I just finished drafting my fantasy baseball teams for 2010. I use Yahoo Fantasy Baseball. It’s free and I like the way their site works. Last year, I did terrible. I came in dead last in my rotisserie league (I was beat by a guy who didn’t even manage the team after the season started). I think my main problem was that my first draft pick was Jimmy Rollins, a former MVP, but had a horrible year that year. I did better in my head to head league. My team got to the finals and was beaten in the final match, so I got second in that league.
This year, I wanted to do better. I bought a couple of fantasy baseball magazines and watched the fantasy baseball 404 on mlb.tv. I also resided not to pick Cubs players for my team. I always pick them because I think they will do well, and I need to realize that they while maybe good players on the team, are not so great compared to the rest of baseball. The Cubs haven’t won a world series in over 100 years, maybe I should think about that. I also took some advice I read about not relying on rookie potential. It may be cool to land that next star that no one else took, but that won’t win you the league. However, Nelson Cruz worked for me last year, and this year I picked Jason Heyward fairly early on.
This year, I picked two teams again. One rotisserie and one head to head. I also picked another one as an experiment that I will outline later. The leagues are 12 team leagues. Yahoo uses the 5×5 format which keeps track of the following stats.
Batting:
- batting average
- runs scored
- RBI
- HR
- stolen bases
Pitching:
- wins
- saves
- strikeouts
- ERA
- WHIP
Yahoo fantasy baseball lets you have 10 position player positions and 8 pitcher positions. I also have 5 bench positions.
So for my first team, Splinter_hands, it is a rotisserie league, and my head to head team is blister. Don’t ask me where I got the names of the teams from, I’m horrible with being creative. This year Yahoo added an additional position to the position player group, another util spot. Yahoo also added another pitcher position. I was not aware of this until half way through the draft.
My draft picks are as follows:
Splinter_hands (7th draft position):
- 1B Prince Fielder
- P Roy Halladay
- SS Derek Jeter
- P Mariano Rivera
- OF Jason Heyward
- 3B Adrian Beltre
- P Josh Beckett
- P Heath Bell
- OF Ryan Ludwick
- IF Placido Polanco
- P Jorge De La Rosa
- P John Lackey
- OF Carlos Gonzalez
- C Benjie Molina
- IF/OF Mark DeRosa
- OF Brett Gardner
- P Clay Buchholz
- OF Juan Pierre
- P Andy Pettitte
- P Joba Chamberlain
- P Phil Hughes
- OF Austin Jackson
- IF Troy Glaus
Blister (5th draft position)
- OF Ryan Braun
- OF Matt Holliday
- IF Kevin Youkilis
- 2B Robinson Cano
- P Mariano Rivera
- OF Jason Heyward
- P Josh Beckett
- IF Gordon Beckham
- SS Elvis Andrus
- C Bengie Molina
- IF/OF Mark Derosa
- OF Ryan Ludwick
- P Jorge De La Rosa
- P Tim Hudson
- P Jon Rauch
- IF Placido Polanco
- C Yadier Molina
- P Clay Buchholz
- IF Maicer Izturis
- P Joba Chamberlain
- P Phil Hughes
- P Derek Lowe
- P Mark Buehrle
I feel better about this year’s teams than last year. I plan to rotate through my pitchers more on my head to head team. In previous years I had more luck in being able to hold just a couple of good starters and pick matchups that I liked each day to acquire pitchers each day. However, I just saw where I won’t be able to do that as much as Yahoo has put a 6 player a week acquisition rule in place. That puts a damper in my strategy. I wasn’t expecting to have great starting pitching picks as I would just choose each day who I thought would win. I’m going to have to keep an eye on the free agents and see if I can’t hold down some better pitching and just draft one pitcher a day for match ups.
I’m excited to be doing my fantasy baseball this year. I know I spend way too many hours looking over all the numbers and keeping an eye out for better players to get, but that’s just part of the engineer in me liking to analyze numbers I guess.
So the third team I drafted I am experimenting with pitching. Typically, hitters are picked in the first round, and hitters continue to dominate the picks for the first few rounds. Pitching tends to be picked later on. I thought I would take advantage of this. Since there is no innings pitched limit in head to head, I loaded my team with pitchers and plan to rotate them through on the days of their starts. I did however take hitters on first two rounds as they were top tier hitters, and I need some hitting production to compete at all. I’m not too concerned if I win this one, but I’m curious what kind of position I can get in the end if my picks are focused on only half of my stats (pitching) that I need to win each week. Here’s the results of my draft:
bud_selig_is_evil (7th draft position):
- 1B Mark Teixeira
- OF Ichiro Suzuki
- P CC Sabathia
- P Felix Hernandez
- P Mariano Rivera
- P Josh Johnson
- P Heath Bell
- P Wandy Rodriguez
- P Clayton Kershaw
- P Ryan Dempster
- P John Danks
- P Randy Wells
- P Jorge De La Rosa
- P David Aardsma
- P Carlos Zambrano
- 3B Adrian Beltre
- C A.J. Pierzynski
- IF Placido Polanco
- IF Micer Izturis
- OF Brett Gardner
- OF Juan Pierre
- OF Cameron Maybin
- IF Troy Glaus
Now if I could only get Yahoo to make an Android app for fantasy baseball like they did for the iPhone