Common players on my 2011 fantasy teams
by Derek CartyApril 01, 2011
With draft season over and my final draft recap posted yesterday, I thought I'd resume my yearly tradition of reviewing my rosters and seeing which players ended up on more than one of my teams. With 24 players making the list this year, I've far eclipsed the totals from previous years (of course, I'm also in one extra league this year).
The strategy of having common players
Having so much overlap between teams can be a good thing or a bad thing. As Chris Liss of Rotowire noted a couple days ago when he engaged in the same exercise, "I'll win because I picked the right guys, or I won't. If you have six leagues, and you roster all different players, you almost can't help lucking into a win just because you have an investment in every possible scenario. And at the same time, there's almost no way all your teams will do well. But this year, I have a chance if five or six players pan out."
I'm comfortable with this scenario because I have confidence in my judgment on players. In years that it works (like two years ago), I'll end up doing well in most of my leagues. In years that it doesn't work as well (like last year), I won't excel in any of my leagues, especially if the reason these players underperform is because they get injured (I'm looking at you, Nelson Cruz). A couple of injuries to a couple of key cogs could torpedo several of my teams.
Caveats
As I mentioned last year, just because a player is on here doesn't mean he was a "have to have" guy for me or that I was targeting him specifically. Take this list for what it's worth: Simply that these players, for one reason or another, wound up on my fantasy team multiple times. Some guys I targeted specifically (like Napoli, Lewis, Uribe, Scott, Valverde and Pierre) while others merely happened to end up on my team through no real preconceived plan (like Votto, Byrd, Nolasco, Betancourt and to an extent Stanton). Then there are others that I thought would be on more of my teams but, for whatever reason, aren't (Jay Bruce, Tim Stauffer, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Adam Dunn, Vladimir Guerrero, Seth Smith, and Ryan Raburn, among others).
Finally, note that there is some bias here in that there wasn't an equal chance of me selecting every player. I play in two mixed leagues (Tout Wars and Yahoo! Friends & Family), two NL-only leagues (LABR and FSIC), but only one AL-only league (Cardrunners). If it seems like there are more NL players on this list, there probably are. I had four opportunities to select NL players compared to three chances for AL players.
The rosters
If you want to recap each of my drafts, here are the links to all five articles I penned about them:
Cardrunners AL
LABR NL
Tout Wars Mixed
Yahoo! Friends & Family Mixed
FSIC NL
The players
Hitters — 3 teams
Mike Napoli: TOUT, CR, YAHOO!
Juan Uribe: TOUT, LABR, FSIC
Ryan Theriot: TOUT, LABR, YAHOO!
Pitchers—three teams
Colby Lewis: TOUT, CR, YAHOO!
Frank Francisco: TOUT, CR, YAHOO!
Hitters—two teams
Joey Votto: YAHOO!, FSIC
Jose Bautista: TOUT, YAHOO!
Juan Pierre: TOUT, YAHOO!
Mark Reynolds: CR, YAHOO!
Aaron Hill: TOUT, CR
Adam Lind: TOUT, CR
Mike Stanton: TOUT, LABR
Luke Scott: TOUT, CR
Dan Johnson: TOUT, CR
Marlon Byrd: LABR, FSIC
Pitchers—two teams
Ted Lilly: TOUT, FSIC
Ricky Nolasco: TOUT, YAHOO!
Phil Coke: TOUT, CR
Joel Hanrahan: TOUT, LABR
Jonathan Broxton: LABR, FSIC
Jose Valverde: TOUT, YAHOO!
Sergio Romo: LABR, YAHOO!
Rafael Betancourt: YAHOO!, FSIC
Alex Sanabia: LABR, FSIC
Concluding thoughts
What do you think? Are these players you'd want to bet your season on? And if you have any questions (maybe about a specific player on the list), as always, feel free to comment.
Derek Carty, 23, has also been published by NBC's Rotoworld, Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, and USA Today. This season, he'll be contributing to FanDuel and will be linking to all of his work at DerekCarty.com. In his three years competing in expert leagues, he has won 2 titles with 4 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, Facebook, or Twitter.
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