Arizona Diamondbacks' closing pitcher Juan Gutierrez

This baseball season, being the arrogant prick I was, I decided to participate in seven fantasy baseball leagues thinking I could manage them all. Great joke on my part.

5 had money involved and

2 were just glorified mock drafts

Among those 5 leagues, I paid attention to each of them and each has their story this season.

I participate in a league which has a 12 players kept, minor league players, salary capped offseasons and a $250 entry fee for each team. A payout structure that pays owners per category win during the season and a playoff payout by position finished.

I have a co owner Mark, and this is our second year in the league. We took home first during the regular season and second during the playoffs last year. We made a good amount of money, so we signed up for year 2. The offseason had trades made nearly every day, salary money and draft picks being swapped so much it was hard to keep track of anything.

This season was mundane, we finished 4th, the first week of the playoffs was a breeze for us. We re-matched with the champ from last year in the semi-finals this past week. By Wednesday, our team was down 0-10-2, and not ANY category was close. Free agency was frozen and our only shortstop, Edgar Renteria was out for the season. I threw my hands up and said we were done.

I didn’t check until Saturday, when I did, I found out we had pitched 26 consecutive scoreless innings and his starters, 7 starts maximum, got rocked. Our offense batted lights out, and conversely his fell off the face of the earth. We entered Sunday down 5-6-1, with nearly every category up for grabs and we held the tiebreaker. This could have been one of the greatest comebacks fantasy baseball comebacks I have ever been a part of.

Sunday started with both teams playing nearly their whole rosters. After an hour, the score fluctuated from 8-4 to 5-7 so many times, I just needed to step away to avoid a heart attack after each batter. There were times during the day either team could have locked up the week, but didn’t. Andy Pettitte looked awful at first, and then settled in for us; Joe Blanton started out great for our opponent, but Blanton gave up a 3 run homer, locking up our tiebreaker of ERA. Mark Teixeira goes deep for us, securing another category, next thing we know, we had the series won, or so we thought. Offense was locked up; it was all down to pitching.

Joe Saunders started out great for us, but his hit parade in the 7th inning lost us WHIP for the moment, putting the matchup in a dead tie, 6-6. Once again, we held the tiebreaker. We had a 2 strikeout lead with only 1 pitcher remaining for each side in the last game left for both teams, San Diego-Arizona. We had Health Bell and he owned Juan Gutierrez.

The Diamondbacks held a 3 run lead in the 8th and the Gutierrez was called in to get the final out of the 8th.  Gutierrez strikes out Chase Headley to end the 8th. Health Bell isn’t called on for the Padres, so our team is done for the week. The fate of the championship was held in the hands of Juan Gutierrez. 1 strikeout was the difference between the third place game and the championship game. Gutierrez comes out for the bottom of the 9th. 1st batter grounds out. 2nd batter, Drew Macias is down in the count 1-2, the next pitch, he ground out to shortstop.

The fate of the series would come down to the final out, strikeout, or non-strikeout. Next batter, Henry Blanco who had struck out 3 times during the game, singles. After Blanco, Edgar Gonzalez, goes down 0-2, then works the count to 2-2, puts the ball in play…but singles. After that single, we regained WHIP, going up 7-5.

Then Oscar Salazar pinch hits for Greg Burke. All we needed was a non-strikeout. Salazar goes down 0-2, next pitch, like mighty Casey, Oscar Salazar struck out. The strikeout tied the matchup in total k’s and the out put our opponent back in front of WHIP. We had lost 5-6-1.

The loss crushed our spirits, and we probably will not rejoin for a third season, but it left me with one heck of a story.