There was a twitter retweet by Rob Neyer who suggested someone lead with that for a headline. Obviously for a blog like mine its much easier to do than a national blog or newspaper, but its fun to do anyway. Last night concluded the first week in baseball, and also concluded our league’s first week of head to head. Many of your know that this blog features two leagues here, one that I have run with my circle of friends, and one that I started this season and opened to the Internet.

This post is for the circle of friends league, as last night before the two night games my match-up with my fiancee was in a dead heat. I had a 22 point lead thanks to a great start by Ubaldo Jiminez, and a lackluster start by her Johan Santana. Because of the rain delay in San Francisco we had two games on our table and 7 players in play between us.  She had Ricky Weeks, Prince Fielder, Yadier Molina, Ryan Franklin, and I had Billy Wagner, Brian Wilson, and Matt Holliday.

Half way through the night, I was sweating the 1 run game in San Fransisco as that makes blown saves much easier to come by, and that would potentially ruin my week. On the other channel, Weeks gets a single, homer, and a walk, Prince Fielder adds a single and a walk, Yadier got a couple points as well.

Headed into the 8th inning of the Giants/Braves game I was only up by 7 points, a blown save is worth -10, so imagine my nerves as Brian Wilson began warming up. Meanwhile the Cardinals are managing a come back which could mean a Ryan Franklin save (usually around 8 points assuming no homers, walks allowed).

My fiancee and I sat in nervous anticipation as we knew the climax of the night was coming. Thankfully the Giants led by Pablo Sandoval took a 4 run lead, removing any chance for a save situation. However, that hurt as well because I could have used some positive points from Brian Wilson to help pad my lead as my fiancee was a double and a homer away, or simply a save, to win.

Trevor Hoffman comes in the game to “shut down” the Cardinals, and Pujols who is 0-6 lifetime against Hoffman, to which my fiancee says, “He sucks against Hoffman, its all over” Pujols promptly answers with a home run. My boy Matt Holliday after a 0 for 4 showing, follows up Pujols with a back to back homer. Thus giving me the padding I needed.

The two teams were tied at 7 and Hoffman got out of the inning.  In the bottom of the ninth the Brewers were able to manage a solo walk off homer thus ending an exciting week of fantasy baseball. My fiancee bummed by her loss, but we both agreed that it was very fun that it was at least very close. I love baseball.

Easter weekend flew on by, the FBtB draft occurred, and opening day happened! There’s plenty to write about, and lets start with the draft. Just like the majority of drafts, Albert Pujols, led off the festivities. In fact the draft was quite typical for the first part of the first round. After Pujols, Hanley Ramirez, A-Rod, Braun, Kemp, Utley, Mauer, and Prince Fielder were the top half of round 1. Crawford, Jeter, Cabrera, Lincecum, Felix, Halladay, Teixeira, and Greinke were the 16 players taken in the first round of the draft.

It is quite apparent that the members of the league did not take the advice of my blog posts. This is all fine and dandy, my team turned out quite fine.

1. Felix Hernandez
2. CC Sabathia
3. Adam Dunn
4. Andre Either
5. Jose Reyes
6. Matt Wieters
7. Chipper Jones
8. Nate McLouth
9. Jered Weaver
10. Billy Wagner
11. Jorge Cantu
12. Ryan Franklin
13. Placido Polanco
14. JD Drew
15. Ben Sheets
16. Jon Rauch
17. Ryan Madson
18. Franklin Morales
19. Jhonny Peralta
20. Pat Maholm
21. Orlando Hudson
22. Melky Cabrera
23. Kelly Soppach
24. Casey Kotchman
25. Luke Scott

The team is full of consistent talent, while holding onto replaceable upside. Felix and CC even when they have “rough” starts should do better than average (as seen in opening day), Dunn and Ethier fill in my outfield and can handle their bats.  Wieters was by far the best catcher available, and as long as he doesn’t sophomore slump he will help the roster. Chipper Jones is Chipper Jones, I don’t buy spring numbers in McLouth’s case, Jered Weaver, JD Drew, Placido Polanco, all provide reasonable production.

The team here is made in a few key picks. First off is Jose Reyes. I wrote about him earlier, and I was shocked to get him in the 5th round 77th overall. Many people were for probably good reason scared off by his early DL assignment, but Peralta should fill in just fine if it only for a couple weeks. If Reyes comes back and returns to being Jose Reyes, I just turned a 5th round pick into a 1st or 2nd round pick.  If he struggles through the season, I could be hurting, but I feel like the 5th round was an appropriate gamble.

I also picked up relievers almost at the end of ever “run” on the closers in the draft and I got the ones I wanted. Billy Wagner is a stud when healthy, Ryan Franklin proved to be good last year, and Jon Rauch, Ryan Madson, and Franklin Morales will all get at least save opps, or be in line for some holds. My bullpen should be sneaky good for my team. If they fall apart, they can be easily replaced week by week if necessary.

The home run pick I feel is Ben Sheets. The Ben Sheets we remember from yesteryear was an ace, and was a hard pitcher to miss. However not pitching for a year will hurt a guy’s potential, and he fell to me in round 15. If Sheets can pull things together, I have an amazing sleeper pick. However round 15 was by no means a draft crippling reach for a player of his potential.

I feel like my team could finish first, or even dead last, at lot hinges on CC and Felix’s production, without them my team is shot, with them, every week I have a great chance. If Reyes comes back strong, if Sheets comes back strong, I don’t see this team losing often. However, the team was built to withstand their short comings, and the appropriate amount of depth should provide this team with the production it needs to succeed.

When hashing through these replacement values, there is an imperfect science going on. First of all, we are using projections that are based on a computer’s guesses, and assuming many many factors. However that is half the fun before the season starts so we will use these imperfect numbers anyway.

Based off of yesterday’s post I determined that replacement value should be a give or take average of the 5 guy’s projection season totals past 16 starters, and 8 back-ups.  However for catchers I assume that almost everyone will at least have 1 back up catcher, and I assumed the 1B position was 8 spots deeper as they are more likely to be used in a utility role. So that may sway numbers as well.

The only way to really make these things perfect is to do them after the fact, and that doesn’t really help me write right now. For fun I took the top 8 projected catchers, 1st basemen, 2nd basemen, and 3rd basemen and figured out their perceived value.

Joe Mauer    457.9    11.316
Victor Martinez    380.1    8.204
Brian McCann    369.8    7.792
Matt Wieters    349.9    6.996
Geovany Soto    341.6    6.664
Russ Martin    314.9    5.596
Jorge Posada    314.8    5.592
Yadier Molina    313.3    5.532

From that alone you can see that Joe Mauer is pretty darn good. Sorry for the poor formatting, I cannot figure out how to make it better. But anyway, Joe Mauer is 11 points each week, on average, better than the best available free agent catcher. Lets look at 1B:

Albert Pujols    604.9    13.596
Prince Fielder    542.6    11.104
Adrian Gonzalez    516.9    10.076
Mark Teixeira    514.3    9.972
Miguel Cabrera    473.4    8.336
Ryan Howard    471.1    8.244
Kevin Youkilis    460.5    7.82
Adam Dunn    455.2    7.608

and 2nd basemen:

Chase Utley    516.6    9.224
Dustin Pedroia    450.3    6.572
Ben Zobrist    438.1    6.084
Brian Roberts    428.9    5.716
Dan Uggla    416.6    5.224
Robinson Cano    414.8    5.152
Ian Kinsler    394.4    4.336
Aaron Hill    388    4.08

Finally the third basemen:

Alex Rodriguez    508    9.28
David Wright    496    8.8
Evan Longoria    473.3    7.892
Kevin Youkilis    460.5    7.38
Ryan Zimmerman    449.4    6.936
Pablo Sandoval    433.1    6.284
Mark Reynolds    414.6    5.544
Chase Headley    410.2    5.368

My first thoughts on this information was that I’m surprised that Joe Mauer wasn’t the highest. However ESPN projects Mauer to score less than last season, while not missing a month. So by that thought it makes sense. If he only matched last season’s production stretched over a full season he’d be higher than Pujols. However this is some pretty awesome stuff. The second surprise is the value of Chase Utley. The difference between having Utley on your roster and Pedroia is almost 3 points a week. In a 16 team league if you happen to get the 8th best second basemen, Aaron Hill, you’re already 5 points behind Utley that week. The quality of 2B really falls off a cliff.

If you were to tier out 2nd basemen, you could draft Utley as a tier 1/round 1 guy, then based on ESPN’s projections there’s a 2nd tier of Pedroia, Zobrist and perhaps Brian Roberts, however they’re all more likely a 3rd tier with an empty second tier, and then past that you won’t need to reach for a second basemen as they all are within coin flips of out performing each other.

The 3rd basement looked like a pretty steady decline from 1 to 8 on value. A-Rod is about 4 points better than the 8th best guy which is a big difference, but it is far from above and beyond. Let’s look at Pujols and the 1B however.  They seem to get a boost as their replacement level player might be slightly lower than the next position as more 1B (I’m predicting) will be used in the utility spot than any other position. But from 1 to 8 Pujols is 6 points a week better than an average 1st basemen.

Based on this preview, based on ESPN rankings, if I had to pick from these 4 positions and had my choice of the litter, I think I’m taking Chase Utley. I feel like Utley is going to be healthy again, on a good team that will push him to play his best all the time, for the whole season. Utley is so much better than all of his kin that he provides the best advantage going into the season for me. Joe Mauer plays catcher which means he is prone to taking days off, and getting hurt. Pujols is my 2nd choice, and could easily be my first, however the spring training back problems really scare me.

In the first round the difference between Mauer, Utley and Pujols is not terribly huge, you won’t get more than one, and they all provide the same type of leg up on the competition as the other. Tomorrow we’ll look at short stops and out fielders to see if there are any other hidden gems out there. Friday I will look at pitchers, and next week Monday I’ll release my opening day big board. I haven’t decided where to go with the feature, but I plan on making it pretty special and updating it either routinely or randomly throughout the season.

The replacement level player is a fairly new concept in baseball. I don’t know about the origin of it, but I know that I first gathered the concept while reading some Baseball Prospectus article on VORP (Value over Replacement Players). Other sites use different tools to value players in other leagues, but the bottom line typically is called a replacement player. A replacement player is qualified as a player who is freely available at the minimum cost. From year to year the quality of this player can change, but most of the time it is fairly stable.

How about in fantasy baseball. What determines a replacement player? In our home league here we have 16 teams gearing up for a draft.    Each team has a six bench slots to help fill in from time to time, but our league limits the ability to freely pick up guys from the waivers or free agents. Other leagues are much different in how they may only have one or two bench slots, but you can rotate your roster via the wavier wire all season long if you really wanted to.

This makes defining replacement level extremely tough as its going to be different for each and every league. However, because this blog is for curbing the standard in hopes to outreach to new players, we’ll use our home league as the example to debate how to define a replacement level player.

We have 16 teams that carry one player at every position, a utility hitter, and five starting and five relief pitchers.

So for each batting position replacement level has to start somewhere past the 16th best player, and each role of pitchers past 80th. Then you may have to dig a little deeper as the utility role swallows up 16 more players from 9 hitting positions, so each position on average (while likely mostly OF and 1B) loses another player.

Bench adds another twist, each best is likely to have at least one starting pitcher (break glass in case of emergency (like if all your pitchers only pitch once that week)) maybe another starter and or reliever, so anywhere from 1-3 bench spots in pitchers. Then hitters in a perfect world you have a backup catcher, infielder, and outfielder.  Finding a guy who can play all 3 OF spots is easier, the infielders gets harder, and catchers it might not even matter, as the 18th best catcher doesn’t have great odds of playing everyday.

So another 100 players past the starter’s point are going to be swarmed up in bench spots spread fairly evenly across all positions. So another 8 players are gone. Then we have to consider that we carry a DL in our league, so injured players allow a few more players to get soaked up past the 1 pick up per week.

How should replacement level be considered?

The most accurate would be to look at the first 5-8 players available in the pool at any given time and average their production. Typically a best available player is not around, and replacement players I hope are only used to plug holes for very short periods of time, or even in a one game situation, thus meaning you might not pick the best guy available if the guy below him is more likely to put in 6 games a week, and may have a more favorable schedule.

If we find an acceptable replacement level number for fantasy baseball in our sabremetric style points league, does it really mean anything?

Yes and no, typically if your opponent picks up a guy from the waivers he’s more likely to go 0/4 or 0/5 for negative points than he is to hit a double with a walk to net some considerable value. So in that way its not very important, as you know your starter is going to be way better than that player anyway. However rating players against this baseline gives you a better sense of their actual production across the board.

Its easy to compare 2B to 2B, however if you want to compare a 1B vs a 2B things get quite a bit more tricky. 20 points a week from your 1B is worth less to your team than 20 points from your 2B. In the end it means the same (20 points for your team). Odds are however, that if you have a 20 point week from Chase Utley (2B) and he has a 20 point week from his Prince Fielder (1B), you’re ahead because its more likely you have a 1B who can put up 12-18 points in a given week, where as his 2b would typically fall in the 8-14 range.

This is necessary because points do not care what position a player plays its hard to see the actual value of the player. If you can freely get a Casey Kotchman (1B) in the Free Agent pool and he averages 12 points a week,  there’s not quite a drop off from that 20 point mark. However if the best available SS is Jack Wilson and he can only be expected to get you about 8 points a week, makes Hanley Ramirez (SS) potential of return much higher as he is less easily replaced.

In our head to head style of play, its much like baseball on the field, the Jack Wilsons’ can score a few runs for the Mariners and be the story of the game, and look like Honus Wagner, the same can happen in our league where Jack Wilson could go 8/18 with 3 doubles, 3 walks and a stolen base and net you 18 points.

This metric would mean much less in the day to day aspect, much like wOBA, WAR, and VORP is meaningless on the field. However pre-draft and looking forward, its a good idea to know what players over the season would net you the most value to give you the best chance to win.

As of today there is just seven days separating us all from opening day. Most fantasy baseball leagues have likely drafted, and for most fans I assume the honeymoon period of Spring Training has worn off.

Spring Training can be very good, (thank you Ian Desmond!), or it can be potentially devastating (glad I didn’t have opportunity to Cliff Lee!).

All in all spring is very fun because it means baseball is back in action, but this lull between my other draft and the season is past excruciating. Luckily I have this blog’s draft to look forward to this Saturday.

But, here’s a list for everyone else who is done with their drafts and trying not to burnout their interest by checking the waivers preseason:

1. Play with your dog outside. If you live in a place that is colder than South Dakota, train a polar bear perhaps.
2. Write a blog, about fantasy baseball!
3. Dust off your glove and ball and play catch with someone.
4. Cure cancer.
5. Catch up on sleep.
6. Spend some quality time with your family, treat them to dinner that you prepare.
7. Complete that honey-do list that has been building up.
8. Go to the gym and sweat off some of that water stuck in your system.
9. Try something new.
10. Go 24 hours unplugged. Its really good for the system actually to unplug everything, at least from what I hear, I haven’t done that in a long time.

I hope you are all enjoying spring like I am. Spring training is almost over thankfully, and next week there will be more interesting things to write about like your first rounders’ cold start, or that waiver wire guy who hit 3 home runs on opening day (looking at you Dmitri Young of 2005). Until then knock a few things off this list or create your own.

This weekend I did not even open ESPN, I played with my dog, designed some graphic art for my up and coming wedding, made dinner for the future in-laws, and sat on the grass. Crazy enough sitting on the grass is incredible therapy. Take care!

15 interested humans plus myself are preparing for a draft in eight days of epic proportions. This league has 16 teams, a head to head by points setup, using balanced wOBA and FIP for the points, among other things. It should be a great amount of fun, the draft order won’t be decided until its randomly made an hour before the draft.

So lets ponder, who goes first overall? This season we are not going with a keeper setup (I want to establish a good group of owners, before we start working a keeper league), so you want the best team this season.

I have written about Joe Mauer already, I think he’s even stronger now because there’s not even a dozen catchers who play daily, let alone 16. If I had the first pick, I’d have issues passing on him.

Albert Pujols is just to easy, last year he was the best, a full season of Joe Mauer changes things, so this year might be different.

Hanley Ramirez is on top of the short stops, and in a league of 16 starts to have the Joe Mauer effect of giving your team a huge head start just by being so much better than your opponents short stop.

Tim Lincecum, young apparently durable, pitching for a large contract in a couple seasons, can’t bet against him, 16 teams means our league will have 100ish starting pitchers drafted, Lincecum might be to good to settle.

There’s to many variables to guess, but in a 16 team league, it will be very interesting to see how the first round plays out. Next week I’ll project the first round, but any of these 4 guys would be legitimate picks. I’m so very excited!

Twitter recently alerted me to a movie documentary called Fantasyland which followed a fan who was very dedicated, (actually talked to players as if he owned them, gave them jerseys, attempted to make a trade while his twins (not the ones from Minnesota) were being born, and drove 8 hours to talk a trade when the other guy wouldn’t answer his emails.) to this league of “experts”.

This guy has a kind heart, is passionate, and loves baseball. I can feel with all of these things. The movie was also entertaining to a point, even got me thinking about missing categories for about 2 minutes. However the guy gets shown complaining about one of hitters walking, and that ruined that nostalgic moment for me. A walk should be a good thing.

Anyway that’s not the point, the guy joins a league that has been going for a decade or better and it is called “Tout Wars”. It features fantasy writers from different websites, and they did an experiment to invite the fan into the league. That’s where our guy comes into the picture.

Before their auction draft everyone is playing not to lose to this guy, as they are all experts, and maybe for dramatic purposes they were portrayed as elitist snobs. Anyway the movie ends up being pretty good, the fan finishes right in the middle in 6th place of 12 guys, he beats the commissioner, who eventually relieves him of his position after the season, basically in disgust.

Anyway this guy balances a wife, newborn twins, a job in finance, and his fantasy team of the course of the six month baseball season seamlessly and his wife doesn’t murder him. Its truly amazing. Anyway the wife says, he doesn’t drink, smoke, gamble outside of fantasy, watch TV, or have any other vices outside of baseball. So because he puts all his hobby into fantasy and its not costing his attention from anywhere else she’s okay with it.

Overall I give the movie 2.5 stars, good enough to watch once, I wouldn’t watch it again. I am jealous of the fact that he got to meet these players, but now I want to create fantasy baseball jersey shirts. You can watch the movie here!

Imagine being halfway into the second round of your draft, whether or not you’re in a keeper league or not, how exciting is it to see Matt Holliday fall to the 16th pick? Well I was less than excited. I’m the type of fantasy player who doesn’t want to have to draft a player because they fall to them. Most fantasy players would be excited to get a first round player in the 2nd round of the draft (remember the draft was in a keeper league, but in fresh leagues Holliday is probably a late 1st/early 2nd player anyway).

Don’t get me wrong I like the fact that I’m getting a hitter who can reach a .400 wOBA, and is projected by 5 different projections to be above .390 for 150 games. So let us focus on Matt Holliday the player, not the fact that I “had” to draft him.

In 2004 Matt Holliday broke into the show with the Rockies and promptly played 121 games, hit 19 homers, and held his own with a .358 wOBA. As a rookie this is really good, but the Coors Field effect cast doubts on his actual ability.  In 2005, ‘06, and ‘07 he continued to get better as his wOBA increased every season as well as his playing time, with 2007 being the career year, 36 homers, and an amazing .428 wOBA.

2008 saw Matt Holliday going backwards some with 12 less balls leaving the stands as home runs, costing his wOBA to drop to .418, which was just the 6th best hitter in the league. Because of Holliday’s looming payday the Rockies decided to ship him off to the highest bidder who turned out to be Oakland, Oakland then turned him over to St. Louis mid-season.

Last season Matt Holliday played a full season and mashed the ball again. His counting stats matched 2008, however he played 20 more games, dropping his wOBA to .390. This drop could be from park effects, age, injury, or just general decline. However, the forecasters named Bill James, CHONE, Marcel, Zips, and the Fans of Fangraphs, all have Holliday matching last years effectiveness with a full season in St. Louis. His projected wOBA ranges from .390 to .399, and playing time they see him getting at least 597 or more plate appearances.

As a 30 year old Holliday still has some life to live in the major leagues. His game is based on power, speed, eye, and ability, and that’s why he got paid this last off season. As a fantasy owner, getting first round talent in the 2nd round, well I just made myself feel better. In your draft you may have to decide do you want Pedroia, Zimmerman, Sizemore, or Holliday… I had the choice made for me already, but it might not be a bad idea to just take Holliday as he has the ability to regress and be better than the others, while he also has a chance to get lucky (a few extra seeing-eye singles, a few cheap homers) and put up another .400+ wOBA year.

Well heading into the draft I had the following keepers: Joey Votto, Billy Butler, Matt Wieters, Ubaldo Jiminez, Jayson Werth, and Rick Porcello.  So I had my 1B, C, UTIL, OF, and 2 SP slots used. I also was short a 5th and 10th round pick in results of a trade last season that helped me land the championship. Despite the lack of a headlining keeper, I had 5 guys who would not have fallen past round 7 or 8 in our draft. I had the 8th position in a 12 team league, and with my post last Friday the first round looked pretty similar: (my prediction in ())

(1) Winnersville Winners – Albert Pujols 1B (Pujols)
(2) Nick Punto – Alex Rodriguez 3B (Lincecum)
(3) Edge of the  Cliff – Tim Lincecum SP (Braun)
(4) Boston Red Sox – Ryan Braun LF (Cabrera)
(5) TPSC net – David Wright 3B (ARod)
(6) Not sure what I am doing – Roy Halladay SP (Halladay)
(7) Team Cyle – Miguel Cabrera 1B (Sabathia)
** (8) Bloodthirsty Uber Giraffes – Felix Hernandez SP (Felix)
(9) The  Benchwarmers – CC Sabathia SP (Jeter)
(10) The Beane Team – Adrian Gonzalez 1B (Tulo)
(11) Twins Fever Twins Fever – Troy Tulowitzki SS (Wright)
(12) Team Cyle – Derek Jeter SS (Kemp)

I thought I had it close, but A-Rod got taken by the guy who eventually drafted the youngest team by a long shot anyway, and with that David Wright got taken early, Kemp got left out. Otherwise the first round was fairly predictable. The 2nd round begun with Wainwright, Haren, and Verlander all going in order knocking the pitchers pool down a whole tier.  My pick came up and Matt Holliday was easily the best player available. Hopefully that new contract doesn’t go to his head.

In the 3rd round I really had to struggle making a pick, it was down to picking BJ Upton’s upside versus another strong pitcher in Johan Santana, Javier Vazquez, Cole Hamels, or Yovanni Gallardo.   I was actually ready to take Johan, but I ran out of time on the draft table and took Upton. Which was a great pick, and was my gut feeling, but filling in my OF slots so quickly made me uneasy and I was unsure if those pitchers would fly off the board, or not. I did get Gallardo in round 4, and I could have had a Johan or Hamels plus Granderson versus Upton and Gallardo, but I’m not sure which pair would be better. I like Upton to do better, but he’s far from reassuring.

The fifth round I did not have a pick, so I watched Ricky Nolasco go in my spot, Torii Hunter, Carlos Pena, Manny Ramirez, Adam Jones, Hunter Pence all follow, so I didn’t really miss much as I had all those positions relatively full. Round 6 comes around, I need an infield and relievers, could use a SP if its right.  My pick arrives and Chipper Jones is available. While Chipper’s health is a concern, his bat while he is playing is not, and I consider this a steal of the draft. A hitter than can put up monster weeks for me at discounted price. I need a backup 3B to make sure I don’t get left hanging, but that’s not a problem. Rounds 8 and 9 see me taking 2B Dan Uggla and SS Asdrubal Cabrera.  Both decent picks for the spot and availability, Uggla is a great 2B at the spot, if his bat declines more I’m in trouble, but if he can even bounce back some I’ll do back flips.

In the 9th round I had to make sure I didn’t get left behind in the closer race and Brian Wilson was available, because I had him last year and I considered keeping him, I snagged him before another run on closers left me hanging. Round 10 I didn’t have a pick again, so I missed out on Brad Hawpe, James Shields, Strasberg, Liriano, and Soriano. While none of the players would have been hugely missed on my team, the depth issues may come into play later in the season. (Still happy I won last year and made the trade, my team without the trade this year would have been even better though =/)

Round 11, 12, 13, 14, saw the Uber Giraffes run on pitchers taking, Rafael Soriano, Billy Wagner, Rich Harden, and David Aardsma in that order. With those rounds the starters portion was finished, and the rest of the draft became about filling the bench and prospecting. Here’s how I did there:

14 C – Chris Ianetta (extra pick)
15 3B – Alex Gordon (fills in for Chipper nicely)
16 OF – Seth Smith (if he gets playing time, he’s an All-Star)
17 OF – JD Drew (when he’s healthy he’s an All-Star)
18 SS – Ian Desmond (Might hit gold here, might not.)
18 2B – Aki Iwamura (another extra pick, fills in for Uggla)
19 OF – Josh Willingham (hoping for trade bait)
20 SP – Jordan Zimmerman (this is our free keeper round, since he sits on the DL until he plays I don’t burn a roster spot on a prospect, huge!)

That was it, I have a free roster spot after the players clear waivers, not sure who I’ll add, my roster looks pretty sexy by my eye. A lot of players who have upside on top of their talent, only injuries stand in the way of a repeat championship here.

Tomorrow at 3 PM Central Time my home league  has its annual draft for the 7th year now. This league has seem many revisions, owners who have left and come back again. We’re now set at a 12 team, head to head points league using the same settings you see on our settings that we will be using for the official online Fantasy by the Book league, (still 3 openings available if you are interested email me!).

Our league is a keeper league that does things slightly different, Players drafted in rounds 1-5 cost $3 to keep, rounds 6-10 cost $2, 11 and on cost $1 to keep along with free agents. The 20th round is considered the prospect round and players drafted there are free to keep.  Each year a keeper gets a $1 raise if they are to be kept again, and each team gets to spend $5 on keepers.

My fiancee this year is keeping Prince Fielder ($3) and Zach Greinke ($2), while I had to pass on keeping better players as I felt I needed to make up for the fact that I dumped 5th and 10th round picks this year for Justin Verlander last year and pushing to win the league championship. Luckily it worked out, but trading two picks in the top half of the draft for a pitcher was  a risk and it really puts a strain on this years draft.

So I ended up keeping 5 guys at a dollar, Joey Votto, Billy Butler, Matt Wieters, Ubaldo Jiminez, and Jayson Werth, so I lose the headliner pick, but I get 5 top 100 guys and don’t have to wonder about drafting a catcher or 1B. But I feel like I really maximized my value for the keepers, Billy Butler is the only guy who might slip outside the first 10 rounds, and that is unlikely as there’s roughly 40 players being kept already.

I won’t go to far into my draft strategy tomorrow, but I could barely hold my excitement about writing about it so here is where I’m sitting.  I have the 8th pick in the draft and here’s my prediction for the first round with the players available:

1. Pujols (Kept Crawford and Ellsbury and let Pujols go only to redraft him)
2. Tim Lincecum (Kept Mauer and McCutchen, loves young players)
3. Ryan Braun (Kept Ryan Zimmerman, Cliff Lee, and Pablo Sandoval (yes holy crap) might as well get another hitter here)
4. Miguel Cabrera (Kept Hanley and Josh Johnson, I don’t see the Red Sox lover taking ARod here.)
5. Alex Rodriguez (Kept Tex, Hughes, and Wandy, I could see a Johan (favorite player) stab, but Arod is too good here)
6. Roy Halladay (Kept Ryan Howard and Ryan Dempster, the new guy likely takes best available.)
7. CC Sabathia (Kept Chris Carpenter, Derek Lee, oh and Evan Longoria, The pitchers will run)
8. Felix Hernandez (My pick, see keepers above, homer pick, arguably best pitcher available.)
9. Derek Jeter (Kept Kendry, Gavin Floyd, Cueto, and Cano, Yankees fan stays true to his heart)
10. Troy Tulowitski (Other hoarder of good talent, Tom Hansen, Kershaw, Mark Reynolds, Aaron Hill, Justin Upton, Tulo is too good to miss here.)
11. David Wright (Kept Andrus, Beckett, and Utley, best OF available, pitchers are gone)
12. Matt Kemp (7th slot traded for the pick, needs an OF)
13. Matt Holliday (being a Cards fan, I see Holliday going here after the run of OFs, keeping Prince and Greinke allows for the solid core anyway)

I’m going by gut feeling and experience here. Lots of great guys were kept, but I think this is close to how it will go. Everyone always throws curve balls, and people in our league have feelings for certain players positive or negative and that always changes thing. Last year I got “over” those feelings and took Mike Young and Brian Roberts two players I detested, but then I won, so hopefully this year I can go bipartisan again and win.

It will be an uphill battle this year as I’m short two picks in the first 10 rounds, but my keepers should patch up those holes pretty well. Hopefully Butler, Wieters, and Ubaldo all gett better, or at least hold their own.

Tomorrow night I’ll let you know how I did and feel about it, I couldn’t be more excited!