Fantasy

Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports has confirmed on Twitter that Aroldis Chapman has signed with the Cincinnati Reds for five years and $30 million. This comes as a bit of a shock, especially given the depth of the Reds' rotation already.

While Edison Volquez is likely to miss the majority of the season, the team still has Aaron Harang, Bronson Arroyo, and Johnny Cueto as its top three, along with Homer Bailey to help fill out the rotation. 

Jimmy Hascup already gave his thoughts on Ricky Nolasco (click here to read the full article), so let’s take a quick look at my projections for him in 2010:

205.0 IP, 15 W, 3.91 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 195 K (8.56 K/9), 54 BB (2.37 BB/9)

Thoughts:

Many fantasy owners feel it’s unnecessary to draft stable closers since you can always find someone either late in your draft or in free agency.  You don’t have to look further than Ryan Franklin or David Aardsma from 2009 as support. 

So, this week we’ll take a look at the National League bullpen situations and next week we’ll shift our focus to the American League, looking at each team’s closer and those who could step in if something were to happen.  Additionally, we’ll continue to update these columns as draft day moves closer.

There are several interesting player comparisons we can look at in the first few rounds of 2010 fantasy drafts.  This season seems more muddled then normal, with very few clear-cut selections for fantasy owners to make due to injuries or epic struggles in 2009.  One of the interesting debates right now comes in the second, with David Wright (ADP 14.40) currently going a selection before Carl Crawford (ADP 15.17), on average.

ESPN released some 2010 predictions for both football and baseball today, and I’ve been reading them over for a little while. I thought this would be a good time to get the conversation going between the self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader In Sports,” Baseball Professor, and everyone else who wants to get involve. So what did ESPN’s crew of experts have to say?

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The momentum of the 2010 fantasy baseball season is slowly picking up, and one of the things that will be increasingly occupying rental space in everybody’s crawl will be just whom to select as the first overall draft pick.

While we enter this year with a handful of players that seem to be no-brainers, there are just as many players lurking in the distance that could actually wind up being better picks than those we think.

Are you an owner in a two-catcher format who likes to wait until the last few rounds to fill out one or two of your catching spots?  While it’s not a strategy that I’m in favor of (which we’ll discuss soon), here are two players that are worth eyeing who are going in Round 18 or later of 12-team formats:

Jesus Flores - Washington Nationals

Madison Bumgarner is a hyped pitching prospect who fantasy owners have been waiting on since the day he was drafted tenth overall in 2007.  With a 27-5 record to go along with a 1.65 ERA and 0.97 WHIP in 273 minor league innings, who can blame them?

The Giants seemed reluctant to push the 19-year-old to the major leagues in 2009, but when the opportunity presented itself, it was hard to resist.  He made four appearances (one start), showing just what all the hype was about.  He posted a 1.80 ERA and 1.10 WHIP, striking out ten batters while walking just three.

Also featured on Rotoprofessor.com !

Last year, Edinson Volquez was one of the top pitching draft prospects, and with good cause. The season prior (2008), Volquez broke out of his mold as a rookie for the Cincinnati Reds , posting a 17-6 record with a 3.21 ERA and an explosive strikeout to ball ratio of 206/93.

His only knock was he beaned 14 batters.