Fantasy Baseball 2006 & Player Rankings

It's that time of year again. Where all of us "statheads" and wannabe General Managers, put our knowledge of the game and its players to the test to battle it out for bragging rights, pride, glory, and it some cases wads of cash. I do it because it's fun, it makes me more involved, and nothing beats talking trade! That's one of my favorite aspects. In the Diamond Mind league I'm in (the BTTF) I'm a pretty active trader. This is my 3rd full year in the league and my roster isn't anywhere near what it was when I took over the team. The only annoying thing when talking trade is that every league has that group of owners that totally overvalue their talent and will only make a trade if they totally rake the other team over the coals. That's not my MO. I always look to make trades with the teams that have a surplus of what I need and I have something they could use. I think I'm a pretty savvy trader, but then again who doesn't?
I'm a "commissioner" of a league of 14. I don't really want to be the commish, but all the role really entails is registering the league, setting it up, and getting everyone to sign up. It's one of the free Yahoo leagues. It's a head-to-head league based on 15 offensive and 15 pitching categories. It's a private league so I know everyone involved. It's been the same cast of characters year after year with a few new additions along the way. The newbies have been a welcomed addition because some of the oldies just set up a team, don't like how it's going and lose interest at some point during the season. We have 1 team whose strategy is to draft all Yankees. Since we're all across the country and it'd be impossible for us to do a live draft, we pre-rank everyone and Yahoo makes selections for us. Every year, the "Yankee" strategy results in a last place team. Most of the Yankees main talent are drafted in the early rounds, so guys like Tanyon Sturtze and Mike Stanton end up being their early round picks. Not a good strategy, but whatever makes it fun. And that's what we're all about: a fun league. We're not overly competitive and like I said, some lose interest half way through the season, sometimes even earlier. We've added more people that stick it out and add some competitiveness, so it's a lot of fun. 3 newbies from last year made the postseason which i want to say was 6 teams. This will be our 4th year on Yahoo (I think). I'm the defending champ and I've never finished lower than 3rd. I've done pretty well in fantasy leagues. I started playing them back in high school (circa 1990-1991). I won the first won I was in, then the second. I don't think I've ever placed lower than 4th. Not bad.
To expand a little bit on our league, we've been doing it for about 4 years with Yahoo. The first year I want to say the scoring was based on fantasy points. Your players would earn points based on statistical achievements. A single would be 1 point, double would be 2, etc. Pretty much every stat had a point value assigned to it. It was okay but there were ways to work around the system. One guy's strategy was to continuously pick up and drop pitchers. He would try and pick up guys that were pitching twice in a week. It worked as it got him to the championship game, which he won, beating me. The 2nd year we went to the head-to-head format. You would match up against 1 team and the game would last 1 calendar week. Scoring was based on 15 offensive categories and 15 pitching categories. The team with the better total at the end of the week would earn 1 point for each category they won. They keep a running total of points won, points lost, and points where you tied. That made up your Win/Loss record. It followed the standard format where teams were ranked by winning percentage. The top 6 teams make the postseason to battle for the championship in a tournament style format. Top 2 teams earn a bye with the championship lasting 2 weeks. The one drawback of the head-to-head format is that you may be able to win a lot of points with minimal participation by your players, particularly in the pitching categories. If a guy pitched a complete game shutout you were set. We learned that the hard way in our first year as we didn't set a minimum innings pitched limit. We've since put in the rule that you have to have a minimum of 45 innings pitched in order for your pitching stats to count. If you fail to make the minimum, you lose every pitching category (it's happened once). Rosters are set at 30 players. The offensive stats are accumulated by your daily lineup, which consists of 1 player at each position and a "DH," and the lineup can be changed daily. The pitching is 5 SPs, 4 RPs and 2 Ps. We've set a limit on in-season free agent pick-ups at 12 as we find it prevents the first guy to log on from picking up every guy under the sun. This year we'll have a 10 man bench so it shouldn't be a problem.
Now my friend Don has been calling me every day asking "how many people we got now?" I always tell him to check his computer and look for himself. God, he's annoying sometimes. He's called me 4 times already today. But that's because today is the day we "draft." I, being the commish, make the draft "live" tonight at 12am EST, I click the little button to change the draft status and we're a go. The draft order is set to random and he system will make selections based on pre-rankings, which are already set up for the lazy man, but if you're like me, you spend a good while moving guys around (maybe that's why I do so well). I've just finished my rankings and hopefully they land me another winner. I don't know that I really have a strategy. Usually, the pre-rankings are decent enough not to warrant many changes, but everyone has guys they like, guys they don't so some tweaking is necessary. My first step is to look for the guys I don't want and move them to my "don't draft me" list. This year's victims were AJ Burnett, Keith Foulke, Wood and Prior, Piazza, Nomar, Bagwell and a bunch of chumps I don't want to get stuck with like Tanyon Sturtze and BK Kim. The pre-rankings listed A-Rod as the #1 guy. I moved him to #2 behind Albert Pujols. I think Pujols is the man is going to have another MVP-type season. A-Rod sometimes scares me but I'd still take him on my team any day of the week. The rest of my top 10 goes as follows (Yahoo's ranking in parenthesis): Vlad Guerrero (3), Manny (5), Johan Santana (6), Big Papi (7), Derrek Lee (8), Mark Teixeira (4), David Wright (11) and Roy Halladay (27). I knocked Michael Young (9) and Carl Crawford (10) down my list to 16 and 17 respectively. I'm gambling on Halladay. I'm picking him for the AL Cy Young (he better stay healthy). The other player I moved up quite a bit was "Pronk," better known as Travis Hafner (34). I'm high on the Tribe for 2006 and Hafner is going to lead their charge. One strategy i do have is to try and load up on closers. They're more valuable in our league than middle relievers and there are always guys that miss the boat on a closer and I can always use one as trade bait (last year I had Nathan, Lidge, K-Rod and a guy who's name is escaping me -- I ended up trading Lidge for Mark Buehrle. I credit that trade in helping to win it all). This year I've ranked what I feel are the top closers at spots 26-31. Rivera (51), Lidge (62), Street (72), Wagner (65), Nathan (67) and Francisco Rodriguez (63). I may miss out on a few key position players but I think it's a good gamble. My other strategy is to move up guys I think will have good years that the rest of my league will either overlook or not move up in their rankings (some only rank a certain amount). Many are highly touted rookies. I moved Francisco Liriano (204) into the 60s (I'm guesstimating now as it's too many guys to count.) Other guys I'm banking on (in no particular order) are Josh Willingham (234), Paul Maholm (379), Jeremy Hermida (896), Hanley Ramirez (880), Delmon Young (895), Joey Gathright (577), Prince Fielder (154), Zack Duke (151), Matt Cain (150), Anthony Reyes (669), and Jeff Mathis (850), and Ian Kinsler (893). I'm not hoping to get them early but the goal is to land them as back-ups, that way I'm not wasting time waving chumps the system drafts for me to pick them up. Hopefully, that strategy works.
T-minus 5 minutes until the draft is marked as ready. I'm pretty sure it's not instantaneous so I'll probably have to wait until morning to see the outcome. Here's hoping this year I get a high pick (usually I'm in the 9-12 range....stupid Yahoo) and I get a team I'm happy with. I pretty sure I'll be trading into another winner if I'm not happy. I'm pretty confident that "Da Hamburglers" will repeat as champs!! (I live in a town called Hamburg). I'll post my roster tomorrow assuming the draft is done.
Take care and if you read this whole post that means you're either my father-in-law Dave (have fun in Vegas!!), or you really like reading blog entries (like me).
Later.
J-Boogie