CarGo is the MVP
by Jonathan SherSeptember 13, 2010
While the race for Most Valuable Player in the National League will go down to the wire with Carlos Gonzalez, Joey Votto and Albert Pujols, when it comes to fanatsy baseball, Carlos is in a league of his own.
Pujols entered the year as the consensus top player in fantasy ball, Votto could lay claim to it best young superstar, but Gonzalez was more of a wild card, a player with power and speed but also poor plate discipline, a short track record of major league success and not even an iron-clad hold on a starting job. That he's matched them in triple crown stats while stealing bases at a harder-to-fill position has made him far more valuable—in fact he's far more valuable this season than any other player in baseball
My draft team, the NorthExposures, was among the beneficiaries in our 14-owner mixed league, one of the countless public leagues at Yahoo. The chart below shows the list of 50 players who appear most often on Yahoo's top 500 Public League teams (rotisserie scoring):
Player %500 Fantasy Team Draft position
Carlos González 51.6 NorthExposures 110
Buster Posey 32.6 Honkers --
Mat Latos 31.8 NorthExposures 222
Adam Wainwright 31.6 The_Superhoo 49
Billy Wagner 30.2 Snipas 91
Francisco Liriano 27.8 The Little Ninjas 234
Juan Pierre 26.6 Honkers 236
John Axford 25.6 fHoogazi --
Álex Ríos 24.2 Vegas Breasts 158
Josh Hamilton 23.4 MR Hoos 93
Rafael Soriano 21.4 NorthExposures 143
David Price 21.4 The Little Ninjas 182
Carl Crawford 20.8 fHoogazi 17
Jon Lester 20.8 The Little Ninjas 47
Josh Johnson 20.4 fHoogazi 73
Martín Prado 20.4 Bealestreet Bluesmen 142
Hanley Ramírez 20.2 Bealestreet Bluesmen 2
Tim Hudson 20.2 Bealestreet Bluesmen 167
Chris Pérez 19.8 NorthExposures 274w
Robinson Canó 19.6 Uni Va Cavs 41
Matt Capps 18.8 Snipas 218
Vladimir Guerrero 18.4 NorthExposures 194
Omar Infante 18.2 The_Superhoo 288
Jason Heyward 17.8 Snipas 106
José Bautista 17.8 fHoogazi --
Miguel Cabrera 17.6 Gus Burgher 14
José Reyes 17.2 NorthExposures 56
Ryan Franklin 17.0 WahooWasp 173
Max Scherzer 16.4 Vegas Breasts 213
Clay Buchholz 16.2 fHoogazi 292
Hong-Chih Kuo 16.2 Tiki --
Hunter Pence 16.0 Tiki 112
Joakim Soria 15.8 The_Superhoo 105
Joey Votto 15.8 Bealestreet Bluesmen 27
Brian Wilson 15.6 Bealestreet Bluesmen 139
Roy Halladay 15.6 The_Superhoo 21
Brandon Lyon 15.4 fHoogazi --
Ryan Zimmerman 15.4 MR Hoos 20
Heath Bell 15.2 Snipas 119
Andrés Torres 15.2 NorthExposures --
Ryan Raburn 15.0 Vegas Breasts --
Clayton Kershaw 14.6 NorthExposures 82
Tommy Hanson 14.6 The Little Ninjas 66
Brad Lidge 14.6 WahooWasp 224
Albert Pujols 14.4 Tiki 1
Brett Gardner 14.2 Uni Va Cavs --
Kevin Gregg 14.0 Honkers --
Trevor Cahill 14.0 Honkers --
Justin Verlander 13.8 WahooWasp 61
Nelson Cruz 13.8 NorthExposures 59
My thoughts and observations:
(1) This reinforces my belief that while leagues can be lost in the early rounds, they are won in the middle and late rounds. You have to go down to the 17th most valuable player to find a first-round pick in Hanley Ramirez and only two other first-rounders cracked the top 50.
(2) It sucked this year if you had the third pick of the first round, as I did. Pujols and Ramirez were vastly superior to anyone else heading into the season and proved why.
(3) Miguel Cabrera is the type of player to take in the first couple of rounds: Safe, consistent, not prone to injury and young enough that he shouldn't regress.
(4) Sixteen of the top 50 were selected after round 10 and 10 weren't selected at all. It really pays to research deeply enough to make strong picks later in the draft.
(5) Toss out the pre-draft rankings and don't be afraid to over-draft a player you think is underrated. That's how I got Cargo, Cruz. Of course it's also how I ended up with Julio Borbon, so there is risk involved.
(6) Here's an attempt to group the players, noting that some players fit in to several:
- Budding stars: Gonzales, Cano, Zimmerman, Kershaw, Hanson,
- top prospects: Posey, Latos, Axford, Heyward
- Prospects a year or two later: Price, Perez, Scherzer, Buchholz, Rayburn, Gardner, Cahill
- best of the best: Wainwright, Crawford, Lester, Johnson, Ramirez, Cabrera, Soria, Votto, Wilson, Halladay, Bell, Pujols, Verlander
- injury risks: Wagner, Reyes, Hudson, Cruz
- comeback kids: Liriano, Rios, Hamilton, Guerrero
- one-dimensional wonders: Pierre, Franklin
- underrated: Prado, Pence
- change of scenery helped: Soriano
- luck at a shallow position: Infante
- out of left field: Bautista, Torres
- Emerging closers: Kuo, Lyon, Lidge, Gregg
(7) There is a deeper pool of prospects a year or two past their buzz than there are of current prospects.
(8) Most of the "best of the best" are on the right side of 30.
(9) Picking injury risks can be a viable strategy, but don't go overboard.
(10) It surprised me Bautista was so low in the top-50, but perhaps our league was slow to pick him up as a waiver claim and missed out on some of his production. Or maybe there is a weaker correlation between good free agent acquisitions and a good overall finish than there is between good drafts and finishes since arguably the draft is more a product of skill where as free agent signing can simply be a matter of who is quickest.
(11) I was able to build what looks to be the league winner with strong picks in the middle and late rounds. My NorthExposures ended up with two of the top three, three of the top 11, four of the top 19, five of the top 22, six of the top 27, seven of the top 40 and nine of the top 50, including one I picked up as a free agent (Torres). In the lower rounds, especially, go for players with high ceilings who are ranked low because they haven't fulfilled their potential, are injury risks or who struggled the previous year.
Jonathan Sher is a veteran investigative reporter, a one-time lawyer and a rookie fantasy baseball writer. He welcomes comments, questions and suggestions at sherpalumbo AT rogers DOT com.
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