Final Fantasy

If there was anything that had you more excited than the way the real-life Toronto Blue Jays finished this year's season, I'm betting it was how they fared in the mystical world of intangibles known as Fantasyland. It was for that reason I deliberately waited more than seven weeks after the last game of the reality season in order to make sure the results of the fantasy season were far apart enough so that your minds wouldn't be completely blown.

As you may recall, back in June I decided to waste my time by setting up three extra Yahoo accounts so that I could conduct a fantasy baseball league, the results of which would determine once and for all whether J.P. Ricciardi is a completely useless sack of shit or not. By painstakingly recreating the rosters of the Blue Jays, the Yankess and the Red Sox, a fourth team was added to the mix consisting of the ghosts of J.P.'s past, ex-Blue Jays given up under his command or potential Jays missed out in draft picks: The Intangibles.

Since the midseason, our hometown team and this mixed group of fond memories (O-Dog) and shitbags (Hinske) battled it out with their dignity and the reputation of their present or former general on the line. The final results were staggering:



By a whole 3 fantasy points, the Toronto Blue Jays proved to still be a better squad than if J.P. had sat on what he had. But J.P., before you print this post out to wave at Ted, and Steinbrenner, before this makes you panic and fork out a few more million dollars for more all stars, take a closer look at the numbers. You might find that they're kinda fucked up.

This could have something to do with the fact that after going through the incredibly nerdy process of conducting a draft by myself that mirrored the exact rosters of three teams and then putting together the Intangibles team photo, I got a bit lazy. While players such as Vernon Wells, Hideki Matsui and Reed Johnson (the grit of The Intangibles) all suffered injuries during the season, they never really did in the fantasy world. But they also didn't contribute mnuch in the way of fantasy points during these times either. I might just have decided, fuck it, Barajas is going to be the catcher for the rest of the year regardless of what happens. And I might have insisted that Eckstein and Stairs were still Jays when they weren't.

I'll admit that I wasn't really on the ball with updating the rosters to reflect what was going on with the real world of baseball. But I guess that just reflects on my preference to live in my own fantasy world. So really, what does all this prove? That besides a few chuckles for the team photo, I'm a pretty shitty manager and that you'll probably harm your vision if you compare the stats of the ex-Jays to those of the real Jays below:

The Intangibles



The Blue Jays



I look forward to doing it all again next year.