Fantasy Baseball

If you are a fantasy baseball avid, over the next few weeks leading up to your draft, you will likely read more "Top Ten Sleepers for 2011" or "Under the Radar Players to Watch Out For This Year" articles than ‘Useful Financial Advice’ or ‘Finance for Dummies’ articles Brian Cashman or Al Davis will read. Although, on that note, everyone in America would be well-served to read some of those articles. Anyway…sleepers. What are they? What does the term sleeper mean? How young or inexperienced does a player have to be to be considered a sleeper?

If you don't know who Kila Ka'aihue is, I wouldn't be surprised. Ka'aihue is the projected 2011 starting first baseman for the Kansas City Royals.

Yes, I am aware that no Royals player has hit 100 RBI since Carlos Beltran in 2003. Yes, I am aware that the Royals ranked 20th in 2010 in runs scored with only 676.

There has been some significant movement in our starting pitcher rankings since we originally checked in on them. 

The most glaring change was due to Zack Greinke’s trade to the Brewers, but that’s certainly not all. Let’s take a look at how things currently look:

The key to a successful fantasy baseball draft is maximizing the return value on each of your picks. At the start of each draft, everybody will have an equal value's worth of picks; therefore, unless you target players who could potentially exceed the value of the pick they were drafted with, you will finish your draft in the middle of the pack. One of the best types of player to target when attempting to maximize value is the player who disappointed the previous year. Logically, his value will be its lowest following a poor season; hence the appeal to targeting these players.

Once upon a time Brian Roberts was among the elite second basemen in the game.  Doesn’t that feel like decades ago at this point?  Even before injuries limited him to just 59 games in 2010 Roberts’ star had lost a bit of its shine.

Just look at his stolen base totals in recent years:

One of the biggest questions surrounding the baseball world this offseason involves the bat of Toronto's newest slugger, Jose Bautista.

Last season, Bautista's on-again, off-again relationship with the home run had many fantasy owners perplexed as to what type of player he truly was.

There are times that fantasy writers will make a bold statement or reach for a player in a mock draft in order to simply make a point.  As unrealistic as it may seem, they want to hammer it home how strongly they feel about a particular player.

That’s not something that I do and this isn’t one of those times. 

If I had a choice between David Price and Colby Lewis, I would make the same selection every single time, whether it be a mock draft or a real draft.

I would rather own Colby Lewis

It seems like at this time for the past few years we’ve had the same discussion about the potential breakout candidacy of Justin Masterson. 

The underlying metrics scream that he could be a successful, under-the-radar option for fantasy owners, yet he has consistently failed miserably. 

The 2010 season was no different, having posted the following line:

I would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t think Adrian Gonzalez landed in the perfect place for the 2011 season.  He moves out of spacious PETCO Park to the friendly confines of Fenway, a ballpark perfectly suited to his inside-out swing.

You would think that a player with over 7,500 plate appearances would be fairly easy to evaluate, but Adrian Beltre may be one of the more difficult players to project going into 2011.  This is a guy who has hit as high as .334 and as low .240, has hit as many as 48 home runs and as few as 19 and has driven in everywhere from 60 runs to double that number.  To say he has been inconsistent would be an understatement.