By JIMMY D / Dual-position players key to fantasy success | Jimmy's archive

Jimmy doesn't mind if you are are bipolar, bipartisan, bi-racial, bisexual or bilingual.

He would prefer, however, if you are bi-positional.

In fantasy sports, in addition to paying attention to bye weeks, you should be looking for players who qualify at multiple positions on your roster.

Jimmy is losing badly in his Yahoo! hockey league and he loathes the idea of waving bye-bye to the season before the calendar flips to November.

He could blame himself for missing the draft date or blame the computer for picking a crappy team for him (who wanted Joe Thornton and Brian Gionta anyway?)

But he has to blame himself for not focusing on scooping bi-positional players off the waiver wire. Many times in the past three weeks of his head-to-head (all routs by the way), Jimmy had four right wingers playing on a given night, but no left wingers.

The result was active players on the bench, while the left-wing slot remained empty and not producing any fantasy booty.

You can’t always avoid that situation, but you can help by prioritizing your draft around players with both center and left wing eligibility, for example.

And that’s what Jimmy did last week, grabbing Tuomo Ruutu and Vaclav Prospal off waivers. The result should be fewer empty slots on game nights and more production. Now, if only someone on the Jackal roster could crack the Top 50 in scoring, we’ll be all set.

Guess we have to blame Thornton, Marian Gaborik, Chris Drury and Mike Knuble and their lousy starts for that.

The other option is to blame Jimmy and we all know that GM incompetence can’t possibly be the reason.

Baseball poolies know the value of dual eligibility. Hockey and hoops poolies should learn a lesson from them.

Jimmy Jackal hoopsters

The dual-position theory was invoked bigtime in Jimmy’s NBA head-to-head league, with a handful of multi-position players plucked.

At the top of the draft, New Orleans assist machine Chris Paul and oft-injured giant Yao Ming landed on Jimmy’s team. And then Maverick Josh Howard (both small forward and shooting guard-eligible) and Mehmet Okur of Utah (both center and power forward-eligible) joined the Jackals.

Sharpshooter Joe Johnson of the Hawks and the Dallas point-guard tandem of Devin Harris and Jason Terry are also new Jackals. Looks like we will be watching lots of Dallas games this winter.

Last year, Jimmy rode Elton Brand, Andre Iguodala and others to the regular-season title, only to gag in the playoffs. We’re here to take care of business in 2007-2008.

Hitting the Marques

Finally. For you Marques Colston lovers who stubbornly refused to part with him despite the Saints poor start, congratulations! Drew Brees is hitting his stride and found last year’s breakout rookie three times in the endzone Sunday.
He led all wide receivers in fantasy production, ahead of Braylon Edwards, who snagged two TD passes.

The QB fantasy leader was, once again, Handsome Tom who led his merry band of Patriots to a humbling romp over Washington. Try five TD passes and no INTs, while easily throwing for 300+ yards. Eli Manning was the dog of the week, throwing for a paltry 59 yards as the Giants edged the Dolphins in England.

Brian Griese did his best Rex Grossman impersonation with one TD pass and four picks.

Among the running backs, Joseph Addai was a wrecking ball at Raleigh with three TDs and 108 rushing yards as the Colts crushed the Panthers. It sets up a beauty this weekend between the 8-0 Patriots and the 7-0 Colts.

Brian Westbrook scored twice while running for 92 yards in the Eagles win at Minnesota and Kevin Jones had another solid week (just in case nobody in your league is paying attention) with a score and 115 yards.

Jimmy plugged Jesse Chatman as a solid bye-week or injury replacement and he generated 100 rushing yards in the absence of Ronnie Brown.

Bosox win again

With all the hype on the Patriots, the Red Sox sweep of the Rockies in the World Series almost got lost in the Boston championship shuffle. With the Celtics being hyped as NBA title contenders and Boston College ranked No. 2 in college football, its mass confusion in Massachusetts.

On the baseball front, it’s time for keeper poolies to immediately start looking forward to spring training.

Lots on the go. Stay busy and you’ll stay lucky.

Jimmy D