Fantasy Baseball: The First Round

With publications, mock drafts and other lists being assembled this month, I thought I would (a) release my projected first round and (b) analyze the other lists first rounds.

No Pepper Games' First Round Projections:

1. Alex Rodriquez - I'm not a fan, but Pujol's AVG doesn't make up for A-Rod's SBs and RBIs.
2. Albert Pujols - Absolutely solid player. If Rolen plays all season, he'll be even better.
3. Valdimir Guerrero - Still solidly in the Top Three this year. The Angels have lost some tools, but Vlad will still produce.
4. Johan Santana - I strongly suggest building solid pitching in standard Roto leagues - this is where that list begins.
5. Mark Teixeira - Is going to be a monster for years to come.
6. Miguel Tejada - SS isn't all that deep this year, and there are no questions surrounding Tejada.
7. Manny Ramirez - Are there better numbers out there? Yup. But few of them are as consistent as Manny. Plus, the other better numbers are from firstbasemen, where there is depth-galore.
8. Derrek Lee - An admitted stretch here. But with the Cubs' offseason acquisitions, Lee is poised for another huge year.
9. David Ortiz - Absolutely sick numbers. The only thing that hurts him is his DH/Util position.
10. David Wright - 3B is another shallow position, and Wright is second only to A-Rod.
11. Bobby Abreu - His 2nd half last year worries me, but only because it makes me think of the weeping opposing teams would have been doing if he had duplicated his 1st half performance. There was a power dropoff, but his numbers were still top notch.
12. Pedro Martinez - Again, I stress the importance of consistently solid SPs in Roto. You'll see contrary advice elsewhere, but it's a proven commodity for me.


Brandon Funston's Yahoo! Sports Big Board

1. Alex Rodriquez - no difference
2. Albert Pujols - no difference
3. Vladimir Guerrero - no difference
4. Mark Teixeira - I can't argue with this, Teixeira is dominant.
5. Manny Ramirez - I mentioned this week that OF is an actually shallow position. Manny's a great pick.
6. Johan Santana - no argument
7. Derrek Lee - At least I'm not reaching as far as Brandon!
8. David Ortiz - We seem to be in general agreement.
9. Michael Young - Wha...?!? Young is a fantastic SS - but better than Tejada?! Sorry, I just don't see it.
10. Carl Crawford - And yet Juan Pierre is completely off his board. Crawford's 12-15 HRs just don't merit that gap.
11. David Wright - After Aramis Ramirez, there are just a lot of questions at 3B, Wright's in for a big year.
12. Miquel Cabrera - I don't have Cabrera much further down, but to put him this high risks having owners take him even earlier. The turmoil in Florida is going to hurt his production this year, so buyer beware.


The Sporting News Top 300

1. Alex Rodriguez
2. Albert Pujols
3. Vlad Guerrero
4. Mark Teixiera
5. Derrek Lee - Wow. Just...wow.
6. Miguel Cabrera - If this was put together before the firesale, I'd forgive it. But it wasn't.
7. Carl Crawford - Chicks dig the long ball. But his 15 long balls aren't this exciting.
8. Jason Bay - This kid is incredible, but not this high.
9. Manny Ramirez
10. Johan Santana - whoever gets Santana at #10 is getting an absolute steal.
11. Michael Young
12. Miquel Tejada - another list with Tejada behind Young. I don't get it.

Fantasy Baseball: Sporting News analysis - Keeper Leagues

This is maybe the best example I can give of how this magazine is terribly edited. Kevin Wheeler gives an admittedly great description and promotion of keeper leagues. I couldn't agree more with his pros and cons. Keeper leagues promote league longevity, giving the bottom-dwellers something to keep playing for, and a higher sense of team ownership.

But then it all goes downhill when he provides a list of "Top 50 keepers for 2006." This is possibly the worst list I've ever seen. Consider the following - he first states:

In choosing your keeper players, the single most important factor you should consider is consistency. It is too risky to try picking keepers you think are about to have career years.

Then he goes on and ranks Todd Helton (#12) above Mark Teixeira (#16). Apparently, no one told Mr. Wheeler that the magazine was going to rank Teixeira as the #2 firstbaseman (at $37) in the league (behind Albert Pujols), or that Todd Helton was going to be ranked #4 ($28). And please, don't consider the fact that Teixeira is 25 years old and easily a few years away from hitting his prime, where Mr. Helton is 32 and in a decline. And to completely top it all off, they have Mark Teixeira as the Number Four fantasy player, OVERALL. (Helton is at #18).

Now, don't get me wrong - I love Todd Helton. He's been a steady go-to for me for several years now. In fact, he's been an anchor on my keeper team for several years. But this is the year that he gets released back into the wild - with the hopes that I can draft him in Round 2 or 3. But Mark Teixeira is simply fantasy elite now - a top 5 pick for many years to come. There is absolutely no reason to have him at #16 on any list.

And where does he put other young studs like Miguel Cabrera, Carl Crawford, David Wright and Jason Bay? I'm glad you asked. They are ranked 8, 45, 29, 43, and 45, respectfully. To give you some perspective, I have them ranked at 13, 15, 12 and 14, respectfully (and that's just in a 2006 non-keeper draft).

"Well, surely he has other youngsters destined for superstardom above those guys, which explains their low rankings, right? Guys like Delmon Young, Chase Utley and Jeremy Hermida. Right?"

Hell no! He has oldsters Barry Bonds (#5, age 41), Roger Clemens (#25!, age 43), Mariano Rivera (#13, age 36) and Jeff Kent (#37, age 38).

Folks, here's a good rule of thumb: if the guy's over age 35, his keeper ranking should be over his age.*

*I'm going to assume a fairly large number of keepers per team. The smaller the number, the less important keepers become. Thus, Bonds would be more valuable as a keeper in a league that keeps 2-3 players than in a league where many are kept. The reason being, you should be trying to cultivate talent and getting guys like Hermida, Felix Hernandez and Delmon Young on your rosters.

Fantasy Baseball: Sporting News Fantasy Mag Is Out

Admit it - this is why you keep coming back to No Pepper Games. I'm the guy willing to bite the bullet, cough up the eight sawbucks and read the early (mis)information to help educate the masses where they should be spending their alloted fantasy time (and hard earned).

Hint: Not in the Sporting News Fantasy Baseball magazine which came out this week.

Okay, I will admit that it's good to have a paper copy of everyone's stats from last year, as well as breakdowns by position of everyone available. It's even good to have a rough ranking which you can (and must) fine-tune. And because of that, I'm going to provide small reviews of many of the sections in the days (weeks) ahead. Keep your eyes on this page, because they'll be a-comin'!

Fantasy Baseball: Position Scarcity

ESPN.com recently released their preliminary starting rosters (here's an NL version). Going through, I was struck by something:

The outfield is the scarcest position in fantasy next year. It's not catcher (guys like Kenji Johjima and Michael Barrett are sliding down early draft boards). It's not second base (there's a surprising amount of forgotten talent in guys like Mark Loretta, Robinson Cano, and Tad Iguchi, not to mention the burgeoning stars of Rickie Weeks, Chase Utley and Jorge Cantu) . It's the outfield.

Yes, that fantasy wasteland of Manny Ramirez, Vlad Guerrero, Carlos Beltran, Ichiro and Left Field, SF.

I'm currently working on my rankings, so I cannot provide solid numbers for you right now. (I certainly will have them at a later date.) But making a very rough draft of the top starting fantasy players at each position (enough to fill a 12 team league's starting rosters), the outfield comes up the shortest. Fortunately or unfortunately, there are quite a bit more sleepers in the OF this year. So I guess the conclusion is:

Scout out a handful of sleepers in the OF, but make sure you have your starters set by about mid-draft.

Fantasy Baseball: League Formatting (5x5 v. 6x6)

There's been a trend the last couple of years for custom leagues to go above and beyond the traditional 5x5 format. Why?

I have a theory, and a suggestion.

People wanted to add either Slugging, On-Base Percentage, or OPS (On-Base Plus Slugging) to their offensive categories. (This is an idea I strongly recommend. All three of these are more useful statistics than Batting Average on their own. In fact, I suggest either (a) replacing AVG with OPS, (b) replacing AVG with both Slugging and On-Base Percentage or (c) adding OPS as a 6th category).

So people increase their offensive categories to six (or seven in some cases). As a result, they feel they need to increase the number of pitching categories to "even out" the league. But why? Leagues are already lopsided in favor of hitters in 5x5 formats. (How many pitchers do you know that contribute meaningfully to all 5 categories? None.) So what do commissioners do? They add on Holds. In 7x7 leagues, they'll also add on Losses. But you know what? Neither of those categories "evens out" the league. Holds don't make starting pitchers any more valuable. Losses actually devalues SPs. The only thing adding Holds and Losses does is actually REDUCE the value of the entire pitching pool. SPs go from contributing to 80% of the categories to contrinbuting to 66% (in 6x6 leagues) or 57% (7x7 leagues - not discounting how much losses hurt).

In Head-to-Head leagues that utilize these categories, it actually makes SPs worthless. Consider a 7x7 league with both holds and losses as the added categories. What happens if I start nothing but relievers and closers - absolutely no starters? Well, I lock up Losses, Holds and Saves (hopefully), and have an excellent chance at taking ERA and WHIP (if I avoid the Jose Mesas of the world, as top relievers traditionally have much better ratio numbers). That's 4 or 5 of the pitching categories, which is the majority - allowing me to focus on drafting a top-notch offense to sweep the league.

So when you commissioner suggests a "new, exciting, more meaningful" set of statistics to use in your league, tell him - don't mess with the pitching statistics. You're league would be better off with a 6x5 or 7x5 league than going 6x6 or 7x7.

Fantasy Baseball: Resolutions

Happy New Year!

I usually don't do the whole New Year resolutions thing, but someone close to me was inquiring - so I decided to give it some thought. I want to do a better job on this blog, and my largest obstacle is similar to why I'm terrible at chess - I can't see several moves ahead. So without futher ado, Nor's 2006 New Years Resolutions:

• Read the 2006 Baseball Prospectus. My knowledge of prospects and up-and-comers is severely lacking, and this better help. Edit: Since the 2006 Prospectus doesn't come out until the end of February, I got the 2005 edition. To satiate myself, I'm going to look around for online resources and possibly the new Bill James book.
  

• Blog at least every three days. Yahoo! RSS feeds default to "last 3 days", and this will keep me current to any of you unfortunate souls who subscribe.

• Get a weekly contributor. If I can get 3 articles up a week, that'd be fantastic. It would even approach acceptability, which far exceeds my expectations of mediocrity.

• Find a new blog layout. After perusing Blogger's other pages, I see that my "green at the top" layout is fairly common. I'd like to mix it up a bit.

• Utilize images and photos a bit more often. They really spice shit up.

• Stop murdering drifters. What can I say - it's a guilty pleasure.

• Namedrop as much as I possibly can. A friend's blog mentions other websites and newsservices as much as he can, and gets results from it. The occassional hat tip and link to other forums (Rotochamps.com, Fanball.com, newspapers (Washington Post, New York Times) and websites (espn.com, si.com, cbs.sportsline.com) certainly can't hurt.