Baseball fans: Try to stay awake during Countdown to Tanaka

The Countdown to Tanaka has overshadowed what little real news there has been about Hot Stove League acquisitions.
Oh, there will be announcements about the Hall of Fame in a few minutes as I write this, and the sacred names most likely will appear farther down in this post. But that really has nothing to do with fantasy baseball.
Or if you're a relative of Ramon Hernandez, Robert Andino or Xavier Nady, you might be interested to know that they have signed minor league contracts with the Royals, Pirates and Padres. Re-signed in the case of Andino and Nady -- and possibly with Hernandez, who has been with more teams than I can remember.
Oh, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas. No Jack Morris? It helped Glavine to be associated with Maddux, but after all, Glavine was a 300-game winner in his own right. Thomas might have stayed a year or two too long, but before that he was clearly a dominant player.
In case you haven't noticed, there's a new look to the blog.
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Football. We're going through the draft for the playoff semifinals in the Andy Memorial Football League. I'll keep you posted. Remaining from my regular-season team were RB D'Angelo Williams, WRs Keenan Allen and Danny Amendola and Seattle's D/ST. My first draft pick was San Diego's QBs, which I'm hoping is Philip Rivers alone. The top four teams in the league are taking part in the championship playoffs draft. This is a scoring-only league.
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Hockey. Lately, for every point or half-point my team has gained, I have lost a corresponding point or half-point. So I'm spinning my wheels at 66 points, in third place. Currently, I'm five points behind the second-place team, which has been fluctuating more than I have.
There are areas where I can gain: 1 power play point out of the league lead, 10 penalty minutes away from a point, 7 seconds from another point in ATOI. My goalkeeping still sucks. I'm 8 wins away from another point and .18 away from the ninth-place team in goals against average. There are three teams within .055 in save percentage. The problem with being close is that there are teams similarly close behind me.
My team was plus-6 Tuesday, so I'm up to 31 points but still 19 behind the next-higher team total.
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Basketball. I made a mistake by not updating my lineup Tuesday. I was up late Monday working on fantasy baseball projections, up late Tuesday morning and as a result I missed out on Joakim Noah's double double by leaving him on the bench. I'm down 5-3 to the team immediately ahead of me in the division, and need to win at least 5-3 to move ahead of that team. Noah's strong points were not in the areas where I'm trailing, but my feeling is that you can't have too big a lead in any category. I understand that if I have 100 more assists than the rest of the league heading into the final few weeks, I could deal assists for shooting percentage or something else I'd need. (You're on notice, Ricky Rubio. Don't be surprised when you hear those trade rumors.) Though first I'd have to get ahead by 100 assists. Another problem is that it's a head-to-head league, so my final Rotisserie (R) totals have no impact on the final standings.
I'm very close in field goal percentage, steals and blocks. It should help in steals, at least, that six of the eight players in my lineup tonight are guards. I don't believe that I have lost since Week 3, and I don't intend to lose this week.