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We'll have more substantive baseball content later in the day, but first, it's time to name the winners of our two spring contests: the guess-the-rotation game and MASN's group in ESPN's Tournament Challenge.
The guess-the-rotation contest got a little tricky once Ross Detwiler got injured - so basically, the first day of the spring. But things got even more complicated when the Nationals signed Livan Hernandez. As such, nobody got more than four or five starters correct. (For the record: I got three of five -- had Stammen, but also had Detwiler and lost a shot to tie for the lead when the Nationals picked Garrett Mock for the fourth spot over Scott Olsen.)
So we've got six entries with four of five: Rich, Sasskuash, NatsNut (who picked Stammen over Detwiler because Stammen is cuter), markfd, Ray and shraf. Ray's is the only one that mentioned Hernandez as a possibility (the Nats hadn't signed him yet), but he said Hernandez, if signed, would have bumped Stammen.
Of the six to go 4-for-5, only two (Rich and NatsNut) had Lannan as the Opening Day starter. But I'm not sure if you break the tie on that basis, either.
So here's what I'm going to do: We're going to have a little runoff competition between the six that got four or five right. Predict the date the Nationals swap out one of their current five starters for one that's not currently in the rotation. It could be because of injury, because someone is ineffective or because they want to call up a rookie (*cough* Strasburg *cough*). I don't need the reason; I need the date and I need the details of the swap (who's coming and who's going). Leave them in the comments of this post, and get them to me by Friday.
The other competition was much easier to decide: Jackobeam is the winner of your Tournament Challenge group. He clinched the title when Duke beat West Virginia in the national semifinals, and added on last night when Duke won the title. The Blue Devils' victory also allowed Maddy to leap sjm105 for second place. Jackobeam had an outstanding bracket - he was No. 2,642 out of 4.8 million entries, good for the 99.9th percentile in the country.
Congrats, Jackobeam. We'll get a MASN prize pack together for you and find a time to get it to you -- either at a meetup in the next couple weeks or in the mail. E-mail me at ben@masnstudios.com and let me know what you'd prefer.
And for the runoff contestants in the guess-the-rotation tiebreaker: Get your picks in by Friday, and good luck.
