Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Rob Neyer, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT.  Derek Ambrosino
John Burnson Derek Carty Marco Fujimoto Eriq Gardner Matt Hagen Jonathan Halket Rob McQuown Troy Patterson Mike Silver Paul Singman Michael Street And here's the full roster. Got a question for our fantasy baseball experts? Email us:
Heater MagazineAdd 10 MPH to your fantasy team — see for yourself
HEATER MAGAZINE Winner, 2008 CBS Sportsline Fantasy League of Experts  Plus our Statistical Definitions Most Recent Comments
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals (8)
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers (4) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (2) Acey-deucey (1) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (12) Monthly Archives
November, 2009
October, 2009 September, 2009 August, 2009 July, 2009 June, 2009 May, 2009 April, 2009 March, 2009 February, 2009 January, 2009 December, 2008 November, 2008 October, 2008 September, 2008 August, 2008 July, 2008 June, 2008 May, 2008 April, 2008 March, 2008 February, 2008 January, 2008 December, 2007 November, 2007 October, 2007 September, 2007 August, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2007 Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Most Recent Posts
Monday, April 20, 2009Draft review: FSICPosted by Derek Carty at 3:30amSorry this article is coming a little late. I've had it nearly completed for a few weeks and never got around to finishing it. Anyway, this year I've teamed up with Paul Singman to compete in the Fantasy Sports Invitational Challenge (FSIC). It's an NL-only league, and you can view our team and some of the thoughts I had about our draft below. Feel free to give us your take on the roster in the comments. FSIC RosterHitters C - Jason Kendall 1B - James Loney 2B - Alfredo Amezaga 3B - Garrett Atkins SS - Jose Reyes CI - Casey Kotchman MI - Jack Wilson OF - Nate McLouth OF - Raul Ibanez OF - Cody Ross OF - Kosuke Fukudome OF - Chris Dickerson UT - Nyjer Morgan Pitchers P - Javier Vazquez P - Derek Lowe P - Kenshin Kawakami P - Jorge De La Rosa P - Ross Ohlendorf P - Joel Hanrahan P - Kevin Gregg P - Hong-Chih Kuo P - Kyle McClellan Bench 3B - Pedro Feliz P - Cha Seung Baek P - Jason Hammel P - Trevor Hoffman P - Wade LeBlanc Strategy and thoughtsWe didn't have a super-elaborate strategy, mostly just drafting for value. Here are a few of the tenets we followed: Don't worry too much about position scarcity We of course accounted for the exact effects of position scarcity, but in an NL-only league, replacement level is virtually the same at all positions — a low-skill player who will likely get only 200 at-bats. While people overspent on Dan Uggla and Stephen Drew, we were content to take guys like Alfredo Amezaga and Jack Wilson at the end of the draft while grabbing higher-skilled hitters early. Don't take a top catcher In a one-catcher league, it simply isn't an efficient use of resources to take a top catcher early. Jason Kendall was one of our last picks and is a perfectly capable starter. The first catchers off the board (Brian McCann and Geovany Soto) were the 15th and 16th hitters selected, yet our rankings had the first catcher as merely an even money proposition if taken as the 40th hitter. It seemed that a few teams overestimated the impacts of position scarcity in this setup. Consistency early Regular readers know that I love taking consistent players early, and we managed to do this fairly effectively. Reyes (Round 1) and Ibanez (Round 4) are as consistent as they come, and Atkins (Round 2) has also been quite consistent. McLouth (Round 3) has been consistent enough for the skills he's shown and the value we got on him. Loney, as a fifth rounder, also looks like a good pick, even if he's not quite as consistent as you'd like. There will be bargains on NL outfielders Same approach as I took in LABR, there were some good, cheap NL outfielders this year. Fukudome and Morgan are already tearing it up, and Cody Ross has finally broke out of his slump, hitting three home runs this weekend. He's a great bet for 25 dingers. I also really like Chris Dickerson if he can ever get going and procure a little more playing time. There are undervalued starters late We felt it was more important to get hitters who will actually be regulars or semi-regulars rather than overextend ourselves on pitching early on. There are still quality pitchers — or at least pitchers with upside — late, but the same is not always true for hitters in NL-only leagues. Kawakami, de la Rosa, Baek, and Ohlendorf all have a chance at a sub-4.00 ERA, and we managed to get two top starters in Vazquez and Lowe besides. Also, at the time, McClellan looked like he could wind up starting (and it's still possible he will). LeBlanc was more of a speculative pick that could turn a profit mid-season, and we recently picked up Jason Hammel, who should post an ERA in the 4.25 to 4.50 area by moving to the National League (if he gets a spot in Colorado's rotation). Wait until the middle-tier of closers Disappointingly, Heath Bell went off the board one pick before us, but Hanrahan is a good closer too. We kind of got stuck with Trevor Hoffman as well (thanks to a glitch in the draft room), but we were able to get Kevin Gregg late in the draft (before he was announced as the closer). Three closers in an NL-only league puts us among the elite, and it didn't cost too terribly much. We'll probably end up trading one at some point, though, once Hoffman comes back and proves he is healthy. Derek Carty is a 22-year old fantasy baseball analyst residing in New Jersey. In addition to writing for THTF, his work has appeared at Rotoworld (NBC), Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, and Heater Magazine. In his two years competing in expert leagues, he has won 2 titles with 4 four top three finishes, including a LABR NL title in 2009, making him the youngest person to ever win a major expert league title. Derek is a proud graduate of the MLB Scouting Bureau's Scout Development Program and is a firm believer in the importance of combining stats and scouting. He welcomes questions via e-mail. Comments
Kampfer said...
In this kind of format, good catcher is not very valuable. You may very well produce more by grabbing a top 1B or OF and end up producing more with no catcher. It is always stunning to know how insignificant a difference is between good catcher and average catcher. There is just not many good hitting catcher in MLB. Posted 04/20 at 02:54 PM
Derek Carty said...
Thanks for the feedback, mymrbig. While that may sound good in theory, we must always consider what your opponents are thinking and doing and what the exact values of players are. Catchers in this league turned out to be less valuable than catchers in a 12-team, two-C, mixed league. Sure, maybe you don’t want to end up with a guy like Kendall in an ideal scenario, but if your opponents are overestimated the effects of position scarcity (they were), your choice is to reach (or severely reach, as would have been the case) or simply ride it out. There was never a time when a catcher was even close to being the top player on our board. Soto, as the third catcher on the board I was using, was the 95th hitter, yet he was selected as the 16th. That type of thing happened with all the top catchers, so taking one just couldn’t have been justified. Also, we need to consider what “negative value” really is. Value is relative to league settings, and in this league, roughly 12 catchers will have positive value (12 teams), even if their raw stats are less than stellar. Posted 04/20 at 02:59 PM
Jeff said...
Derek, just as a point of reference, who is replacement level for 3B versus C? I’m going under the assumption that Atkins and Soto were grabbed at roughly the same spot in the draft, and it might be useful to look at their relative replacement’s stats to show that Soto was a reach that early. Posted 04/21 at 05:35 PM
Derek Carty said...
Sure thing, Jeff. Nick Hundley was my replacement level catcher (followed by John Baker and Jesus Flores) and a 180 AB Mike Lamb was replacement level at 1B (followed by a 100 AB Mat Gamel and a 125 AB Wes Helms - Ramon Vazquez at 210 AB was slightly above replacement level). Posted 04/21 at 05:39 PM |
To some extent, I disagree with your recommendation to not take a top catcher in this situation. NL-only and AL-only leagues are deep and basically show the same kind of depth as a 2-catcher mixed league. The drop off from McCann/Soto/Martin to Doumit/Iannetta/B. Molina is large (though I’m a big Iannetta fan). Then dropoff after Doumit/Iannetta/B. Molina is pretty big. While you don’t necessarily need McCann/Soto/Martin, I wouldn’t really want any of the bottom tier guys as my starter (Hundley/Flores/Pudge/Y. Molina/Kendall/Schneider.
The rule on catchers should, at the very least, be to end up with one of the top 6-7 catchers, because after that you start talking about guys who will rack up 300+ AB and literally return negative value.
The difference between McCann/Soto/Martin and Kendall/Schneider/Flores is quite astronomical.