Joe Mauer – ADP — 13.  Last year, his homers were bonkers for him.  He’s a catcher with a bad back.  Leave him to the autodrafters.

Mark Reynolds – ADP — 20.  Are people seriously drafting a guy that breaks the strikeout record every year in the 2nd round?  Rhetorical!

Victor Martinez – ADP — 22.  At 1st base, this makes no sense.  At catcher, it makes less sense.

Jason Bay – ADP — 25.  I’m hoping Reyes will come back soon, but right now Bay’s hitting behind Wright, Lousy Castillo and Angel Pagan and in front of Daniel Murphy.  Bay anywhere near 25 is fjord’ing crazy.

Pablo Sandoval – ADP — 39.  I’m guessing drafters reach for Sandoval due to The Great 3rd Basemen Drought of 2010.  My Chase Headley projections are 70/20/85/.290/10, Sandoval’s projections are 80/24/95/.315/4.  Cust kayin’.

Aaron Hill – ADP — 50.  Last year’s overrated guys (namely Hamilton) were causing people to send death threats to the site.  This year Aaron Hill could knock up your 17-year-old sister and you wouldn’t care that much.  Not sure why, but this year there’s a pretty boring group of overrated guys.  Should give people more reason to ignore them.  Alas…

Javier Vazquez – ADP — 59.  Unless Keith Law has been doing hundreds of mock drafts, this ADP is baffling.  Last time he pitched in NY, he had a 4.91 ERA.  That was pre-Jetstream.

Manny Ramirez – ADP — 62.  When he was younger, his insouciance (Word of the Day!) was cute and didn’t mess with his game.  Yeah, insouciance doesn’t age well.

Aramis Ramirez – ADP — 61.  I have him 30 spots lower on my top 100.  I thought about dropping him another 10 or so spots when I thought about how he has no speed and hasn’t hit over 30 homers since 2006.

Billy Butler – ADP — 81.  November Grey thought about doing a Butler sleeper post, but now I think Butler’s in sleeper sell territory. He doesn’t bring that much to the table. Unless we’re talking about the dinner table.

He doesn’t really have any.  On Bill James’s Speed Score where the average is 5.0, Hill’s at 3.2.  Behind such tug boats as Mark Teixeira, Glass Chipper and Scott Rolen.  All right, but you can’t just ignore those 108 RBIs he had last year.  Maybe you can.  He hit behind a career year from Marco Scutaro who had a .379 OBP in 680 plate appearances.  Speaking of which, Aaron Hill had the most plate appearances in the major leagues last year.  Number one.  As in, no one was in front of him number one.  You have to take that many plate appearances with a grain of salt.  In 2010, Hill will be hitting behind who?  John Buck?  Jose Bautista?  Yeah, there goes those RBIs.  People are drafting him around the same time as Justin Morneau (30/100/.290) and Curtis Granderson (30/20)… Okay, different positions.  But how are people drafting him at the same time as Cano’s 90/27/100/.315/5?  Take a 2nd baseman later (Ian Stewart, Scott Sizemore, Kelly Johnson) instead of reaching for Aaron Hill.  He’s overrated.

Billy Butler is a line drive machine.  When he’s not hitting line drives, he’s hitting ground balls.  He’s much closer to Robinson Cano or, to get historical on ya, Edgar Martinez.  Edgar Martinez only hit above 30 homers once in his career, Cano has yet to reach it.  Maybe it’s the portly body that has people seeing Butler as a surefire power breakout, but I don’t agree.  If you don’t believe me because of trust issues, CHONE and Bill James both project Butler to hit 17 homers.  Then there’s the Royals.  How many Runs do you think Butler’s getting in that lineup?  80?  85?  Yeah, maybe.  Then there’s the RBIs.  See lack of Runs.  Looking at maybe 100.  So 85/25/100/.300.  That’s not terrible, but those numbers are leaning down rather up.  What I mean is, he’s between 75-85/20-25/85-100/.300.  So if he ends up at 75/22/85/.300, that’s a corner man, not a 1st baseman.  If he had steals to make up for his shortcomings, it would be different.  But Billy Butler couldn’t steal a base if they were only 15 feet apart and he grew 13 more feet.  You know who does have some speed?

Robot Jones.  On Bill James’s Speed Score, Jones had a 4.4 last year.  Butler was at 2.0. (You ever think if Butler had any speed he might have had 7 or so triples instead of some of those doubles?)  Last year in 358 plate appearances, Jones stole 10 bases.  In 672 PAs, Butler stole 1 and I’m assuming it was a hit and run and no one covered 2nd.  Jones’s fly ball rate was 41.3% last year; Butler was 34.6%.  Jones can hit 30 homers a lot easier than Butler.  I’m calling Butler and Jones a push on Runs and RBIs.  So that leaves average.  As we all know, average is fickle, but Butler will easily beat Jones.  At least .300 to .270.  However, Butler is being drafted around 70 spots before Jones.  Yes, Garrett Jones is much riskier.  If Butler were at 120 and Jones 140, I’d take Butler every time.  There’s a chance with Jones that he flames out and looks like Ludwick circa 2009.  But the difference of 70 spots in ADP has me in Jones’s corner.  He’s much better value.  Oh, and Billy Butler hits about .450 every Spring Training, which led him to be dubbed Mr. Grapefruit, so his ADP isn’t going down any time soon.

I know what a lot of you are thinking.  What the eff does totes crazy mean? Actually, I thought you were thinking Aramis will beat my projections this year because it’s a contract year.  Ah, yes.  The contract year theory.  For those not in the know, the contract year theory is when someone’s production peaks the year they are about to enter free agency, allowing them to cash in.  The first known example of the contract year theory was when Noah built the ark before signing a lifetime contract that produced nothing except odd texts about animal fornication.  It didn’t catch on in baseball for many years later.  In 1897, the Cleveland Spiders management gave a $50 raise to Sparky Anklebiter after a massive 3 HR season only to see him drop to 0 HRs the next year.  I wish someone would flip the script on players who play well in their contract year.  I’d love to hear a negotiation go something like this, “For you to be so much better in your contract year, it means you were sandbagging it for the previous three years.  Yeah, we want someone who sandbags it.  We’re going to sign Jack Wilson instead.  He throws well.”  Okay, now for actual examples of contract year players from last year:  Beltre (8 homers and crizzap), Rick Ankiel (lots of strikeouts, ugly bout with an outfield wall), Erik Bedard (usual injury shizz), Khalil Greene (ended up in the psyche ward), Rich Harden (see Bedard), Brett Myers (bunch of hits off him, some thrown at his wife) and Xavier Nady (season ended April 14th).  Yay, contract year theory.  That shizz is foolproof.

Aramis Ramirez is currently being drafted on average around 60th.  That’s about 3 rounds too early.  He’s overrated.  Grey out.

There’s something else at work here.  Something no one wants to talk about.  Fantasy baseball ‘perts are afraid of you.  You, the reader.  Everywhere you look people are telling you Reynolds is a top third baseman.  They’re telling you he’s a top third baseman because they screwed up last year and they don’t want to screw up again.  They think there will be a mutiny if you don’t see rankings that make sense compared to everyone else.  Finally, they underestimate you.  They think you only look at last year’s stats and you want the next year’s rankings to compare favorably to them.  It’s why everyone (but me) was telling you to draft Josh Hamilton last year.  No one wanted to rock the Josh Hamilton boat.  (Actually, I like Hamilton this year, but that’s for a another post.) There’s so much “What has he done for me lately?” in fantasy baseball that you can exploit it if you’re aware of it.  People have great years all the time, doesn’t mean they will have a great year again the following year.

There was a reason I told you to draft Reynolds last year and it had as much to do with where he was being drafted as what he could do.  Mark Reynolds is not a 1st, 2nd, 3rd or really even a 4th rounder.  He’s definitely being overrated right now for 2010 fantasy baseball.  Is anyone that is drafting him early in 2010 fantasy baseball drafts actually looking at his numbers?  He struckout 223 times last year.  He hit .187 in September.  What if he hits .187 in April?  You gonna be happy about drafting him in the first four rounds of 2010?  Doode’s a bad luck year away from hitting .225.  What if he only steals 15 bases and hits 34 homers while batting .250?  Sounds terrific…for a guy you draft in the 7th round.  Not the 3rd round.  Stop the madness.  Please.

For next year, we will give him an extra ten Runs and RBIs.  Annoying nosism aside, that seems fair.  I refuse to give Mauer anything higher than a .330 average for 2010.  That’s still good; it’s around his norm.  You start assuming people are going to hit .350, then you may as well also paint a female face on your knuckles.  The 28 homers are the obvious outlier.  In 2009, Mauer nearly doubled his career average for HR/FB.  To quote Q-Bert, “@?&!$%.”  Mauer had a HR/FB of 20.4, which had him sandwiched between Adam Dunn and Albert Pujols.  Did Mauer hit any balls last year that didn’t go out of the park?  I think he hits 18 to 20 homers and wouldn’t be surprised by 15 to 18.  What some may find surprising is even if he repeats what he did last year, I don’t want him as my 1st or 2nd round pick.  He’s a catcher dammit!  He’s injury-prone and he plays a very demanding position.  (Keep your arms inside the vehicle, we’re about to loop back around to our earlier comparison.)  So is Joe Mauer better than Iannetta?  Of course!  But, in regards to fantasy baseball, by how much?  If Iannetta (last year, 16 homers in 289 ABs) gets 400 ABs and hits around .260 with 20 homers, I’ll take that with my last pick of the draft every day and twice on Muesday while taking a big bat at a power position in the early rounds.  Mauer helps in Runs and obviously kills Iannetta on average, but you only need around a .280 average for your fantasy team to be successful.  You don’t have to turn your average to 11.  Don’t get lost in Mauer’s eyes, he’s overrated for 2010 fantasy baseball.