Definitely agree on maintaining flexibility in snake drafts to take advantage of bargains throughout the draft. One caveat detailed in that link is to avoid getting over-invested in a specific position too early. Nothing’s more frustrated than gorging on, say, OFs early and then seeing nice values floating around late in the draft that you can’t take advantage of.

I competed in an expert league last year and lost on the last day–but have won various CBS leagues in years gone by and I’ve typically subscribed to the “no pitchers before round 5″ maxim and no more than 1 closer before say–round 10 or so –no catchers til late.

BUT…since in 5×5–all 10 categories count equally toward winning and if I can strike a balance and there’s a couple pitchers who look to be Shin-soo-choo-ins to rule in 4 categories, I’m beginning to wonder if I should alter my thinking a little. One has to be light on their feet at time of the draft to capitalize on mistakes that have slipped through and not be totally locked into a formula. Pitchers look deeper than ever this year though…maybe I should invest in a roto dart board?

And, yup, understood on LPP’s flexibility. It’s impressive. I try to do Point Shares for all the league formats I play in so I know AL/NL/MLB 12-team will be done. I’m not a big fan of the custom ones…(except Fantasy Razzball of course)

@Bob: Wow. Overcame Martin, Soto, and Reyes. Crazy. It must’ve been 10 team MLB, right? The bigger the available free agent pool, the more roster management plays a bigger role. I’ve actually gravitated towards deeper leagues (15 team MLB, 12 team one-league, etc.) b/c I like drafting and speculation (e.g., snagging Andrew McCutchen for $3 in case he gets called up) more than playing ‘hot hands’. All that said, Martin, Soto, and Reyes….and won…impressive.

@cubfever7: I do think that pitchers tend to be undervalued. But they do carry more risk (see Webb and Peavy last year). My general snake draft philosophy for pitchers is to not reach too early for SPs – if there’s a standout, look in the 2nd round. If there are a group of strong pitchers, maybe wait until the 4th or 5th round. But if there are signs of a pitcher rally happening earlier, be flexible enough to grab one. In a $ draft, I don’t like investing too much in one starter. I’d rather draft a lot of high potential SPs in the $5-$15 range with the expectation that a couple will get injured. You spend $20+ on a guy like Webb and he gets hurt…and you’re f***ed.

@cubfever7: You can win like that, but it makes things harder. You’ll need to draft exceptionally well later on for hitting.

If a Felix and Halladay are there for the taking in a 12 team mixed–wouldn’t it make sense to take them assuming you landed a Braun and a Kinsler for example in rds 1 and 2?

@Simply Fred: word – though there may be some intra-system problems that make the James projections bad to use relative to other projection systems (e.g., too bullish on youngsters compared to oldsters – I’ve heard this before and it may have been what Rudy meant).

J: 77/24/76/.255/8
G: 85/29/100/.260/10

BTW: I checked Grey’s top 20 OF: James’ projections averaged 4% above Grey’s–big deal.

Pujols, Sparkakis, Haren for
Fielder, J-Upton, Beckett

A few questions:

(1) “And I don’t even pay attention to Bill James’ projections. Too bullish.” – I don’t disagree, necessarily, but it doesn’t really matter if they’re bullish relative to the other projection systems (or even to real life for that matter), so long as the intra-system differences are accurate, no? In other words, if they projected Prince Fielder to 92 HR last year, Billy Butler to hit 42, Juan Pierre to hit .5 (and similarly doubled the actual HR output of each player), that would be an incredibly good system for fantasy baseball rankings, no?

(2) One advantage that Last Player Picked has over PS is its flexibility – so many folks (yours truly included) play in custom leagues that LPP (and Baseball Notebook, though that’s a pay site) are great resources. Though I may respect the methodology of PS, I can’t really utilize it very often.

(3) Speaking of FBHOF, is Lou going to do his War Room application this year? I remember seeing it last year and just being awestruck.

/mooching

@brad: Once I have 2010 rankings, I’d compare the actual value against the expected value of that round. You can get the latter by say taking the 12 players whose rank matches the # picks in that round – e.g., the average Point Shares of players ranked 13-24 represent the 2nd round.

Off-hand, I’d pass on Vazquez and Wandy for the offensive keepers you mentioned.

I think CHONE and ZiPS are both slightly better than Marcel, BTW, since they take a few more variables into account (note: the originator of Marcel – Tom Tango – will admit as such – Marcel should be a baseline that all other reporting systems should exceed although it’s always surprising based on tests how well Marcel does vs. the others).

And I don’t even pay attention to Bill James’ projections. Too bullish.

@gaucho: I’ll break it out AL vs. NL for 2010 projections.

@Charlie: Yeah, Lastplayerpicked isn’t bad. He did a bunch of comparisons vs. Point Shares but I found the methodology of the tests was lacking. I’d still argue Point Shares are better for apples-to-apples comparisons and provide an estimate of a player’s impact on standings but he crushes me in league rules flexibility.

@cubfever7: The Point Shares are estimating the value of players with 2009 data. The reason why it’s best – generally – not to take SPs in the first couple of rounds is b/c 1) Others don’t and the longer you wait for the SP you like, the better value you get and 2) SPs tend to be riskier propositions vs. their projections.

For this year, I could maybe argue Lincecum but tough to say at this point. Generally looking for good shot of healthiness and shot at either sub 1.05 WHIP and/or 300 Ks.

Going back in recent memory, here are the SPs that I think were top 10 picks: Pedro (when he was with the Red Sox), Randy, Johan up through last year (espec. when he was turning in sub-1.00 WHIP), Peavy & Webb (for a year in there and they didn’t earn the spot).

Check out Randy and Pedro’s stats in 1998-2000 to see what I mean in terms of pitcher value. Holy crap were they good. http://razzball.com/fantasy-all-stars-early-00s/

@Mikey boy324: Yup, will do a risky pitcher analysis in the next couple of weeks.

@cubfever7: They should be drafted later because there’s a lot more pitchers.

@sean: CHONE is free. Point Shares is a composite. Rudy does CHONE first because it’s readily available and trusted.

@Van Hammersly: He’ll have matchup value, not much else.

@Andrew: Rosters equal, Braun is more valuable. Here is some write up on the methodology – http://razzball.com/2008-fantasy-baseball-player-rater-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%9Cpoint-shares%E2%80%9D/. I can’t say 100% the definition behind SGPs but I think the biggest difference is that SGP’s compare a player’s worth vs. a replacement value player (scrub off FA wire) vs. Point Shares which bases it off the average player.

You’ll see in the link I attached my argument why average player is better. And while it’s possible that someone would build their team around a dominating SB guy (and, really, no stat can be affected by one player’s impact like SB), there are significant risks with such an approach as it makes it that much harder to replace if they get hurt.

I see him going in the 7-9th rounds…. on average the 8th.

I’m a fan.

And for everyone here’s some more Billy Butler HYPE.

http://royalsblog.kansascity.com/?q=node/483

and NO its not brad evans writing….