minihouston - Editor
Thought it was a time for a Meet the Writer(s), I'm sure most don't pay attention to who "writes" these articles but their names all have some sort of reference; most to another fictional writer.
- Amy Amanda 'Triple A' Allen - Doesn't write often, but often covers the minor leagues.
- Gabrielle O. Alvarez-Tillman - Covers scouting and mostly known for her Draft Recap posts, but the name is in reference to the Goat curse that owner minihouston brought upon the league the day he joined.
- Eli Cash - Focuses on the Cobbfather Hall of Fame and is a reference to Owen Wilson's character on The Royal Tenenbaums.
- He is often joined by Jill Bames, who is a reference to Bill James, the baseball writer, historian, and statistician.
- Jack Torrance - Covers the league's records and is a History Buff, is also in reference to Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining.
- Jessica Fletcher - Not active as of late, but covers Free Agency and Budgets. She is a reference to Angela Lansbury's character in Murder, She Wrote.
- Richard Castle - Works a lot with Skynet as he covers our power rankings, references Nathan Fillion's character in the TV show Castle.
- Catherine Trammell - Is our final writer who covers rumors, Meet an Owner, and when teams go on sale. She is a reference to Sharon Stone's character in Pulp Fiction.
But enough about them, what about behind the scenes? As some may have read, I covered my introduction to HBD and Cobbfather a few seasons ago in a long write-up, recapping my rebuild of the franchise. This now makes my 11th season and have actually enjoyed writing about fictional players and stats as much as, if not more than owning/building a team. Baseball is a random sport, but at times it feels HBD is a bit too random for my likings. There are also a few owners that I chat with routinely about the on goings of Cobbfather, sometimes just to brag about who beat who or to remind some (ahem the commish) how awesome DIAMONDS in the rough are!
Sidenote: Be sure to message him about your diamonds when you have a chance, and feel free to send him trade offers for them. He's a collector! If I didn't know better, I'd say diamonds are a commish's best friend.
In between early season losses, and being the nerd that I am; I created a spreadsheet to help me sort through players since I wasn't happy with what the website had to offer. I was also curious if I can find a system to determine the type of players I wanted to build from and what ratings might carry more value. Being fresh to the game I had no clue how speed varied from base running ability or if a player had high contact but low splits what kind of hitter would he be. I also got interested in the history of the league...yes I'm aware how nerdy I am, and no I do not care...and more than just the awards that showed up like MVP or Hall of Fame. And then I noticed the blog and thought I'd contribute with more factual information than funny; leaving that to FW_Kekionga's articles.
Pulling a few questions from the Commish's article of Meet an Owner, in my free time when I'm not working my real life job in architecture or with my family I'm typically defending the Houston Astros World Series titles against our commish and the Pittsburgh owner and his Chicago Cubs. I also have a big interest in film and board games. Just played Dead of Winter for the first time a few weekends ago and really enjoyed it.
I've stuck around with Cobbfather because of my friends whom are in it, but also because of all the owners. Overall it's a great group without a ton of drama, minus a few occasions here and there but no world is perfect. And I appreciate that owners tend to stick around from what I've noticed on the forum and other leagues. I think most years, if we lose anybody, it's typically just a single owner; making rollover easy.
My favorite part about building a franchise is the trade market, though I wish HBD made it easier to have conversations; which is one reason why we created the discord though it's rarely active. A lot of the activity is really connecting people together for personal DMs. I'm a big believer that I don't have to "win" every trade; but overall I need to improve the future of my franchise. 1B/LF/RF/DH are tough positions to trade, because they are so easy to fill because the market is typically flooded with both FA and trade options. I think HBD could make some tweaks to how the IFA and Rule 4 draft work; but beggars can't be choosers.
Of my current roster, I think Juancito Martin is my favorite; partially because of how he fell to me in the draft. I thought for sure he'd go #1 overall to Washington DC, though William Martin is a close second considering how little I paid for him in IFA and how useful he's been in my pen the last few seasons. Pitching aside, the team is still relatively young so I'm interested to see what they do in the next 3-5 seasons.
The best advice I've heard in Cobbfather is...
5. Know when to hold ‘em.
4 Know when to fold ‘em.
3. Know when to walk away.
2. Know when to run.
1. You never know what $132M will buy you when you’re bidding on free agents. There’ll be time enough for trading when Spring Training comes.
That's about it, I'm looking forward to the All-Star game and wrapping up S54. Hoping to get a few more articles out before the season ends. Perhaps one day I'll retire just end up writing the blog. Ha!