NFBC Weekly Profile - Joe Martino/Will Spencer/Paul Roberts

[Tom Kessenich]

No championship is won by a single player in Major League Baseball. It’s all about teamwork. When each player works together greatness can be achieved.

A trio of NFBC players are hoping for similar results in the RotoWire Online Championship. And entering action this week their plan was off to a strong start.

Joe Martino, Will Spencer and Paul Roberts joined forces in the $350 event and began the week on top of the competition, residing in first place in the event’s overall standings.

“The keys to our early, and I repeat early, success has been nothing more than luck, preparation and the very hard work me and Paul and Will put into this season of baseball,” Martino said. “We evaluated every player on the board and made our position tier lists. We conversed about what players we liked and disliked and in the end amazingly after all these drafts we have agreed every step of the way.

“Our love for baseball and daily discussions have made this a great offseason. We also highlighted potential injury prone players to stay away from drafting.”

A big part of their draft preparation was taking part in Draft Champions league. That enabled the trio to get a good feel for what to expect when their Online Championship draft would begin.

“After a few drafts we determined that the trend year after year continues to be guys like to draft bats early,” Martino said. “This year was no exception. However, we felt differently about that strategy only because there were so many good bats later so why not try and get good pitching early?”

That is precisely what they did. They opened up their draft with three strong offensive players (Andrew McCutchen, Justin Upton and David Wright) but after that the focus went squarely to the mound. They landed closer Craig Kimbrel in the fourth round and nabbed their first starter (Yu Darvish) in the fifth. Another strong selection came in the 10th round when they selected Mets’ phenom Matt Harvey.

“I saw Matt Harvey pitch at Citifield last year against the Rockies with Will and was like, ‘This is our guy next year.’ He was just dealing,” Martino said.

Not surprisingly, their team is off to an impressive start in the pitching categories. Entering play on Tuesday, they were leading their league in pitching by a commanding five points. They were first in ERA and WHIP and second in both Wins and Saves.

The Waiver Wire has been their friend as well, especially this past week.

“The biggest pickup has been our third closer for now, Andrew Bailey,” Martino said. “Boy, what a week he just had. Hopefully he remains the closer (in Boston) going forward.”

Joe Martino and his brother Dave are longtime NFBC and NFFC veterans. With Dave focusing on their NFFC plans and diving into early season Draft Champion leagues, that led to Will and Paul stepping in to help Joe steer the ship toward what they hope will be a successful NFBC season.

“These guys are true gurus of the game and should have their own baseball radio show,” Martino said. “Together we conferred all winter long, ranked guys, threw out ‘What if’s’ all to try and reach the pinnacle of winning one of these NFBC overall events.”

Although it’s early Martino and Co. are definitely sitting in an enviable position in the Online Championship. As any NFBC veteran knows, however, there is still a long road left to travel before ultimate fantasy success can be attained.

“Our team has to stay healthy and continue to produce,” Martino said. “It’s so hard to win a league, let alone the overall title when you have such great competitors participating in the NFB leagues. We are only at the quarter pole of the Kentucky Derby with a long mile to go.

“It’s so hard to go wire to wire. But we sure are going to try like heck to pace our team, budget appropriately and be in good shape to make a charge at the end.”