Some of you have asked about the upcoming fantasy baseball season. I have been preparing for my own drafts – although, admittedly, I’m not as fully engrossed as I’ve been over the past few seasons – and thought I would at least pass along my favorite links, sites, resources, etc., that I’ve been using.
You can find rankings all over the place. I use the guys from Yahoo!’s, not because they are colleagues but because that crew really knows baseball. Their current offering can be found here. They tend to update every other week, so we’ll probably see a new set towards the end of the current week.
If you are looking for lots of different opinions or something that isn’t tailored for 5×5, then a link dump site could come in handy. I’ve found this and this to be useful in that regard. Of course, any of the “major” fantasy sites tend to offer their own rankings, but you need to be sure to know what settings they are tailored to (the same goes for any set).
It’s a really good idea to do a mock draft or five before you participate in a draft that counts. Two very good mock draft sites: Mock Draft Central and couch managers.
Some of the sites that I visit every day, or at least every time I need to know something related to fantasy baseball:
Fantasy Baseball Cafe – amazingly active forums that produces a wealth of knowledge; if someone/something merits even a bit of discussion, then it’s a good bet you’ll find a lengthy thread or two about it there; one of the most useful discussions: the annual closers thread.
Baseball Monster – the essential site for precise player valuation, from the same people that offer Basketball Monster; it’s incredibly useful if you play in standard 5×5 leagues, but downright necessary if your league varies from anything that would be considered standard
Player updates: Rotoworld, RotoWire, and ThomasGeorge.com
Fantasy baseball is about stats, stats, and more stats. The best places I’ve found to dive into the numbers:
The Baseball Cube – major and minor league numbers for everyone
FanGraphs – major league numbers broken down as far as possible, from BABIP and LOB% to how often a batter swings to how often a pitcher throws a curveball (and how fast it is, on average); they also offer projections from five different sources up until the start of the regular season
MiLB.com: the home of minor league baseball; straight-forward stats and profile offerings
MinorLeagueSplits.com: if you need to get deep into prospecting; the name says it all
A few other random links: ESPN’s recent lineups (the inspiration for my recent lineup application); Doug’s stats (handy raw stat downloads); USA Today Rotisserie Corner (lots of stats); Baseball America (mostly a pay site); First Inning (batted ball charts)
And lastly, you can download a draft workbook (excel spreadsheet) that I put together here. It contains Yahoo!’s position rankings (as of 2/27), a compilation of average draft position info (thanks to rookies and cream of the FBC), and aggregate 2009 projection info (thanks to Curtis Pride of the FBC).
Thanks for the great information. I’m a fantasy baseball rookie this year so I’ll need all the help I can get. This site is amazing and chalked full of useful information for basketball and I’m sure the sites you’ve provided for baseball will be very useful. Thanks Matt.
Razzball.com is the only site I use for baseball.
yeah i meant to check out that site last time you mentioned it but didn’t. i’ll have to be sure to check that out this time around. and maybe i should have resources pages for every sport, not just hoops?
If you have the desire and time to do pages for every sport (at least the 4 major sports) that would be awesome. I’ve won my football league once and place in the top half every year but I’m always looking for info and advice. This was my first season in hockey and I’m looking good for the playoffs there too. Advice for every sport would be great.
yeah i’m working on some ideas as we speak
Yeah, Razzball is kinda like the baseball version of this site.. He has a good personality/sense of humor, so his posts are usually pretty entertaining. He has position rankings, projections, sleepers/busts, and is a good source of baseball info and strategies. Usually gets updated 2-3 times a day.
Ashley, you mentioned Razzball a few weeks ago. I tuned in and now I’m hooked. Not only is the information excellent, but I nearly choked on my morning coffee when I read the Razzball Glossary, which is absolutely hilarious.
Ha yeah, my favs are probably “Pronk’d”, “Cleveland Streamer”, and “FEMAs”
Yahoo does mock drafts now. They have a great drafting interface and a lot of serious people working on their draft positions.
that’s funny, i completely forgot that they offer them now
Razzball is a great site, one of about 5 I follow on RSS for baseball religiously….I encourage everyone who isn’t in any league of mine to follow FantasyPros911.com. Just a great wealth of information there. Buser you’ve now given me too many more sites to consider, I already spend wayyyyy to much time on fantasy baseball…..and basketball….and hockey.
Question: Are the ADPs in your spreadsheet the ones that will be used during Yahoo drafts?
no, the ADP info was collected from a number of sources .. click the link in the post to read more
i should probably just do one of their mock drafts already…
I try to just use one site, because the annoying thing about baseball is that 5 different people have 5 different opinions about every player. Some people love Ricky Nolasco, some people think he’ll be a bust.. Some people think Ortiz will hit 30+ homeruns (Yahoo! “experts”) and people with common sense know he’s on the decline. So instead of being confused by 10 different opinions, I just stick to one site. And the guys at Razzball are informative and really entertaining. Most of their projections from last year were dead on. So they’re my main source.
And I’ll use baseballmonster.com, that’s a good site.
Yeah, last year I had a prediliction to pick up Bowden Fluffers, like Lastings Milledge, and Weepstakes Specials, like Jobacum, from the Waiver Wire. I still somehow won the league Championships. This year, no more Schmohawks! (I still drafted Mad Max and Bruce Almighty this year – I really can’t help myself.) As Gray would say: “Sweet Upside…Sweet, Sweet Upside.
Yeah I have Scherzer but I’m trying to trade him, the shoulder concerns me.
When I first realized that I needed to work on getting the necessary information, I relied on “Street and Smith’s” (who subsequently bought out and renamed themselves to “The Sporting News”) for the data. It seems that it had quite the reputation amongst the Yahoo players as a reputably excellent source.
Nowadays, I get the information from several magazines, average the data out, rank the players and try to figure out who will fall where in the draft. Seems to me that it takes way too long to do that, so I might go back to S & S/SN for the necessary data and go from there.
BTW, I just use the data. I still make my own decision on what will work best for me, based on what I believe is the best priority of categories that I think would produce the best player possible. I’m no lemming here.
Thanks for the links! Definitely really helpful.
I have a question for a Keeper league I am in:
I need to keep 6 players and I have 7 potential candidates.
Miguel Cabrera
Josh Hamilton
Johan Santana
Matt Holliday
Brandon Phillips
Brandon Webb
Matt Kemp
My locks are Miggy, Josh, Johan… Right now I can’t seem to shake not keeping Matt Kemp because he has such great potential. Who should I drop? Thanks!
Keep Miggy, Hamilton, Kemp, Johan, Phillips, and Webb.
Holliday won’t do anything special in Oakland. And there is plenty of depth at OF. So leave him out.
you can’t not keep kemp, that’s for sure. holliday is going to be very useful, but ashley is right in that his days of being ‘special’ are likely over
Hey Buser! thanks for the response. Do you also think I should omit Holliday then? It seems like I have to decide to to keep 2 of these 3: holliday, Phillips, webb.
Webb is very consistent and although I don’t expect stellar numbers he is a solid number 1 to go along with Johan on a fantasy team.
Phillips is a 20/20 guarantee, but his average is always qustionable.
Holliday’s projections are still around 100/20/100… his SB will take a hit because Oakland manager is notorious for being conservative.
Any more take on this? I’m still confused as to which 2 of the 3 I should keep considering Kemp is a lock now.
Thanks again.
yeah holliday still will be good. for me it’s between holliday and phillips, and phillips has a greater edge over his peers
Hey buser. Sorry to pester you, but I have one last bit of information.
the stat categories my league include all of the following
R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG, OBP, SLG, W, L, SV, K, ERA, WHIP
Since its 7 batting vs 6 pitching do you think I should drop brandon webb out of my list and keep both holliday and phillips…
Last question on this topic i promise
(1) that info should be among the first things you bring up
(2) go here to see how your players stack up with custom cats:
http://baseballmonster.com/
Hey Buser,
I am a fantasy baseball newbie and I just wanted to know what’s your general strategy for a h2h standard cat league?
i’ll qualify my answer before i give it: when it comes to hoops, roto is best described as my ‘preference’. when it comes to baseball, i can’t decide whether i ‘loathe’ or ‘abhor’ 5×5 h2h (i don’t have much of a problem with h2h points leagues, though). in h2h hoops, sure the team with the players that get hot at the right time tend to win, but in baseball it just seems to be magnified to the nth degree (via one bad start or an 0-10 streak). i find it entirely too random
in terms of h2h strategy, i approach both sports the same way. draft a strong team in most categories and don’t be afraid to ignore (for lack of better) one. my preference is to ignore AVG (in part because of its random nature), concentrate on counting stats for hitters, and build a great pitching staff overall
But that’s what I like about H2H.. Upsets. Just like real life sports. If your best player goes 4-21 during the championship round, tough luck.
Braves dealt with it the last few years they were in the playoffs from guys like Andruw and Furcal.
And the Yankees deal with it every year in the postseason from A-Rod.
So that’s how I view H2H, for every player slumping on your roster any given week there’s probably a player on a hot streak, so it balances out.
one and done is fine for fantasy football, but i find few things more frustrating than an “upset” in h2h baseball. i love the grind of the roto baseball season and the satisfaction that comes with a “full season” win. it’s something people have to agree to disagree on, though
No love for John Sickels’ minorleagueball site, buser? That’s the first place I look for “deep prospecting.”
I see victor_y77 must be teasing you on the H2H question.
Looking forward to your reply.
sickels has good stuff, but i don’t frequent the site. to be honest, i’m used to doing my own legwork
Hey Buser,
last year you always had links to updated sabremetric tables which were absolutely instrumental in winning my main baseball league. However, i can’t seem to find such a list right now. Any info on where this table can be found?
Thanks.
i don’t know the link to the last one that was posted, but i know it wasn’t for final stats so it won’t be completely useful
for SABR stats: check out fangraphs (advanced and batted ball tabs)
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=0&season=2008&month=0
gracias.
Does baseballmonster not have holds or am I just blind? It seems to be one of the more common extra categories, odd to not have it in there, although I guess projections are tough for it, still would be nice to see how it would effect the rankings though.
you’re right, they aren’t there. i’m a bit surprised as well (although i’ve never been in a league that used holds)
It seems to value middle relievers a lot with my settings regardless of holds, I think that may be due to the inclusion of losses as well. Hmm, this may change my strategy, although I won’t be drafting a middle reliever in the 6th like their ’08 rankings suggest.
one mistake fantasy owners often make is underestimating the impact a really good MR can have, particularly in roto. think of MR as the shane battiers (at his best) of baseball – 75 IP of great ratios and over 1 K/9 makes a big difference
Last year, Marmol helped my team out immensely with K’s, ERA and WHIP. Other excellent MR from last year included Arrodonda (who picked up 10 wins, more then many starters) and Joey Devine, whose ERA was about 0.59. Even in H2H, it is worthwhile carrying one. This year, Devine or Marma loses the closer job, which I doubt will occur, they will still have value. And watch J.J. Putz on the Mets, who should help you out quite a bit. You can usually pick up a MR on the last or next to last pick of the draft. One more thing – try to pick a MR to back up one of your closers; I had Kerry Wood last year, who I kept expecting to get an injury, but never did; I didn’t worry, as Marmol would have taken over the job.
I remember that you once posted something in Yahoo about how to evaluate your draft and/or team (like you did for baseball) and determined where you were strong and where you needed help. Is that article still somewhere?
I’m sorry, meant to say “did for basketball”. Sometimes, my fingers know not what they do.
i think the ‘law of averages’ columns are what you referring to. andy behrens did it this season
http://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy/blog/roto_arcade/post/Tip-Drill-Law-of-averages?urn=fantasy,152095
Yeah, that was the one, and I did find it. Thanks.