Should you draft David Price against the Red Sox at Fenway? Photo: © Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE

One Day FREE Fantasy Contest – $300 in cash prizes!

If you haven’t heard yet, there’s a new way to play fantasy baseball that turns the season long grind into quick one night leagues. And the best part is that you can win cash every single day. You draft a team for one night and get paid out as soon as the games end that night. DraftStreet.com is at the forefront of this new trend in the fantasy world and is giving us a great promotion: a FREE one-day fantasy league with $300 in prizes exclusively for Baseball Musings fans.

This free contest will be salary-cap style drafting where everyone tries to assemble the best team out of the available players. You will have a $100,000 budget to build a team of 14 players consisting of the following: Catcher, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 3 OF, 2 Utility, 2 SP, 1 RP, and 1 P. Each MLB player has been assigned a price based on their expected fantasy performance.

You can adjust your roster up until the contest starts on Friday April 13th at 1:05 ET at which time your rosters will lock and the Live Scoreboard will be available.

Look for the Baseball Musings team under the name DavidPinto on the leader boards. The team was easy to assemble, and I liked that players receive points for their entire lines, so stolen bases dont’ overwhelm more meaningful stats. A four for four night with two home runs will beat a two for four night with two steals easily.

This week I’m trying to create a team that’s strong up the middle, with possibly undervalued players at the corners. I’m still tinkering with the pitchers, but I’ve spent the most money on individuals at starter. I’ll try different scenarios as the season progresses.

Remember, the Day by Day Database provides plenty of tools to help in selecting your team. You can find the hot sluggers, check out batters against a pitcher, and even see how a starter performs in a particular park.

CLICK HERE to sign up for free and join the Baseball Musings $300 Freeroll on DraftStreet.com. I hope you all clobber me!

Roku is offering a refer a friend program. If you use this link to buy a Roku 2, you get a discount, and I get a free Amazon movie rental.

I own the original Roku and love it. In addition to streaming video from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Crackle, you can stream MLB games live (and watch as many times as you want) with your video subscription to MLB.com. One of the things I love about the Roku is I can take it when we go away on vacation, and plug it into the set where I’m staying.

The Kindle Fire is shipping. If you buy it through this link, you help out Baseball Musings.

The Chevrolet Volt advertisements that run relentlessly during the playoffs have gone from being stupid to completely annoying. They’re trying to sell a car by making people look like idiots? Please, please, please, stop them.

Kindle Fire, Full Color 7″ Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi sounds like a great way to read Baseball Musings.

Don Walker notes MLB is releasing a series on unconventional advertisements this year, under the theme, “Always Epic.” I seem to remember Roger Clemens throwing at milk bottles a long time ago, but the ninjas living in Brian Wilson’s beard are pretty cool.

I like that MLB is focusing on individual players, they’ve avoided that for a long time. Another indication of labor peace. You can see the ads here.

Anheuser-Busch and Major League Baseball settled their advertising contract dispute:

The two sides agreed to drop their pending litigation in federal court, where M.L.B. contended that the two sides had signed only a nonbinding letter of intent in April to renew their sponsorship deal. Anheuser-Busch claimed that M.L.B. tried to renegotiate a deal that was completed.

The announcement of the sponsorship, which was set to expire this year, did not include any financial terms or details on what compromises were made. Budweiser will remain the official beer sponsor of Major League Baseball as well as a sponsor of 26 of the 30 M.L.B. teams.

I think I’ll have a drink. 🙂

A beer brewer is taking MLB to court:

Anheuser-Busch is suing Major League Baseball in a dispute over the brewer’s decades-long sponsorship.

The maker of Budweiser claimed in a suit filed Friday that MLB agreed in April to a multiyear extension of its exclusive sponsorship rights. The St. Louis-based company says that a few weeks later, baseball’s licensing entity tried to back out.

Maybe MLB decided they wanted a sponsor that brewed a good beer.

One thing I like about Amazon Video on Demand is that during the baseball season I can catch up on shows without worrying about them disappearing from my DVR. Recording three hour games in HD chews up a lot of disk space. The shows play on my Roku Player, which I can take on vacation, or on my computer. One thing that the on demand service lacked was ABC shows. Up until now, if I missed one, I had to go to the ABC site and sit through the commercials. Not anymore.

If you click on one of the above links and buy something, you help support Baseball Musings. Thanks!

Amazon says they are shipping the Droid Incredible. Who knows how long they will last. I’m supposed to be due for an upgrade on my primary line, but Verizon Amazon only recognizes my two-year upgrade, not my one year upgrade. Verizon should straighten this out.

Amazon just announced that they opened a new wireless store. I was just looking to upgrade my Storm, and saw the Storm 2 for $80 less than on the Verizon website or at Costco.

If you use one of the above links to buy a phone, you also help support Baseball Musings.

Fathead.com is giving away a Fathead a day in April. You can enter at the link, and as a reader of Baseball Musings you can use code SML15C to get a 15% discount on a purchase, and code SMLSHP1 to get free shipping.

Disclaimer: I’m receiving a free Fathead sample from Fathead/Smile.ly.

Russ Smith finds the new “Beyond Baseball” ads offensive.

Bank of America decides not to sign a big advertising deal with the Yankees, as the economy even hurts the big teams. The money they would have made from the deal likely would have paid the yearly salary of one of their superstar players.
Update: It looks like the deal was worth more like $10 million a year, so half a superstar. 🙂

In a spoof of the Holy Grail, Derek Jeter and other sports stars go on a quest for Gatorade. The Dance off is great, as well as Jeter battling the toy poodle.

River Ave. Blues looks at looks at what a potential advertising bubble burst could mean for the Yankees.

So what do you think, the BaseballMusings.com Pool?

Yankees Chick runs down the top ten Baseball Player endorsements. My guess is that Ford gives Jeter a very nice car to drive.

The Jays are turning on the lights, ’cause they’re radioactive:

The major league club announced yesterday that nuclear operator Bruce Power, which supplies more than 20 per cent of the province’s electricity, has gained national rights to plaster its logo and name throughout the Rogers Centre and during game broadcasts.
Under the five-year agreement, Bruce has also agreed to supply nuclear power to the Rogers Centre. In return, it gets the right to use the phase “Rogers Centre, powered by Bruce Power” in its own marketing and promotion campaigns.
Duncan Hawthorne, chief executive of Bruce Power and chair of the Canadian Nuclear Association, called the deal a “win-win” and said the advertising will give the company a higher profile in Toronto and across the country.

That should make the Rogers Center the greenest stadium in the major leagues. Now, if they could harness the wind power from strikeouts…

Daisuke Matsuzaka is already using his Red Sox fame to pitch products:

The Japanese baseball star, also known as “Dice-K,” who the Sox paid $103 million to acquire has recorded a Japanese commercial hawking Asahi Super Dry beer, fully dressed in Red Sox regalia, showing that his star power in the Far East has already lent marketing clout to his new team. The endorsement happened without the involvement of the Red Sox, under rules that give Major League Baseball control over the team’s trademarks outside New England .
Those rules aside, Sox executives believe there is a big market in Japan and locally for endorsements involving the team and Matsuzaka, and that their new pitcher will boost the team’s popularity in Japan past that of a certain pinstripe-wearing rival with a Japanese player of its own.
“We want to be the team of Japan. The Yankees are very popular over there because of [Hideki] Matsui, but now we think we can get in over there as well,” said Sam Kennedy , the Red Sox’ senior vice president of sales and marketing. Matsui , the left fielder the New York Yankees snagged in 2003 from Japan, remains popular there and has several endorsement deals.

This will make the Matsui-Matsuzaka matchups even more exciting! The winner gets the best Japanese endorsement deals! 🙂

I’ve removed Google AdSense from my website due to their agreement to censor searches in China..

BlogAds now allows the creation of mini-networks. I’ve created one with all the baseball blogs I could find that take Blogads called Baseball Blogoshpere. If you are included, you may wish to add a link to the page. If you are included and don’t wish to be, let me know and I’ll remove you blog from the list. By having a number of us link, we may be able to sell more ads than just working alone.

Baseball Musings has joined a new affliates program. You’ll notice two new ads under sponsors for SportingbetUSA and Superbook. This site will receive a commission if you sign up for either of these services through the links on Baseball Musings.
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