A little background on myself. I have been playing fantasy sports for over a decade now and through the years have gained the nickname “The Fantasy God.” My unique interpretation of sports psychology and split statistics have made me very successful in accurately being able to predict Major League Baseball. If you follow my advice you will win. I am highly accurate and never miss the playoffs in fantasy baseball, no matter how many leagues I am in. Since 2001 I have either finished in the top 3 or won a championships in 94% of my leagues. With all of that being said here are a few basic things to know about the 2011 fantasy baseball season.
Wait on pitching
It may be nice to have one top heavy ace on your team but caution yourself to taking pitchers early. You will be amazed at the great talent you will find after the 10th round in your draft. Stack up on hitting early and fill those spots that are thin. After all of your position players are filled then start worrying about your pitching.
Here is why. In a standard 12 team league based on Yahoo rankings here are a few great pitchers you can get. Round 10- Brandon Morrow, Chad Billingsley, Clay Buccholz. Rounds 11-12 Brett Anderson, Trevor Cahill, Wandy Rodriguez, Ted Lilly. Rounds 13-14 Josh Beckett, Gio Gonzalez, Madison Bumgarner, Ryan Dempster. Rounds 15-16 Ricky Nolasco, Javier Vazquez, Jeremy Hellickson, Brian Matusz, Matt Garza, Colby Lewis, Daniel Hudson. Rounds 17-18 CJ Wilson, Jorge De La Rosa, Brett Myers, Gavin Floyd, Jhoulys Chacin, Aroldis Chapman (if he starts), Edinson Volquez, Jordan Zimmermann. Rounds 19-20 Ian Kennedy, James Shieilds, Johnny Cueto, Scott Baker, Tim Stauffer. Rounds 21-22 Brett Cecil, Jonathan Niese, Jair Jurrjens, Clayton Richard, Edwin Jackson, Homer Bailey. If I wanted to I could wait until round 10 and draft an entire staff out of those guys I just listed and beat any rotation in my fantasy league on any given week. Now here are a list of guys who typically aren’t even being drafted this year who all will have enough value to be on your fantasy team. Bud Norris, John Lackey, Wade Davis, Anibal Sanchez, Derek Holland, Carlos Zambrano, Brian Duensing, Tommy Hunter, Travis Wood, JA Happ, Jeff Niemann, Jake Peavy, Mike Pelfrey, Erik Bedard, Brad Penny, James McDonald, Fausto Carmona, Randy Wells, Cory Luebke, Ross Ohlendorf, Jake Westbrook, Wade LeBlanc, Mark Buehrle, Brandon Webb, Chris Narveson, Carlos Carrasco, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Joe Blanton, Marc Rzepczynski, Mike Minor, Mike Leake, Rick Porcello, Jenry Mejia, Jake Arrieta, Luke Hochevar, Chris Tillman, Brad Bergesen, John Lannan, Aaron Harang, Justin Masterson, and Nick Blackburn. If this doesn’t convince you to wait on pitching then go ahead and pay your league salary in advance to make sure the champion gets it.
I would also wait on second base. If you have a high pick and your projected to get Robinson Cano then by all means do it. Also take Chase Utley, Dustin Pedroia, and Dan Uggla if your in a spot where you don’t have to overpay to get them. If you don’t get one of them I would wait until later in the draft. But that is a topic for a future blog. Make sure you fill your 1B, 3B, and SS early if possible since they are thin positions. SS is extremely thin and gets very weak after Hanley Ramirez and Troy Tulowitzki go off the board. After them its already thin pickings. There is “a big 7” this year at 1B. But you have to get one of the big 7 in the first two rounds. The big 7 would of course be Pujols, Cabrera, Votto, Gonzalez, Howard, Teixeira, and Fielder. If all of these guys are gone by the time you pick in round 2 then i would feel comfortable with Youkilis. There are a couple decent options a few rounds later such as Dunn, Morales, Butler, and Morneau but they all come with their own question marks. Try to get one of the big 7. You will be happy you did.
That pretty much covers each position for this season. I will go into more detail on each position over the next month. I will also address draft strategies, busts, sleepers, prospects, and anything else anyone asks for. As always don’t waste high picks on closers. Thats all for now. Leave questions or comments!
-Mark Brown
The Fantasy God
Well, I’ll speak for myself, but I assume others will think the same…
Starting with “The Fantasy God”, that immediately turned me off. If I wrote some article with that opening paragraph, you’d call me a pompous toolbag. Sooo yeah.
So, you’re going to draft 9 straight rounds of hitters and wait until round 10 to draft pitching. Good luck with that. Drafting a scrub SS, if you don’t get top 2 SS, in rounds 8-9 over starting pitching? Riiight. Good luck with Wandy and his 10 wins as your ace or Morrow and his SP ERA of 4.44.
Also, you say 1B is a thin position and then proceed to talk about the “Big 7” for that position. That’s the deepest position there is! I don’t follow the logic.
As you can tell, I don’t see how this “draft strategy” can come from “The Fantasy God”
While I agree with your premise that hitters are important, it is flawed and imcomplete. Pitchers are just as important in roto and head to head leagues as there are just as many categories for pitching as hitting. There are quality players to be had that swing a bat late. The idea should be to draft studs whether they hit or pitch. Your premise on the positions is also off. First base and outfield are the deepest positions in fantasy baseball. If anything, your philosophy should be to wait on an outfielder not a pitcher. So I will take the best player available on my draft board and let you have Chad Billingsley as your #1 pitcher.
I did say it would be good to draft one ace to anchor your staff. You can continue to take multiple pitchers high in the draft but at the end of the day I’ll have a stronger staff that I drafted later. I will have just as good of an ERA, more K’s, and I will fight for wins with my two start strategy week to week. Go ahead and have Halladay, Lincecum, Cliff Lee and a terrible offense with guys like Billy Butler starting for you and I’ll take my staff of Josh Johnson, Max Scherzer, Wandy Rodriguez, Madison Bumgarner, Brian Matusz, Ricky Nolasco, Brett Anderson, Gavin Floyd, Brandon Webb, and Jair Jurrjens with a completely stacked offense. I’m just telling you what will win. I make enough off of fantasy baseball each year to not have to work for 6 months. I didnt address outfield because your right, it is deep. And you can’t go wrong with it. I always hear that 1B is deep but I dont agree. I like 6 of the big 7 minus Ryan Howard. I like Youkilis. After that its weak. If you go Dunn you lose lots of average, if you go Morales or Morneau you get an injury. If you go Butler you lose power. Konerko, Pena, Huff, etc are all terrible options this year. You need a guy in the first 2 rounds or you will be weak at the position. I appreciate you guy’s feedback. Any response is a good response. But trust me that this is the way to go this year. I would even say its okay to add 2 pitchers in the top 9 rounds, but I certainly wouldn’t go any deeper than that. As far as SS goes, I’d wait very late to get a guy who does 1 thing good. Because Hanley is great, Tulo is a first round bust, Reyes in an injury risk, and you have to waste too high of a pick for mediocre players like Jeter, Alexei, Drew, and Andrus. There is no way I’d take any of those SS over an ace like Buchholz when I can get a young SS with upside in the last few rounds.
I love this strategy and this is how I have been thinking about drafting since fantasy baseball has come up this year. I had never really thought about how 1b is actually pretty slim. By slim I mean that pretty much after the 1st and 2nd round almost all the top first basemen will be gone and after that you don’t have much to choose from. I agree to with SS, if you can’t get one early you might as well wait for a guy like Castro that you can get pretty late considering how bad SS position is. I do believe that you can pick most of your pitchers even though I don’t know if I would go as far as round 10. I feel if you can get some core offensive players rounds 1 through 6 and then start loading up on pitchers based on value and filling in the rest of your lineup.
Thankfully, there is more than one way to skin a cat. I too have won a lot of money playing fantasy baseball and there are plenty of good strategies that work and are very successful. I think the key is being open to change as the draft warrants.
I agree Gregg…if Cliff Lee mysteriously falls 2 rounds I would break my own strategy and take him…I understand there are many different draft strategies that will give you a winning team but based on this year’s depth this is the one that will give a team the best chance to finish the top seed heading into the playoffs…and drafting a good team is only part of being a winning team…my next blog will address the 2 start pitcher strategy that will aid to the draft strategy i spoke of
Ever since I’ve played fantasy baseball I’ve followed the general strategy of drafting pitching late (8th round or later) and I’ve always come away with a quality pitching staff and have done well every year. That being said I see no reason to change that strategy since I agree with the author that pitching is extremely deep this year. Also, depth at pitching is more important than having one or two aces and a mediocre rest of staff because as most people will tell you, pitchers are more prone to injury than any other position and if one of your aces goes down you’re done in pitching. If you draft for depth and one of your pitchers goes down you still have a lot of good pitchers.
In H2H I don’t think about a starter till late.
In roto? I’ll draft one if the value is right.
That’s been my philosophy for 15 years and I’ve done quite well on the whole.
Agreed. I stated in my article that I was basing this off of a Head to Head format. There are too many formats to consider every single type of league, so i typically write about Head to Head with Yahoo style rankings since that is the most highly played website and format.