As Yahoo! svengali Andy Behrens recently detailed  in his latest Roto Arcade column, this year’s annual Kingman league draft turned (devolved?) into a five day long bloodbath, at times resembling a virtual reality show of 30-40 year old journalists and fantasy baseball geeks with laptops trapped in the  Mock Draft Central  website for days.  

The draft–featuring a handful of baseball media heavyweights–will be looked back on and analyzed for decades if not centuries by historians as possibly a turning point in fantasy baseball.  Think about the final scene from Apocalypse Now when the cow is being sliced in half and you can kind of get a mental picture of it.

ESPN’s  Chris Harris  had to be talked down from the ledge several times, going ballistic waiting for Asia-based league members to make their draft picks.  Later, during one of the countless hour-long draft pauses, Harris and Behrens got into a steel cage ALL CAPS match brawl over whether or not Tampa Bay or Toronto had improved more defensively.    At some point around the 15th round, just having woken up in the middle of the night to draft Aaron Heilman, I lost my shit on Chris Harris in a profanity-laden early morning semi-conscious tirade defending our league’s Asia based members. Despite the fact that one of them was apparently lost on an amphetamine/strippers/ Mild Seven binge somewhere near Taipei and unable to draft Josh Willingham for at least 8 hours.

Even Aaron and I, usually the greatest of chums, flipped out on each other during the draft in the final rounds when Aaron decided–just on the verge of the draft’s completion–that he was going to try to provoke the room by slipping Koji Uehara’s name in the draft in the 24th round.  As commissioner, I vetoed the move, bitterly ranting I would have taken Darvish rounds earlier had I known we could do that, thus prompting Aaron to spend the rest of the day berating random Korean people on the street. Rumor does have it however that he has since stopped chewing on his own arm out of anger. We haven’t spoken since but I believe things will be OK.  

Even though the draft was bloody, it not only set the table for what is going to be one incredibly fierce fantasy league (you really had better F’ing win if you spend 5 days of your life staring at the MDC draft screen), but raised some interesting questions I now turn over to the EWC readers:

1. Chris believes the Blue Jays will finish ahead of the Devil Rays this year.  I disagree and I’m willing to drop a little wager on it.  Reader thoughts?

2. The venerable Harris and I also disputed the following pick: I chose (2007 Cy candidate) Rafael Betancourt in the 10th round, while the ESPN expert believes Polanco is the better pick. Betancourt already picked up his first win of the season in relief for the Indians, but certainly Polanco’s runs and high on-base% are attractive.   (I instead opted for Freddy Sanchez much later at middle infield).    Reader thoughts on this one as well….