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.

Kim Ng leaving Dodgers to become MLB's senior VP of baseball operations

Big news! Kim Ng, the (now former) vice president and assistant GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is leaving her current position to become the senior vice president of baseball operations for MLB, rejoining former Dodgers manager Joe Torre.

It's a bit of an unexpected step for Ng, who hopes to become the first female GM in the league and whose name has been listed as a candidate for the position in the past with at least three teams. Still, it's a great opportunity and I hope her path eventually takes her where she wants to go. It would be fantastic to see a female GM in the league. 

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.

It's time for baseball!

Ways we can tell baseball season has started

• Rich Harden is already injured.
• So is Justin Duchscherer. 
• And hey, look, Joel Zumaya is getting his elbow examined. 
• Miguel Cabrera's off-field issues are coming into play again. (Yes, he was arrested. Again. For an alcohol-related issue. Again.)
• Speaking of off-field issues, hello, Milton Bradley.
• This one's a couple of weeks old, but Tony LaRussa is running his mouth.
• Oh, look, Chris Carpenter might be injured.
• Still keeping an eye on Brandon Webb.

Am I missing anything? Comments and suggestions appreciated.

Three years later . . .

Well, almost three years later. This blog sorta fell by the wayside, but now that I'm done with school, I'm trying to get it started again. Working on getting new/more contributors and, you know, actually writing.

Spring training is here and one of my favorite teams just won the World Series last year, so you can bet I'm pretty excited about baseball this season!