@Cole: Yeah, I have both of those albums too. Good stuff.

@royce!: Bash Brothers! Ha!

do you think that technique is worth trying out (it worked for some people last year), or should i just treat the draft like a normal mixed league, and if i happen to draft all three of my NL picks in the first three rounds, so be it?

another interesting thing about this league are there are two mini-drafts during the season where you can draft up to three more NL players… kinda cool.

@Random Collmenter: Not sure I fully understand. You can use 3 NL players the whole year or they have to be traded into the AL? If you can use them all year, why would a top tier guy like Kemp go in the 13th? Draft NL top guys early as you would AL guys, no?

any general advice for an 9-team AL-only league where we can also draft three NL players? was thinking about waiting until the last 3 rounds to draft my NL guys (since a max of only 24 NL guys will have been drafted), but then again i don’t want to miss out on any elite players i might have a shot at, esp. ones with position scarcity (tulo, reyes, etc.).

have u ever been in a league like this? it’s my first year and i’m a little nervous about the draft but excited too. last year some amazing NL talent dropped way down in the draft- hanson in the 11th, kemp in the 13th, bruce in the last round.

@sandles: Your team might hit .255 collectively. Also, pretty light on speed. I like your pitching…

Wow, Panda and Wilson huh? Didn’t think you’d be that high on them, I couldn’t give Wilson away to Al last year.

The problem in our league with power in the draft is most big bats are keepers but I’ll roll the dice. Whatever you say Grey……….

It’s that time of year again, when you get inundated with repetitive queries about keepers from guy’s who go by such such monikers as Hippo, AlKoholic and Steve (where’d he come up with that silly name?)

Allow me to post the first of many of the same questions………

Keepers, 8 team league, 300 cap, can keep up to 6.

Beckett-7
Jaime-10
Hanson (the pitcher, not the nerd glasses wearing hockey players or a member of your favorite band)-23
Felix-40
Mad Bum-6
CJ Wilson-5

Ellsbury-31
A Gonz-41
Panda-6
BJ Up-16
Beltran-5

Pick 6, thanks

I keep reading about Ryan Braun’s value being impacted like Maurice Gibb’s colon in non-keepers, but I need some keeper league advice.

We keep 4-7 players each year for a max 3x so Braun is now available again after a few years. My pick is coming up (since i won the league last year i’m last) and Braun is still available. Problem is so is Matt Holliday, ARod, Crawford, Cruz, Kinsler (and maybe Reyes, but probably not).

So my hunch is to take Braun here. I think everyone else is scared away, but insteading of fretting over 50 missed games (that isn’t even official yet), I’m looking at 3 more years of production after that. I figure with a clever draft this year, I can rotate in the hot players in April and May until he’s ready and still have him when it’s important, for the end of the season and playoffs.

What say you (or anyone else reading this)?

can’t be any more succinct than that .

I should clarify my point further, I think. As I mentioned before, in the NFBC, many of the top performers are crafting strategies that seek to arbitrage players through structure. As an example, the guy who punted saves was thereby afforded the opportunity to draft low strikeout rate pitchers with good whip and era (because he was using 9 pitching spots on starters in a no innings limit format). This is not to say that a balanced strategy cannot work; the NFBC grand champ uses a balanced strategy trying to compete in all 10 categories. My point is that you have to know what your strategy is. I see plenty of people who have a plan of getting the most value relative to ADP or anticipated auction value and after the event you already sense that the team in question will have a hard time competing because there is no cohesive strategy as to how that team will accumulate enough points in enough categories. I mention that this is especially true in the highest level of competion because there are a lot of people doing pretty careful analysis because there is money to be made. In those leagues, you need to know ahead of time not just what players you want, but how you intend to win.

So my point is that the value of a player is in the context of your own strategy and different guys have different values to different teams depending upon the organizing principle behind that team.

@Awesomus Maximus: Damn, make it rain!

@Howard: Greinke

@polczek5: Cool

Will somebody drop a beat so we can start countin’ paper?