Fantasy

Well another Fantasy Baseball season is upon us, and I'm sure most of you are preparing quite hard right now for your upcoming drafts. Some of the cabin fever baseball diehards may have already drafted and many others are hitting the mock draft scene (check out www.mockdraftcentral.com) on a nightly basis to help finalize your draft boards. 

We all know Max Scherzer’s 2010 story. It was a tale of two seasons, to say the least, as we can tell by his splits before he was sent down to the minors and after it:

Hanley Ramirez: When he has played in at least 140 games in a season, Ramirez has averaged a .313 AVG, .385 OBP, .520 SLG, .906 OPS, 25 HR, 78 RBI, 112 R, 187 H, 39 SB and 108 SO.

Troy Tulowitzki: When he has played in at least 120 games in a season, Tulo has averaged a .301 AVG, .372 OBP, .533 SLG, .906 OPS, 28 HR, 95 RBI, 98 R, 162 H, 13 SB and 107 SO.

If you play in a standard 5×5 format, you can view my rankings by clicking here.  For leagues that utilize OBP instead of average, there are a few significant changes.  Let’s take a look at how things look:

In Spanish, the word Espinosa means thorny. A rose is thorny. Danny Espinosa is much like a rose. He can be a thing or beauty for his fantasy owners, or he can be downright painful.

As we’ve discussed before, a late-round option is someone who has an ADP after Round 18 (216) according to Mock Draft Central.  Considering how many question marks there are at the top of the shortstop rankings, the idea of nabbing one of these guys as a safety net is probably a very good idea:

Injuries continue to dominate the news, but today it is far from all bad.  We have multiple pieces of good news concerning injuries tonight as well as some bad as one of the top pitchers in baseball suffers a tough injury. There is also news of the AL Rookie of the Year and what his role will be this season, along with news and notes from today's games from Arizona and Florida on some players that you surely have questions about heading into your drafts.

With Adam Wainwright done for the year, it raises an interesting question for fantasy owners. What happens if you were unfortunate enough to have Wainwright on your team? Or for that matter if one of your top pitchers gets hurt and will miss most of the season? Here are some options to consider that might get overlooked in your draft that you could steal in the late rounds.

Click here to enter the 2011 Fantasy Baseball Team Name Contest



Here’s an updated and expanded look at the 2011 Starting Pitcher rankings.

1.  Roy Halladay, Philadelphia Phillies:  Led the Majors in wins (21), ranked third in WHIP (1.04), fourth in ERA (2.44), and tied for fifth in strikeouts (219). He’s the complete package.

Last year, the Cincinnati Reds had two young pitchers that burst onto the scene.

One of them was Mike Leake, who skipped the minor leagues and started in the majors instantly. He stole a spot in the Reds' rotation and ran away with it. He took the fantasy world by storm by going 5-0 with a 2.22 ERA in his first 11 starts.