Fantasy Baseball Team #2

Second fantasy baseball draft was last night. Another H2H, ten-team league. Categories a little different, as well as positions.

Hitting categories:

• Runs
• RBIs
• Home runs
• Stolen bases
• Batting average

Pitching categories:

• Wins
• Saves
• Strikeouts
• ERA
• WHIP

I ended up with the 10th pick in the snake draft, which is okay, because I got bookends! The thing about the people in this league--they draft a little crazy. People reach like crazy for some strange players. Also, I've noticed that pitchers always go pretty quickly. This season, I think they may have gone more quickly than ever. For example, I was intending to draft Roy Halladay with my first or second pick. I knew it was a reach, but he wasn't coming back to me and I wanted to own him. Instead, someone took him with the 7th pick. Jesus. The end result of pitchers going so quickly was that someone like Brian Roberts was available in the last round (or close to the last round). Hitters are on FA that kinda have no business being there. Ah, well. Someone's gotta drop a great pitcher some time, right? Right?

Anyway, my team.

Catcher: Geovany Soto (I came so, so close to landing McCann, but apparently that was the round people decided they wanted hitters. The person who has McCann is starting him in the utility spot.)
First base: Miguel Cabrera
Second base: Ian Kinsler
Third base: David Wright
Shortstop: Derek Jeter
Outfielders: Justin Upton, Colby Rasmus, Dexter Fowler, Angel Pagan, Vladimir Guerrero, Nick Markakis
Starting pitchers: Yovanni Gallardo, Dan Haren, Trevor Cahill, Jorge de la Rosa, Jaime Garcia, Brandon Morrow, Jair Jurrjens, Brandon Webb
Relief pitchers: Neftali Feliz, Francisco Cordero, Kevin Gregg

I feel like this always happens in this league, but I'm just not really feeling my team. For one thing, I have a lot of overlap with my other fantasy team in terms of players and they're generally not players I wanted to own in both leagues (like Pagan, Vlad, de la Rosa). Also, I really kinda hate that I own Derek Jeter. He was the best available and shortstops kinda fell off a cliff in terms of value after him, but still. I don't like that I own him. At least I have Upton, Gallardo, and Haren, three players I really like. Guess we'll see how this goes.

Fantasy Baseball Team #1

Did my first fantasy draft of the season on Friday night for a league in which I am the defending champion. (Last time I was defending champ in this league, I fell to dead last the next season. Here's hoping that doesn't happen this time around.) Ten team head-to-head league, with the following categories.

Batting:

• Runs
• RBIs
• Stolen bases
• Walks
• Strikeouts
• Total bases

Pitching:

• Wins
• Saves
• Walks
• Strikeouts
• ERA
• WHIP

By some miracle, I ended up with the first pick in the snake draft. (I shudder to think of what karma has in store for me in my next draft on Tuesday.) You know what that means. PUJOLS, BABY, PUJOLS.

This is my team:

Catcher: Carlos Santana (no, not that Carlos Santana, this Carlos Santana)
First base: Albert Pujols
Second base: Brandon Phillips
Third base: Casey McGehee
Shortstop: Starlin Castro
Outfielders (including a center fielder position): Nick Swisher, Josh Hamilton, Jason Heyward, Brett Gardner, Dexter Fowler, Vladimir Guerrero, and Angel Pagan.
Starting pitchers: Tim Lincecum, David Price, Jorge De la Rosa, Ian Kennedy, Mat Latos, Trevor Cahill, and Johan Santana (who will obviously be stashed on the DL until he comes back)
Relief pitchers: Brian Wilson, Jose Valverde, Matt Capps, and Brian Fuentes.

There's a total of five bench positions--in my case, two bench hitters and three bench pitchers--and two DL spots.

This is an interesting team that I think has a lot of upside, but also some risk. There are some young players on my team, some of whom are proven (Lincecum, Price) and some who are not (Castro, Santana). I have a bit of a hole when it comes to third base. I currently have my eye on Michael Moustaka, of the Royals, but he won't be up before June, due to arbitration, etc. I also have a problem at closer--right now, I own two and two-half closers. Andrew Bailey will probably be shelved for a couple of weeks at the start of the season, so Fuentes will probably get some saves (along with Grant Balfour), but if Bailey's healthy, he's the closer. Capps is, of course, backing up Joe Nathan in Minnesota. He'll get some saves while Nathan is getting back to form, but like the situation in Oakland, once Nathan's back, the job is his. I'll have to keep an eye on the closers thread at FBC, which is always annoying because you have to sift through stupid comments to get to things of substance. Sigh.

Overall, I like my team, but it's a different sort of team than I've owned in the past, so we'll see how it works out.

Good resources for you fantasy baseball managers out there

Baseball Prospectus 2011. Good in-depth analysis of teams and players, including previous stats, projected stats, chances of breakout/improvement/collapse, and comparisons to other players. Includes a smaller section on minor league players. This book was invaluable to me when I was first starting out as a fantasy baseball manager--I'm pretty sure I cross-referenced every player I thought about drafting in this book. A new edition is published every year, released around February, just in time for spring training. Pick one up (and do it at Amazon, so much cheaper than B&N or other bookstores).

Also a resource I use a lot: Fantasy Baseball Cafe. It has articles, mock drafts, podcasts, rankings, and, most useful, user forums. You'll have to create an account and log in in order to be able to post to the forums. One thread that is very popular (and thus peppered with more useless posts than most others) is the closers thread that keeps managers up to date with who's closing where, including a very helpful first page that keeps track of who the primary closer is, what their grip on the job is, and who's lurking to take over. There's also a Cafe for fantasy football, basketball, and hockey.