What did I do to deserve this?

I don't know how it happens, but it seems that every year I end up drafting a guy to my fantasy baseball team who should be good, but proceeds to tank awfully. This year, C.C. Sabathia is killing me.

In three starts — including a 13-2 loss to the underachieving Tigers last night — Sabathia is 0-3 with an ERA of 13.50 and a WHIP of over 2.50. He's struck out 14 batters while also walking 14. Do those sound like the numbers of a contender's ace?

How a pitcher coming off of a Cy Young award winning season goes into the gutter so quickly and sharply is a mystery to the universe. It's not like he's battling injuries either, no such concerns have risen on that front.

Even worse, his value was highly inflated because he's in a contract year! This is the season where he was supposed to be at his best and earn a nine-figure deal from (most likely) New York. They probably had a pin-striped No. 52 already made up for him.

C.C. should give fellow hefty pitcher / former A.L. Cy Young winner Bartolo Colon a call and ask him how his story went along. Colon, who's now a minor leaguer for the Red Sox is hoping he can crack Boston's rotation one day. His best chance may be through injury troubles though. Sabathia had better get back on track fast or it may not just be fantasy teams that are passing him over.

Season openers abroad

It's getting a bit ridiculous and cheap ploy for publicity when almost every North American sports league opens their regular seasons overseas. The NHL did it in London for the beginning of their 07-08 campaign and are doubling efforts next season with openers in Prague and Sweden. The NFL played a game in England last season and even had a minor league running in Europe that was forced to close down. The NBA is looking at European expansion as their future and are marketing heavily in China. Even the English Premier League was looking into having regular season games on the other side of the pond.

But here's the nuttiest one of them all: Major League Baseball – who has been opening in Japan for several seasons now — staged games in Tokyo featuring the Red Sox and A's while the preseason was still being played out stateside. Even better, the A's and Red Sox will come back and play more preseason games after they've already opened their seasons. How does this make any sense at all?

Even when the Braves and Nationals open the regular season in the states on Sunday night, there will still have been three Spring Training games that took place during the afternoon. I would expect this kind of lunacy from a shifty league like the NHL but not from MLB.

The players who are forced to travel and play at what amounts to six a.m. on the body clocks only hurts their performance and can throw a monkey into the beginning of the teams' seasons. Maybe they're lucky that they can have a tune up before playing more real ball, but I don't see how this benefits anybody.

The simple solution would be to make the Japan games exhibitions, but then you may not draw a big crowd and teams would likely bring over more scrubs than stars. Would you be a Tokyo-er if you couldn't watch Manny or Big Papi?

So can we try to straighten this out sometime soon? Having a fantasy baseball draft a week earlier than usual to try to get in two games is quite absurd.

A true fantasy

Every year major league baseball tries to tell us that fantasy baseball infringes on their copyrights and every year they can’t stop anyone from drafting their teams on a wide array of sites. MLB thinks that its players names, their stats and all their information are somehow copyrightable and their exclusive property – not to be used for the purpose of games. But since when was information not public domain? Well MLB can keep on spinning its wheels over that while I set up my sweet team for the 2008 season.

Who did I manage to snag you may ask? Well here’s how my team, in a standard Yahoo! Public rotisserie league:

C: Ivan Rodriguez. Catchers were running out and he was the best available. Hope he holds up.
1B: Mark Teixeira. Last pick in the second round. Monster numbers at first.
2B: BJ Upton. Great potential and a solid five-tool player. Can also play OF.
SS: J.J. Hardy. I missed out on the early, better shortstops. Hardy can play though.
3B: A-Rod. How could I not be happy about this? I wouldn’t have minded drafting second and getting Reyes to clean up in steals though.
OF: Hideki Matsui. In a contract year and is usually good for 100-25-100 with average.
OF: Juan Pierre. I’ve got to get steals somehow and he’ll score more runs with L.A.’s new lineup.
OF: Jeff Francouer. My sleeper. Had 19 homers last season and 20 doubles that bounced off the wall. Now that he’s put on 20 lbs of muscle, I expect great things.
Util: Todd Helton. Doesn’t have as much pop as he used to but a discount in the 12th round.
Bench: Aaron Rowand, Stephen Drew and Jose Guillen. I don’t think I’m too bad off if I’m hit with an injury or two.
SP: C.C. Sabathia. Contract year/Yankees audition.
SP: Cole Hamels. Number 2 in the rotation means easier matchups.
RP: Bill Wagner. The Mets are going to win a lot of games.
RP: Trevor Hoffman. A saves stud. Even if he’s getting up there in years
P: Jeff Francis. Only getting better and 17 wins last year.
P: George Sherrill. Could save 35.
P: C.J. Wilson. Needed one more closer.
The pen: Heath Bell. Matt Garza. Bell in case Hoffman goes down and Garza has a lot of hype behind him.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about my team. I could use a few more steals and I’m not sure about my K’s but we’ll see how the season plays out.