Posts Tagged ‘fantasy baseball league’

2009 Fantasy Baseball – Spring Training Review

Posted by Todd Lammi on April 5th, 2009

by Todd Lammi

Opening day is finally here, now that all of the fantasy baseball drafts have been completed, here is a run down of some of the highlights and lowlights from the spring training stats.

Catcher: Pablo Sandoval might qualify at this position by the All-Star break. As of right now the San Francisco Giants are going without a back up catcher and will use Sandoval in that role. It makes sense if Sandoval can handle the job at the major league level; the Giants cannot afford to have his bat out of the lineup. Sandoval blistered the ball in spring training to a tune of a .442 average. The average and rbi will be there, but the power might take another year or two to develop. I was loving John Baker as a second catcher until the Florida Marlins decided to bring in Ronny Paulino to platoon with. At least Baker owns the majority of the at bats as the left-handed hitter and when he plays he will be batting second so he still should put up decent numbers. Baker is hitting .340 this spring.

First Base: Micah Hoffpauir of the Chicago Cubs is worth stashing in N.L only leagues after his power show this spring. Hoffpauir has hit six home runs with 26 rbi and will see time backing up Derrek Lee  and possibly getting some at bats in the outfield. Travis Ishikawa hit seven home runs to go along with a .316 batting average and looks ready to provide the San Francisco Giants lineup with some much needed power. For those of you in keeper leagues, keep an eye on Kyle Blanks of the San Diego Padres. The first basemen hit .319 with four home runs. Either he or Adrian Gonzalez will find themselves as trade bait by 2010.

Second Base: Emilio Bonifacio opens the season as the Florida Marlins third basemen, but for fantasy baseball purposes he qualifies at second base. Bonifacio hit .279 with 5 stolen bases . Rickie Weeks hit .312 for the Milwaukee Brewers, supposedly new coach Willie Randolph has been helping Weeks with his all-around game. One of these seasons Weeks is going to be injury free and get 600 at bats and hit over .260. He turns the fantasy baseball magical age of 27 in September. Chris Getz of the Chicago White Sox hit .333 with four stolen bases. Emmanuel Burriss of the SanFrancisco Giants hit .341. He qualifies at second base and shortstop in fantasy baseball leagues. His one category of help is stolen bases. In 194 career minor league games, he has only one home run but 105 stolen bases. He stole 13 with the Giants last season in 95 games and could easily steal over 30 this year. He ended the spring with 6 stolen bases in 8 attempts.

Shortstop: Jed Lowrie of the Boston Red Sox ended spring training with a .343 average with three home runs and 16 rbi. I don’t see Julio Lugo ever getting his starting job back with the Red Sox.  For those in NL only leagues, keep an eye on Everth Cabrera. Cabrera has never played above class A and was a rule 5 pick by the San Diego Padres. He still needs work offensively and defensively, but he has a ton of speed, witness his 73 stolen bases in 121 games. If he can shore up his defense, he might see some extended playing time in September with the likes of Luis Rodriguez and David Eckstein ahead of him in the middle infield. Even in a reserve role it is possible for him to get 15-20 steals this season. He was 9 for 11 in stolen bases this spring.

Third Base: It looks like the work that new Kansas City Royals batting coach Kevin Seitzer has been doing with Alex Gordon has been paying dividends. Gordon finished the spring with a .320 average and 6 home runs with 14 rbi. Casey McGehee won the final spot on the Milwaukee Brewers bench following the release of Mike Lamb. Although he hit .328 with 6 home runs and 16 rbi, he is still behind Bill Hall on the depth chart with top prospect Matt Gamel waiting in the wings in AAA.

Outfield: Mark Teahen of the Kansas City Royals finished spring training hitting .433 with 7 home runs and 3 stolen bases. With him making the move to second base, he will qualify at second base and outfield in either the second or fourth week of the season, depending if your league rule is 10 or 20 games for position eligibility. Alfonso Soriano ended spring 0 for 3 in stolen base attempts. I think the over / under on his stolen bases for the year is 20.  Nelson Cruz has carried over his performance from the end of 2008 into spring training with 6 home runs, but more importantly only 9 strikeouts in 55 at bats. Ryan Spillborghs of the Colorado Rockies hit .318 with 5 home runs and 6 stolen bases. The decision to carry rookie Dexter Fowler on the major league roster means Spillborghs could sit a few extra game this season. Fowler hit .291 with 8 stolen bases in 79 at bats.

Starting Pitchers: For NL only leagues, Chan Ho Park seems to have had a re-birth at the age of 35, winning the 5th starter job with the Philadelphia Phillies. Park ended with 25 strikeouts in 21 innings and a 2.53 earned run average. Homer Bailey sported a 2.61 ERA and 20 strikeouts in 20 2/3 innings. If Bronson Arroyo has to miss any time due to the problems he has been having with carpal tunnel, Bailey will be first in line to replace him. Micah Owings ended spring with a 1.52 ERA and 24 strikeouts in 23 2/3 innings.  Owings started off 2008 with four straight wins before things went downhill, I believe due to an unannounced injury. I would not be surprised to see him put up numbers similar to his 2007 season with Arizona. I expect big things from Kevin Slowey of the Minnesota Twins this season. Slowey had a 2.13 ERA with 22 strikeouts in 25.1 innings pitched.

Relief Pitchers: Francisco Cordero of the Cincinatti Reds was bombed all spring long to the tune of a 12.10 ERA. If you own Cordero, I would make sure to grab David Weathers as insurance.

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2009 Fantasy Baseball Auctions

Posted by Todd Lammi on April 1st, 2009

by Todd Lammi

If your favorite day of the year is your fantasy baseball draft, I am about to introduce you to something that is ten times better, and that is a fantasy baseball auction. No longer do you have to worry about players sliding to you in the draft, or having the 10th pick in the first round, knowing that you have no shot at nine players in front of you, in an auction, you have much more control of what goes on around you.

While there is the extra excitement of bidding on players and trying to slip through your favorite sleeper for $2, there are also additional challenges presented in an auction that you do not face in a draft. In addition to tracking the players that have been picked, the players still left on the board and your own team and its stats, in an auction format, you also have to track dollars for your roster and the entire league.

For most players when participating in a fantasy baseball league auction for a first time, they usually run into one of two problems, either they run low on money with multiple players left to buy, or else they have already filled their roster, but have several dollars left to spend.

I am going to give you a couple of tips in order to prevent this from happening and to ensure that your first auction experience is a great one.

When you are preparing for the auction, make sure that the dollars you have assigned to each player add up to the total dollar amount that is to be spent for the league. For example, if you are playing in a 15 team league, and each team has $200 to spend, make sure that the combined salaries you have for the number of players that need to be bought equals $3,000 ($200 x 15). This way you will have closer to a true dollar amount of what a player is worth. So many of the cheat sheets or projections floating around out there provide dollar totals, but they do not add up to what a league total dollar amount is. Each league is different in roster size and team size so make sure that your dollar values are adjusted accordingly.

To make sure that you spend all of your allotted dollars and on the flip side, to make sure you do not run out of money, it is a good idea to go into the draft with dollar amounts assigned to each position on your roster. If you team budget is $200, determine what amount you want to spend for hitting and pitching. On average the split is roughly 70-30 skewed toward hitting. That means with a $200 budget you would plan on spending $60 on your pitching staff. Assuming you have a 10  man pitching staff, you dollar amounts would look something like this:

1Sp – $15

2Sp – $8

3Sp – $7

4Sp – $4

5SP – $2

6Sp – $2

1 Closer – $16

2RP – $2

3 RP – $2

4 RP – $2

You have $15 budgeted for an ace on your staff and $16 budgeted for a closer and so on down the line to fill out your rotation and bullpen. This gives you a good plan of attack to start with. If you happen to spend $17 for an ace starter, simply adjust by $2 another spot on your staff to make sure you hit the $60 mark if that was your allocation to build your staff with.

I usually try to leave $2 for each of the positions instead of $1. At the end of the draft when people are low on money, the auction at that point basically turns into a draft because each person is down to a dollar per player. By having $2 left per player, this ensures that you have a much greater chance of getting the players you want late in the draft.

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