2008 NFBC Champion Profile - Scott Zeidman

[Tom Kessenich]

1. How did it feel to win the league title?

As a member of the CREATiVESPORTS.com team, I was in a league with the likes of $100,000 winner David DiDonato, Rotowire's Jeff Erickson, and FanBall's Seth Tractman among notable others. Winning any league would be fantastic, but to be able to make it through an entire season and come out on top with such illustrious competition, well that made it all the better.



2. What were the keys to your championship season?

We were very fortunate in a lot of areas. Guys like Milton Bradley, Rich Harden and Albert Pujols, all considered injury risks on draft day, pretty much played throughout the season, and all turned in great years. Pickups Kelly Shoppach, Mark Buehrle and Chris Young excelled. Late-round flyers, including Mike Mussina, Mark DeRosa and Garret Anderson performed better than expected. We also targeted pitching early, a normal taboo in fantasy baseball, and those early pitchers (Johan Santana, Roy Oswalt, and Joe Nathan) performed well.



3. Was there a point in the season when you began to realistically believe you could win the title?

We were in the bottom half of the standings for the first two months. With Oswalt faltering, Troy Tulowitzki hurting, Michael Bourn hitting a buck 50, and every catcher we picked hurt, it was looking like a long, long season. About the All-Star break, things picked up and by August, we thought we had a shot.



4. What draft day strategies worked out the best?

The two strategies that worked for us in this league were drafting talented, but injury risk players, and drafting pitching early. Normally, we would tend to avoid the injury risks, and certainly would avoid spending early picks on pitching. However, when we saw DiDonato, Erickson and Trachtman in our league, we realized that drafting conventionally wouldn't cut it. So, we decided to go against conventional wisdom and take the high-reward injury-risk players, and to go with pitching earlier than the rest of the league. We ended up leading out league in ERA, WHIP, Strikeouts, and finishing second in wins.



5. Did any not work out the way you planned?

Many. We were low on speed early, so we drafted both Ryan Freel and Michael Bourn. They stunk. This caused us to chase speed the rest of the year. I no longer believe that finding stolen bases on the FAAB is easy, because it isn't. We held off on drafting our catchers, then decided to go with the Padres' 1-2 "punch" of Michael Barrett and Josh Bard. We figured that between them, they'd get 600 at bats, hit .270 or better, and put up some offensive numbers. They were offensive, no doubt. When healthy, they were awful, then they both got hurt. It didn't turn out to be such a good idea.



6. How did FAAB work for you?

We were exceedingly lucky, and pretty darn stupid at the same time. The lucky side brought us Kelly Shoppach, Mark Buehrle, Chris Young, Jason Kendall and Rod Barajas, as well as pitchers Greg Smith and John Lannon with our FAAB. We also found a few saves in Luis Ayala. On the stupid side, we spent most of our remaining FAAB in August on Jim Johnson, figuring that he would be that third illusive closer. Johnson did nothing but get hurt. With only a handful of FAAB left, we were pretty much paralyzed down the stretch, and couldn't get the key free agents we needed to make a run for the top 10 overall.



7. How was the competition in your league and the overall event?

The competition in the NFBC is tremendous. As indicated, this year we had DiDonato, Erickson and Trachtman. Previously, we've been in leagues with $100,000.00 winner Terry Haney (twice), Todd Zola, Nate Ravitz, and fantasy baseball king Shawn Childs. Each year, it seems that the competition just gets tougher. Last year was as tough as any before.



8. How long have you been playing fantasy football/fantasy sports?

I've been playing fantasy baseball only since 1990, but have been playing Strat-O-Matic since my early teenage years.



9. Personal info - married/single, where do you live, what do you do for a

living?

Married with two childen. My eldest son, Jason (age 9) was my co-manager for in-season moves last season. As he was the deciding factor in many of our key free agent moves, he's been promoted to co-general manager, and will be joining me in Las Vegas for the draft this season. My 5-year old will be watching SpongeBob. We live in Culver City, CA where I practice law, manage a slot machine distribution company, write for CREATiVESPORTS.com and sit on the Board of Education.