Well, not much has changed since Week 10. Virtually everyone stayed the same, save for Carnage and Super Bad, who pulled a John Kerry and flip-flopped on the 3 and 4-spots. Though the big news coming out of Week 11 was the barn-burner between MFH and Chuck Wipple, which ended in a 7-6 victory for MFH thanks to a 1.20 to 1.24 difference in the WHIP category. Now MFH and I will lock horns in a battle of Subway Chatter titans, though MFH holds a decided advantage now that Chienny-Ming has run himself out of my lineup for God knows how long. Either way, it should be a good one and I’m looking forward to bragging about my big win next week…

So after a 7-week hiatus, the fantasy updates return. Some would say the break was a strategic ploy on my behalf to stem any embarrassment that might arise from my cataclysmic fall from 1st to as low as 6th place last week, but I can assure you all that wasn’t the case (funny, something tells me none of you believe me). Anyway, back to the present– the league has kind of been turned on its head (or ass, depending on your point of view) with our favorite reader (Yeah, we’re biased. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?), Behjota, and Mashing Maters rising from 5th and 8th, respectively, to claim the top two spots, while my very own MatsuisImaginaryWife and the Quahog Homers have plummeted from 1st and 3rd since our last update and now find ourselves fighting for a playoff spot (I’ll just say this– I’ve won four, yes FOUR, fantasy baseball championships coming out of the 6-spot. Try sleeping with that on your mind tonight, BehJota and Mashing Maters.). And as if that didn’t provide enough drama four you, the top-two squads duked it out last week for first place, with BehJota holding off a late charge from Mashing to capture an all-important 8-5 victory.

And to round out the rest of the staff for all you SC Fanboys (and girls) out there: Chuck Wipple’s VIVA LA WHITE GIRL is holding onto 6th at the moment, and MFH, who is the odds on favorite to win the “Most Original Fantasy Team Name of the Year” Award finds himself four-and-a-half out of the last playoff spot in 7th. Consiglieri is not a heterosexual and, consequently, abstained from partaking in our Fantasy League. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.

One other thing before I close out the update– kind of a blanket Fantasy observation/subtle Yankee-bashing. Remember when SS used to be baseball’s glamour position? As of today, there are only 6 of them who rank in the top 100 according to Yahoo: Hanley Ramirez (17), Miguel Tejada (should be tested for HGH and comes in at 23), Jose Reyes (28… never thought I’d say this, but I kinda wish the Yankees’ shortstop “sucked” as much as he did), Rafael Furcal (71), Mike Young (76), and Cristian Guzman (99… probably shouldn’t even count, but it’ll help drive home the following…). Notice any glaring omissions? How about The Captain (ranked 190th) and J-Roll (219). Now to be fair, both guys were on the DL for a while, but in Jeter’s case he’s likely going to fail to reach 200 hits for the first time since ‘04, and if he keeps this up he’ll register the fewest number of doubles in his entire career (as of today he’s projected for 22). And all of this seems even more bizarre considering he stands to notch the fourth-highest RBI total of his career (81) at his current pace. So basically Jeets is having the most unproductive productive season of any player since ‘06 A-rod. Weird.

Recently I have been neglecting my duties as Subway Chatter’s resident Mr. Fantasy. I am still the subject of countless women’s fantasies, but I haven’t provided any fantasy baseball advice since the season began. That streak will (sort of) come to an end today. But before I help you make your team better, let me help you make your league better.

It is probably too late for this season, but in the future do NOT provide the option for the league to vote down trades. Far too many people want to reject trades that, in their minds, are not COMPLETELY even. “These two players are pretty equal in AVG, OPS, steals and runs, but I think Player A will hit 2 more home runs than Player B so I can’t possibly allow this trade to go through.” In such a world nobody gets traded, and let’s face it, fantasy baseball without trades is boring – it might as well be fantasy NASCAR (yeah I was shocked to learn there was such a thing too). These “gods” of the fantasy sports world don’t allow for the fact that often times, owners are willing to accept a slightly lesser player in a trade in order to shore up a weak position or gain production in a stat they are lacking – therefore improving their team as a whole. And they can’t even fathom that perhaps they aren’t the authority on relative player values. Seemingly one-sided trades happen quite often in real sports – and sometimes they actually are one-sided, why can’t they be allowed to occur in fantasy sports?

Unless there is evidence of collusion, trades should NOT be rejected. Give the commissioner the power to reject the trade if there is such evidence, but otherwise, worry about your own damn team and let the other owners try to improve their teams in any way they see fit. Just because you weren’t able to detect Rob’s man-love for Ryan Braun and offer up a good trade before I got Hanley Ramirez and Cole Hamels from him for Braun and Barry “81 MPH fastball” Zito doesn’t give you the right to rally the other owners together and void our deal.

Here’s an example of why you should let trades go through: Many years ago I was in a league with a bunch of friends and after the draft my one friend who had man-breasts (not important to the story but I like to point it out when I can) was very unhappy with his second baseman situation – he didn’t have one. I, being the kind-hearted individual that I am, generously offered up Brett Boone for some pitching help. We did not have a league vote on trades in place. However the league message board immediately filled with whiney complaints about how I was ripping my top-heavy friend off. The commish put it to a vote and the trade was vetoed. Well that just happened to be the year Boone broke out with an MVP type season and the pitcher I tried to acquire went .500. Now you tell me, who would have had the better end of that deal, me or man-boobs? The moral of the story is: Don’t veto trades and if possible, don’t allow voting on trades in your league. And work out so you don’t have your man-jugs referenced numerous times on a website that sees 2-50 thousand (and hopefully climbing) hits a day six years after you got rid of them (for the most part).

We’re going to stay along those same lines while trying to help you improve your team. This isn’t going to be anything profound or season changing, but it could help put you over the edge. If you are like most players, you won’t make a trade unless you are clearly getting the better end of the deal. The problem is, unless you are playing with idiots, you won’t be able to pull off too many trades with that mindset. By now we’re more than a month into the season and you can certainly begin to see which categories and positions you are strong in and which ones could be your downfall. In need of a good closer because you put all of your eggs in the JJ Putz basket? Why not offer up your backup catcher that could start for most teams in the league to the team who’s relying on Jason Kendall to provide stats out of the catcher position but has six closers and is running away with saves. Who gets the better player? Who cares? Both teams improve. And if you are on the receiving end of this offer, TAKE IT! So what if you think K-Rod would be ranked higher overall than Joe Mauer, you don’t get extra points for doubling up on the second place team in saves. Think this is pretty obvious? Clearly it’s not, because not enough people do it. Peruse your opponents’ rosters and look for opportunities to offer up trades that will improve both teams. Also, if you are sent a trade offer that seems outrageous, instead of lambasting the jackass who had the audacity to send you such an insulting offer, simply make a counter offer using the player on your team that he is after, because now you know who this jackass wants, and maybe he’ll pay a premium for him. When you berate people for offering you Heath Bell for Chase Utley, though they deserve it, you discourage them from trading with you for the rest of the season. If you do that enough, you won’t have any trading partners, and trading is a critically important piece of fantasy baseball. Very rarely is the winning team made up of the same players its owner drafted.

There you have it, some simple advice from SC’s own Mr. Fantasy. Now about being every woman’s fantasy…

There’s been a lot of change near the top and bottom of the standings since week one, with Mashing Maters, MFH, and Behjota taking somewhat of a tumble while Chuck Wipple’s team formed in honor of white chicks has rocketed up the standings along with Super Bad– who jumped all the way from sixth to just 4 games out of first. And I know the season’s early, but Pabst and da booze are already playing themselves out of contention, finding themselves 6 and 7.5 games out of a playoff spot, respectively.

But the real story here continues to be my Matsui’s-anime-wife-inspired squad, who has held on to first for three weeks running and now finds itself 13-games over .500. I guess you could call us the anti-Yankees. Though here’s hoping we don’t crash in burn in June right about when the Yanks start taking over the world…

Not to brag or anything, but unlike the Yanks, yours truly doesn’t need the warm weather to get off to a hot start (yup, that’s me, “MatsuisImaginaryWife.” Number one in the standings, and, not coincidentally, number one in your hearts). Thank God for Tampa. I was telling anyone within earshot Sunday night that the bats would come out of hibernation once the temperature hit 70 degrees, regardless of whether that happened courtesy of a dome or not. (Update: notice I didn’t say we’d win, just that the bats would come around) (Update of the update: obviously I meant we’d win) Wait, sorry, what am I doing? This is supposed to be a little spiel about SC Fantasy Baseball, not Yankee baseball. Anyway, yeah, I’m in first, MFH is in 4th, and Wipple was done in all week by the stone-cold duo of Cano and (Miguel) Cabrera and finds himself in 7th. Our readers had a pretty good showing in week one, with full-time reader/part-time contributor Behjota in 2nd place, followed by the leader of SC Nation’s Louisville, Kentucky delegation, Mashing Maters, in 3rd. Let’s see what happens as things start to heat up (literally) in Week 2… (And no, that’s not a typo. Our “opening day” was April 7th, not March 31st)

As James Dolan continues his reign of lunacy at MSG (I won’t even bother to tell you what I would “prefer” to do to Isiah Thomas), we can all take solace in the fact that the start of a new baseball season is upon us. Because of the heated passion that baseball evokes (I still don’t understand how people can rate Derek Jeter ahead of Jose Reyes (Editor’s note: I think the above photo pretty much sums up the reason why)), I thought it would be fun to start up a Subway Chatter fantasy baseball league, and open it up to you, Subway Chatter Nation. It’ll be a Head-2-Head, 12-team YAHOO! league and everyone is free to join (first-come, first-serve, obvi). Oh yeah, one other note: sign up if, and only if, you are SERIOUS about participating over the long haul (in other words, don’t join if you’re gonna stop setting your lineup after Opening Day, or even after the All-Star break, for that matter). Anyways, there’s no cost to sign up and we’ll post weekly standings for public consumption (aka bragging rights). Goodluck to everyone who joins! The winner will get to spend an evening with the 2008 Tournament of Hotties Champion (ha!). Here goes the league info:

League ID#: 264722

Register at: CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!!!