The Fantasy Levels of Failure

League, many of you have perhaps read Bill Simmons' column about the "Levels of Losing." In it he goes through 10 or 15 different ways in which a team can lose, starting from the least terrible and finishing with the most (not surprisingly, he uses the Red Sox Buckner game as the example). Well, since my fantasy team just cannot seem to win no matter what, I decided to quantify the ways of losing that can happen in fantasy. Not only will this hopefully amuse, but I think it will provide for new levels of hilarity because you'll be able to describe your loss with a specific term.

Without further ado, I present to you, from least to most painful, the 15 Levels of Fantasy Failure --

(15) THE GENERAL UNDERPERFORMANCE
Undoubtedly the least painful way to lose, the general underperformance occurs when your team simply doesn't play up to the quality of the other team. You never really feel like you are getting a bad run of luck, and deep down you have a gut feeling that you deserved to lose the week. Your team might start off in contention, but gradually slips behind as the week goes on, never really gaining any traction. By the start of Sunday, you sort of know how the week will end, in a frustrating but ultimately not devestating 3-7 or 2-7-1 loss. The general underperformance often happens when you play the #1 team in the league, and sort of realize you're climbing uphill before you even start accumulating stats.

(14) THE HALF-WEEK MATCHUP
Despite the name, the Half-Week matchup occurs not during the shortened all-star break week, but occurs when you get the nagging sense that your opponent has had a lot more opportunities to you to win the week. You'll get a nagging sense that he's had many more ABs -- and although you trail homers by one, you did it in 100 fewer ABs! Your best pitchers get single starts against the Yankees and Red Soxs off the league, while his best guys always get two starts and against abysmal offenses. The Half-Weeker is more frustrating than the General Underperformance because you legitimately believe that you could have won if you had simply gotten your fair number of starts and at bats.

(13) THE SUNDAY SURGE
We've all been there -- Sunday rolls around, and a lot of categories are close. You're generally ahead, maybe up 6-3-1 on the week, and just need a decent day to lock in the victory -- or so you think. You check your team a little later on and see that guys are producing at a reasonable pace -- you've hit a couple homers, are batting around .280, and things seem fine. But then you look at your opponents team, and you can't believe your eyes. 14 runs, 8 homers, 24 RBIs, .390??!?!? You can't believe it! The categories generally start to fall your opponents way and you end up losing the week. The Sunday Surge just blows you out of the water and makes all your effort that week worthless, leaving you no time to react, and embittering you beyond belief.

(12) THE SUNDAY COLLAPSE
A cousin to but ultimately more painful than the Sunday Surge, the Sunday Collapse begins our descent into the deeper circles of fantasy losing hell. The Collapse occurs when you may be very close to your opponent, tied or trailing in a few categories, and need only the most modest of performances on Sunday to win the week. Maybe you trail by 4 Ks with two starters to go and your opponent has no one left. Maybe you are down losing WHIP 1.73 to 1.72, and just need a starter to post a WHIP below 1.70 to take the category. Maybe you trail by 1 RBI with a slew of great hitters left to go, and your opponent is done for the week. But for whatever reason, your team absolutely collapses. Your starters take the field and get shelled off in the first inning. Your hitters all go 0/4 and you finish the day 2/41. The tiny demands you made of your players aren't met, and your opponent never relinquishes his lead, leaving you to an infuriating loss.

(11) THE MONSTER MONDAY / "THE MORALE DESTROYER"
The week's begun, and you're excited to see how your team performs. Your first day is good, but nothing like your opponent's: he posts a 0.42 ERA with 4 starters going, 40 Ks, and his hitters slug out 7 homers on day 1. As the week goes on, these categories never even approach being in play again; despite a good rest of the week from you, you just can't make up that first day's deficit. Oftentimes, the Monster Monday destroys your morale immediately, bringing you to check less since you know your efforts will be fruitless. You can't bear the site of seeing yourself down 0-10-0 day after day, and gradually that score becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

(10) THE CRUCIAL RAINOUT
Few thing are more brutal than needing only the modest performance from your team on Sunday (see "Sunday Collapse"), but finding that the one start you needed is in danger of being rained out. As the start time approaches, the weather doesn't clear up, and finally the game is called, leaving your horribly in the lurch. When it happens with hitters, inevitably you will find that you had 4 or 5 guys involved in the rainout, while your opponent managed to have no one. Two factors can come into play which compound the painful rainout -- first, when the rainout happens midgame and either causes your guys' stats to be erased, or second when it causes a starter to get pulled out during the delay and then not come in after.

(9) THE STRUGGLING STAR
Your 1st round draft pick is the man you build your team around, and as he goes, so often goes your team. When you look back on Sunday and see your stud player has gone 1/21 on the week, with 1 R, your have a sinking feeling that you're not going to be winning the week. There are two ways the Struggling Star disaster can be amplified -- first is when they hit the DL mid week, or, even worse, decide not to play in the Sunday day game for whatever reason (worst: "a routine day off"). The second is when in addition to your Struggling Star, your opponent has the phenomenon listed below...

(8) THE WAIVER WIRE SUPERSTAR
Your team is struggling, with solid players with ADPs of 100 or less batting .081 on the week, your stud doing nothing, and your pitchers generally getting lit up. Still, somehow you've managed to stay in it. But as the week goe on, you find yourself falling farther and farther behind. What the hell is going on, you ask yourself? You check your opponents team, and you see that the random scrub he's picked off waivers to fill in for his injured star is hitting .400 with 4 homers, singlehandedly denying you your deserved victory. Heck, the waiver guy is playing better than the man he is replacing. The worst part is that you know the minute the week is over the waiver scrub will return to his normally worthless ways and be right back on the wire. The waiver wire superstar level of losing hits its absolute peak when your opponents waiver wire man is a Sunday spot starter...some 5th starter with a 6.80 ERA and a 2.22 WHIP, who somehow pitches the game of his career and carries a no-hitter through 7 innings to hand you the loss.

(7) THE RECORD BREAKER
Now we're entering the real rarified air of fantasy hell -- when your opponent starts doing thing that you can't possibly believe. At the end of the week, he's put up 28 homers. Or a WHIP of 0.68. Or 22 steals. And there isn't too much more to say than that. You're sort of resigned to the fact that you weren't going to beat the numbers he's posted, but at the same time you juts CAN'T BELIEVE that it had to happen against you. Inevitably, that mark ends up being the high water point of the fantasy season, and while everyone else dodges the bullet, you're forced to take the pain.

(6) THE SAFE CATEGORY SWING
When your opponent manages to swing a category that you had already marked as "safe," you're the victim of this disastrous event. Up by 14 Ks with him only having one starter left to go, and the man manages to put up 16Ks in a 8 inning blowout? Up 7 homers with him having only 7 hitters to play and 4 of them post 2 homer games? Those are the kind of events that demolish your fantasy dreams. It's one thing to lose a category that was close, but losing your "sure things" seems to hurt even more.

(5) THE MORNING AFTER
As Sunday night approaches and you get ready to hit the sack in preparation for work tomorrow, you give your fantasy team one last check. You're up 6-3-1, and all the games remaining are in the bottom of the 9th, and the categories all seem decided. But as the night goes on, you can't sleep. You toss and turn in your bed. Something feels wrong. You log back onto your team, and see you're the proud holder of a 4-6 loss! You start scanning rapidly to see what the hell went wrong...what's this?! One of his players got a vulture win in the bottom of the 13th? Or his speed guy hit a bases clearing walkoff grand slam? Few thing are more painful than having what you thought was a sure thing stolen from you, clutching defeat from the jaws of victory.

(4) THE "MURPHY"
Is there anything worse than making a decision that controls your fantasy fate, but secretly knowing that no matter what you choose, it will end up being the wrong decision? Otherwise known as when your fantasy decisions control your player's real life careers, few things are worse than being Murphied. Start hitter A over hitter B? Hitter B will be sure to slam a homer that would have swung two categories in your favor (of course, if you started hitter B, hitter A would have slammed 2 homers...on your bench). Start your untested but highly-touted rookie fireballer over the tired veteran? He'll have a rough introduction to the big leagues, getting shelled for 8 ER in 2 innings. But start that wily vet? He'll have an unimpressive start that does nothing for you, while your rookie superstar will look like Cy Young. And worse, you have no one to blame but yourself.

(3) THE 2nd BEST IN THE LEAGUE
Now we enter into the true hell of fantasy failure -- the worst three levels of losing. There is almost nothing worse than putting up a monster week that seems to be dominant...until you realize that the ONE guy in the league who put up a better week than you happens to be the guy you're playing. You hit 17 homers and no one else in the league has more than 12? He hit 18. You threw 72 Ks and everyone else is in the 50s? No fear my friend -- your opponent posted 80. The way you can tell you've entered this level of losing is when you start scanning the rest of the league boxscores (maybe the only time you do this) and mentally tabulating how much you'd be beating everyone else. Bonus points if you are so angry that you send an e-mail to the league pointing this out.

(2) THE SINGLE AB LOSS
The second worse way to lose, and one that has decided several playoff series, is the single at bat loss. You have one guy active and your opponent has no one, and all you need to do is not get an out in that last at bat in order to take AVG and win the week and the playoffs. You're watching your guy on MLB.TV, and see him come up to the plate and take 3 balls in a row. Surely this will be a walk. You sit there as the pitcher now throws a meatball down the center and your guy doesn't swing. 3-1. "Batter's count," you reassure yourself. But when the next ball gets popped foul and caught by the 3rd baseman, you want to kill yourself. The permutations for this painful ending are endless -- you have a pitcher and need juts one more K but can't get it, you need your speed guy on first to steal 2nd and he gets thrown out, or you need your man at the plate to successfully hit a sac fly to get the RBI for your team. But when your whole week boils down to one at bat and it doesn't go your way, it's within one step of the ultimate agony. Which brings us to...

(1) THE OFFICIAL SCORER'S DELIGHT
No explanation needed here. When your week is lost by the whims of a middle-aged man who decides to call your hit an error, or awards your opponent's pitcher a win when he clearly wasn't the most instrumental pitcher in the win, and it costs you the week, and the championship, it's as bad as it gets.