categories = Add 2 additional stat categories: Total Bases (TB) for hitters, and Quality Starts (QS) for pitchers.

These categories are readily available for us to use (they're included in the weekly stats data that I generate for the Rhino Stats Service), and I'm currently showing them on the HARL reports as extra statistics.

Total Bases is a worthy offensive stat because it incorporates 2B and 3B which we currently ignore, represents slugging ability well without being another ratio-style stat, and counter-balances OBA (ie: it's good to have a high OBA, but you also need guys that rack up the bases on a cumulative basis). Quality Starts is a solid way to evaluate Starting Pitching and this helps give good starters their just due (relievers are always a bit overrated in fantasy terms).

So there you have it. Some bold new ideas to chew on and seriously consider. I'll followup on these later. For now, if anyone has any comments, suggestions, or questions about any of these things, feel free to shoot me an email or leave you comments on this blog (just click on the Comment link at the end of this post and write whatever is on your mind).

ONE LAST THING.... Since I'm away at the Origins game convention in Columbus, Ohio this weekend, I won't be home to handle the Waiver Wire process. So please send you waiver claims to Joey this Saturday. Thanks!

Who's In First?

While Abbott and Costello could never quite agree "who's ON first", the fantasy baseball gods governing HARL can't seem to decide "who's IN first". After 7 weeks of baseball, we have had five different teams sitting in 1st Place (Maygamers, Mudhens, Assassins, Gamblers, and Jokers). That's both amazing and refreshing. I can't recall any prior examples in our 22-year history where there's been so much flux atop the leaderboard during any part of the season.

It's even hard to tell which teams really suck this year. Just like the top of the standings, there have been 5 different teams in Last Place this season (Jokers, Lemmings, Rhinos, Brewskis, and Maygamers). In fact, after 7 weeks of play, the teams that started out in 1st and 11th place after one week have officially swapped places with each other. How weird is that?

Perhaps then, it's appropriate that Joker Jack is currently at the top of the class at the Week-7 mark. Trying to predict who is going to win HARL this season has become a mind-bending, head-scratcher. Who else but a court jester could even make sense of it all?

So it's time to put on the silly jester hat with the dangling bells, prance around and act goofy, and babble idiotic nonsense to everyone within earshot. It's Joker Time. So how, you may ask, did the Jokers move all the way from LAST PLACE after Week-1, into FIRST PLACE after Week-7? Good question. For me it boils down to these 3 things:

• The best power hitting in HARL to-date. Last week the Jokers slugged a whopping 23 HR and drove in 60 runners. That was so damn good I had to doublecheck the stats and make sure that I didn't make a mistake in recording the transactions somewhere. It was not a mistake, it was just stellar offensive production. Alfonso Soriano smacked 7 HR with 14 RBI last week all by himself. Only 32 of 252 NL players to post stats this year (roughly 13%) have 7 or more HR for the entire season. Dan Uggla and Ryan Ludwick have also been red-hot of late in the power department. All of this has lead the Jokers to have the 2nd most hitting points in HARL this year.
• This team has nice balance. The Jokers are currently 2nd in Hitting points and 4th in Pitching points, and in the middle in Fielding Ratio. You know that I always preach balance, balance, balance. Trust me, it keeps you in the hunt and can take you a long way in the playoffs.
• Bang-for-the-buck. If you can get star-level statistical production out of your cheap guys, your team is destined for great things. Of the top dozen HARL players in terms of Profit (Actual YTD Dollar Value - Salary), the Jokers have 3 players in that list -- more than any other team in HARL. Ryan Ludwick ($1.50 profit), Dan Uggla ($1.40 profit), and Geovany Soto ($1.40 profit) have been top-notch producers for Joker Jack's club this season. And not a single one of them cost more than 60 cents.

Kudos to Jack for his fast start. I like to see new faces atop the HARL standings. With all the crazy movement going on in the standings, I can't really predict how things will shake out with any certainty. But I do think that the Jokers have pretty good team and aren't a fluke. Once Adam Laroche starts hitting and Jose Reyes starts playing up to his ability , their offense will get even better. That's a scary thought for the rest of us.

Later!

Hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah... the Sevy Rhinos aren't in last place anymore! After a three week slumber, the Horned Ones finally woke up and rampaged ahead with a turbocharged performance during Week-4 of the regular season. Their 12 point gain jumped them all the way up to 7th place. What's more, they're now only 4 points removed from a playoff spot. My faith in humanity (and baseball) has been restored.

Meanwhile at the top of the standings... The Assassins one-week hold on 1st Place didn't last, as the killers suffered a sudden 16-point drop. Consequently, they were passed by the Mudhens and Cobras. Clucky rises again! But our fine feathered friend can't get too comfortable, because those sneaky spitting cobras are poised to strike at their heels, lurking a mere 1.37 points behind the leader.

Here's how things sit with 4 weeks worth of statistics in the books:

Things look pretty tight don't they? Less than 10 points separate the 3rd place Assassins from the 8th place Maygamers. That's close.

And while it sucks to be trolling around the sub-basement of the standings, the Jokers and Lemmings can take comfort in my 1-week rise up the HARL standings as proof positive that there's still plenty of room for movement at this early stage of the season. If the Rhinos can do it, well then, why can't they?

As April comes to a close, I thought now would be a good time to examine our first Team Points Graph of the 2008 season. Remember, if your colored bars are rising over time, your team is headed in the right direction (up the point standings). For instance, the Cobras have been making steady gains since the first stat period.

Conversely, if your colored bars are decreasing over time, your team is in a downward spiral points-wise. The Maygamers are an example of this, bleeding off points since they sat atop the standings after Week-1.

Sorry for the smallish graphic, but you can't post a full-sized screen shot here due to the limited layout space.


I'm beat and that's all I feel like writing for now. I'm thinking about starting to post snippets of fun stuff (like stats analysis, quirky comments, etc.) later in the week, rather than writing one big news-post every Tuesday Night. Spreading things out into smaller chunks may feel like less of a burden for me, while keeping the content of the blog fresh. We'll see how things go.

As always, your comments and suggestions are welcomed.

New Week, New Leader

Uh oh, another one bites the dust!

Sneaky little bastards! Those cloaked killers, the Abingdon Assassins, have sliced and diced their way into 1st Place, cutting down all who oppose them in the process. Dougie Fresh's boys have put a disappointing 2007 season behind them and are making a statement that this year they'll be a team to be reckoned with.

Three weeks into the season and we've had 3 different teams leading the pack. This has all the early earmarks of a very wild year in HARL country.

To be honest, I can see more lead changes in the rotisserie crystal ball which I keep hidden in a secret chamber deep within the bowels of HARL Central. Why do I say that?

Well, for starters, just look at the Week #3 HARL standings:

While the Assassins and Mudhens have gotten off to fast starts, there are a whole bunch of teams huddled tightly together in the 70-point band. It would only take a hot week or two for the 9th place Brewskis to vault themselves all the way up to 3rd place. Things may settle down a bit standings-wise in another 2-3 weeks, but right now, things are in a huge state of flux. Everyone is still legitimately in the race, although the Lemmings and Rhinos need to bounce back soon because they're off to a sucky start.

I honestly can't recall the last time I found my beloved Sevy Rhinos in last place. I'm sure that the rest of you are cheering. I mean really, who doesn't want to beat the hell out of the team with the most HARL championships to its credit? But guys, I'm not giving up! I actually like my team this year. But jeez, the combination of poor starts from several key players (Francis, Gorzelanny, and Valverde on the pitching side, and Weeks, Beltran, and Andruw Jones on the hitting side), and some injuries woes (J-Roll, Matsui, Wigginton, zero stats from my 2nd Catcher for 3 weeks, and a back-half of the rotation that's been DL bound for a good chunk of the early season), and you have a recipe for a crap start. The horned ones really need to right the pitching ship, because 18 points just ain't gonna cut it.

Another thing that I find fascinating about the teams so far, is the great imbalance between batting and pitching points for most teams. The Gamblers and Grillers seem nicely balanced in the early going. The Maygamers, while tilted towards the offensive side of the ledger, are not grossly imbalanced. But every other HARL team has a difference of 14 or more points between its Batting and Pitching numbers. That can only mean two things: (1) lots of free agent action, and (2) much more trading activity to remedy these weaknesses. At least that seems logical. Whether our more conservative owners actually pull the trigger on deals or not remains to be seen.

All I know is there ain't no way in Hell that I'm finishing dead LAST! And you can suck that down, monkey boy!

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:

---

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!

The Bearded Pirate is Riding High!

By now, most of you know that tired old rotisserie mantra that falls from the lips of wily veteran fantasy baseball players the world over: It's Still Early.

One look at my Rhinos horrendous pitching stats from Week-1 and you can be sure that I'm going to be reciting that classic phrase a helluva lot. Someone has to start off slow, and that someone appears to be me right now (along with Joker Jack).

Conversely, someone usually starts off red hot, and no team was better in Week-1 than the Maygamers. Yes guys, that's an expansion team in 1st Place!

HARL's gray bearded elder and diehard Pittsburgh Pirates lover, Mayer Foner, is certainly riding a wave of statistical goodness right now.

Xavier Nady was just named player of the week. Nate McLouth is smoking hot. Jeff Keppinger is hitting so well that he may very well become a super-sub who gets 350-400 ABs playing a variety of positions this season. Johnny Cueto had a dominant pitching debut, and 4 different guys in the bullpen registered Saves in Week-1. Welcome back to HARL Mayer.

Here's the Reader's Digest bite-sized look at the current standings:

What can you tell from these standings? To be honest, I never put much weight into these things until 4 or 5 weeks of the season have passed. Once you have a bigger sample size of stats, you have a much better idea of who has a good team and who might struggle. Still, I'd much rather be near the top of the standings than the bottom. Nobody can takes those good "counting stats" (HR, RBI, SB, Wins, Saves, K, etc.) away from you.

It's pretty obvious that the Stampeders and Lemmings need to start hitting better, and the Rhinos need to starting hurling some gems. Aside from that, talk to me in a few weeks.


GETTING WEBBY

I fooled around with a bunch of reports tonight, in an effort to see what kind of work I would need to do to for our fledgling HARL Central reports website. I ended up creating a whole bunch of reports, and I did a LOT of editing to make things look prettier. A few observations are worth sharing:

• Generating HTML reports from Rhino Baseball isn't very hard or time consuming for me, so that's a major plus.
• Unfortunately, the HTML reports in their standard format are pretty homely looking when compared to their much more colorful PSR brethren. I may put some tweaks into the baseball software over the summer to reduce the default font-size of HTML reports (because the reports packed with lots of data seem too wide to fit comfortably on most screens). There are several basic reports (eg: Rosters, Team Stats, Team Scores) that look fairly decent as-is. I still ended up doing tweaks to a bunch of them, just to add color here and there and cut off excess/straggling info. Call me anal retentive.
• I need to avoid getting EDITING HAPPY. Editing the HTML reports is very time consuming. I already do enough work for HARL, so there's no way I'm adding another 2-3 hours of work to my plate each week to duplicate a bunch of PSR reports online. So I'm going to stick with the key reports on Stat Night, and perhaps add in some bonus reports during "off-hours" throughout the weeks. We'll see how it goes.
• Without a shred of doubt in my mind, PSR reports still kick the poop out of HTML reports. Not only do the PSR reports look better, but you can sort, filter, and search them in the Rhino Viewer. You cannot do that with static HTML reports; you can only view them. So don't plan on dumping the Viewer, unless you're just too plain lazy to analyze any stats/ratings and simply want to see the quick & dirty stuff (standings, rosters, waivers) each week.
• Scrolling thru HTML (web page) reports online can be dicey when the reports are BIG. For example, scrolling down thru scads of players in the NL Batting and NL Pitching stats reports isn't nearly as nice as doing it in the Viewer because the HEADINGS don't stay put!

Some of these issues should spur me on to look into making PSR reports available through a web browser. I've done a little bit with that quite some time ago, but need to revisit it. I know that you can get it to work using the OPERA web browser. Internet Explorer won't support it because it got rid of support of Netscape plug-ins (an older technology). Not sure about how it would work in Firefox or Safari (for the Mac). You guys using those browsers would need to test it for me once I get something ready to test. Or you could just download and install Opera on your PC -- it's free (and happens to be my browser of choice, although I also use IE sometimes).


THE PLACE for NEWS

This will probably take some getting used to for the Old Guard, but this blog will now serve as the place for HARL News. I will slowly be weaning everyone off the regular EMAILS you used to receive.

So that means the weekly FAD Results will be posted here. League commentary will be posted here. Trade announcements will go here. And so on and so forth. So be sure to bookmark this blog (http://harlbaseball.blogspot.com/) and visit it on a regular basis.

Another nice thing about the blog is that YOU GUYS can LEAVE COMMENTS on any blog post (article) that I write here. So 2-way communication over the web is now possible. Everyone can read whatever you post (including outside site visitors), so don't post anything you don't want a stranger to read.


That's about it for now. I'll have a review of the FAD process and Waiver Wire picking process later this week, so look for that.

And so it begins!

After 21 seasons of communicating entirely by phone, email, and PSR software reports, HARL finally has a web presence in Season #22. Pretty cool huh?

Creating our own home on the web has been something I've thought about for a long time, but I never took the time to make it happen. Why? Mostly because our mix of email communication and PSR reporting methods worked just fine. They still do, really.

Secondly, I've always been a little leery of the time required to maintain pages on the web. Many a league website has been abandoned due to the burden of maintaining it and keeping the information fresh. That's something that still concerns me, but at least I'm going to give this the old college try and see how it all works out.

I'm still going to generate PSR Reports each week from Rhino Baseball. You guys will be able to download the ZIP file containing those reports from HARL Central and view them in the Rhino Viewer like you've done before. Eventually, I may test out incorporating the use of a PowerBuilder plug-in on RhinoSoftware.com so you can view full-color PSR reports online thru your web browser. That won't happen right away, but it's on my things-to-try list.

I will also post a series of online reports as well such as the current Rosters, Waiver Wire, Team Standings, Weekly Roster Moves, and so forth (pretty much the same stuff you came to expect in the body of the weekly emails from the past couple of years). I may also post some additional stats/analysis reports as well, provided it's not overly time consuming.

An archive of the major news/events is also being included on HARL Central, so you'll have a handy way to reference old important news items that you previously received via email.

Most of the weekly newsy notes and league banter & comments will now appear on this Blog, rather than be sent via email each week. So we'll slowly be transitioning from regular email communication to heading to this Blog to get your HARL news.

You'll notice in the lefthand margin there are lots of links. The HARL Stuff section takes you to HARL Central (where you can view online reports, download PSR reports, and read archived news articles). You can also check out the Mega Links to go to a directory which lists every online report that has been posted this year. Clicking on a report name will take you right to that online report.

There's also a helpful collection of links to Baseball News (for daily news/chat and boxscores), Baseball Stats (for player stats), Baseball Blogs (sites where people talk about baseball and fantasy baseball), and Baseball Podcasts (where you can download MP3 audio files and listen to shows on baseball).

I'm sure that our website will grow and improve over time. Your suggestions on helping to mold this blog and the HARL Central site are always welcomed.

Until next time, see you on the web!