It wasn't too long ago that the Cheese Steaks were the talk of the JLB. Three titles in four years made him the team to beat and the rival of your's truly.
And just because he hasn't lugged home the big shiny trophy that I haven't seen in three years since I haven't had to hand it off to anyone else, doesn't mean he's fallen apart.
In fact, with a JLB record 276 wins in 2021 and 2023, the Steaks have been the most dominant regular-season team in JLB history. His franchise winning percentage of .583 in hands down the best all-time, and it's even crazier to think that since 2018, that winning percentage shoots up to .603.
That's right, Sex Panthers: 60 percent of the time, JV wins every time.
Lately, that 40 percent has come in the playoffs, and that is heavy on JV's mind. After going 7-2 to start his postseason career, the Steaks are 1-5 with the lone playoff win in the last five years coming in 2021.
"Baseball is by far the most 'long haul' of all fantasy sports," JV said. "So that regular-season wins record is nice because it's hard to sustain that success over a long period of time. Unfortunately, these bums have developed the irritating habit of going ice cold come playoff time. But you can't control that stuff, so we're pretty pleased with the big picture."
And that big picture looks pretty good once again for 2024.
The Steaks lineup is stacked, and even though it looks like a dream team from 2019, the mega stars on this roster can still produce and still lead him to another 276 wins.
Freddie Freeman, Mike Trout, Jose Ramirez, Bryce Harper and JD Martinez are all former All-Stars who can still produce at an All-Star level. They're joined by Jorge Soler and Yandy Diaz, who are both coming of great 2023 campaigns as they head into their age 32 seasons.
And that's all good, but health will certainly be a factor here.
Already, JV's roster looks like the beach before a hurricane — red flags are littered up and down the coast here.
"We'll open the season with 9 of our 10 IL slots full," JV said. "And some of those guys are very, very key players. So the start of this year will be critical for us to just try to stay afloat until all of those guys get back."
With 9 players heading to IL right away, it will be hard to fully replace those voids in the first go-round of free agency. Obviously, there's the only 7 moves allowed in the first week, so it will take at least 2 weeks for JV to get back to "full strength."
And then there's the factor that replacing a Gerrit Cole, Sonny Gray, Jacob deGrom and Matt McLain is not going to happen via free agency, which makes it even more important for the geezers to step up and lead the charge.
"We know all of their career years are behind them," JV said of his elder stars. "But their careers have been so ridiculous, that they don't NEED to put up career years in order to still be really productive. For the most part, if the geezers can just maintain what they've done the last year or two, we'd be more than happy with that. And if they don't, then we cut bait and upgrade.
"To have any kind of success, we'll need to tread water until all those injured guys get back. Then we'll need some of the aforementioned geezers to do what they can do. Then most of all, come playoff time, we need that luck to reverse itself and stop suddenly hitting .220 with a 5.15 ERA!"
If that can happen, then maybe we're talking about the Steaks scoring a fourth World Series title in franchise history.
Now that would be a story for all of these grandpas to tell their grandchildren someday.
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