Zack Hanrahan shook
things up in a big way for The Franchise as he abruptly announced his
resignation from the league via Facebook a mere 15 days before the draft.
Hanrahan had been MIA the entire offseason, his only league activity coming
when he renewed his team for the 2013 season on February 21st.
“I
apologize for the lateness, but [I] will be resigning as well. It has been fun,
or at least back in the day, my heart is not in it anymore.” He
said in his official statement, which came out on Friday night at 8:15pm, less
than four hours from the keeper deadline. The news came out of nowhere, as no one had
heard from him in weeks.
The feeling around the
league has ranged from anger to confusion to sorrow. Defending league champion
John DeMovellan could barely muster a comment, “I’m not even mad, just sad.
What happened?” Reportedly DeMovellan was the last one to hear from Hanrahan in
the form of a missed phone call less than a week ago.
Other managers are
shocked more than anything, as evidenced by the abundance of comments on Zack’s
wall post. One anonymous fan of the league even texted in to express his displeasure,
“Not even part of the league but that is soo weak”.
Commissioner Russ
Travers finally spoke on the matter at a Saturday press conference, “It’s disappointing,
when you compare the way Roland [Zhou] left with this…I just don’t know” Although
Zhou announced his resignation after a draft date was already set, it was still
well before the keeper deadline, and gave ample time for the league front
office to find a replacement.
Zhou posted a classy
farewell on the Facebook wall days later, which earned the approval of the
league by way of 9 “likes”, essentially 100% of the league (excluding new
manager Bryan Bart, and Facebook ghosts Hanrahan and Andy Musto).
The commissioner didn’t
dwell long on the nature of Hanrahan’s departure and spoke more towards what
has to happen in the coming two weeks, “I started the search for a new manager
last night, and we’re going to try to find a replacement as soon as possible.”
Although Travers did express some concern as to the difficulty of the process, “Finding
a replacement for Zhou was easy, he worked hard to build up some great keepers.
This is a different story, this is a last place team without a lot of keeper
talent, I’m just hoping we can find someone willing to take the job.”
The team is coming off
a last place finish in 2012, the worst season of Zack’s 5 year Franchise career.
His keepers (assigned by the league based on Yahoo O-Rank) are Curtis
Granderson, Elvis Andrus, Carlos Gomez, and Max Scherzer, not exactly championship
material.
The Commissioner ended
his Saturday press conference on a melancholy note, as this marks the 2nd
manager of the 10 remaining “originals” to resign this pre-season, “Of course I
love the kid and the league will miss him, I just wish it could have ended
differently.”
The league had held a
100% retention rate for the last two years, but Hanrahan’s departure makes him
the fourth of the original twelve Franchise managers to resign since 2008.
For those of you
looking for my annual keeper analysis article come back tomorrow, clearly
couldn’t get it done today.
We will miss zack. Great kid we've all known for a long time, and always has had great baseball knowledge. Sad to see a good participant of the league leave, but since when is fantasy baseball not fun, and so suddenly, I guess me personally I'm just shocked. Time to find another participant.
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