Well, my Sports Blurb article was put up on Thursday as promised however it is behind their Xtra Innings subscriber wall so you will have to pay a small fee to read it. There is a lot of great content behind the wall so its well worth it. Don't worry, everything else I do here will still be free! Just one article every week will be for cost a one time payment and its not even to me! What a bumer.
Anyway, I have been sick recently and that is why I have had very little new content posted and that will continue until I feel better which will hopefully be tomorrow or monday. Thanks for understanding.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Papelbon to the Pen
In the biggest fantasy news of the spring, the Red Sox announced today that Jonathan Papelbon would be the closer again this year. He was being drafted as a starter in about every fantasy league so for those of you who tried to grab a potential Red Sox closer like Timlin or Pineiro, throw them back on the wire. If you haven't drafted yet, Papelbon is probably worth a look around the Wagner/Rivera area. If he can stay healthy he can certainly have value like Nathan and K-Rod but he has a very high chance of injury.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Baseball: Statistical Oddities Part 2
Part 2 of my look into statistics in baseball is finally here! If you missed Part 1 you should definately give it a look before you read Part 2. Part 1 focused on hitting and Part 2 focuses on pitching. The article will also be appearing on Lenny Melnick Fantasy Baseball and Roto Hog.
As always, I appreciate any comments, questions, critisism etc. that you have and would love to hear from you! You can shoot me an email or post a comment using the link below.
Finally, tomorrow will be my first weekly article on Sports Blurb. It's a good site and I will post up the link to that tomorrow. Also, don't forget to check out what the Fantasy Man has going on over at Fantasy Baseball Express. You should definately consider buying his Fantasy Man F.E.E.D. It's a lot of great information emailed straight to you for only 20$!
Speaking of which: You can now subscribe to recieve a nightly email from MLB Front Office with all of the articles from the previous day in it! It's easy to do and its FREE! Just enter your email in the bar on the right hand side.
As always, I appreciate any comments, questions, critisism etc. that you have and would love to hear from you! You can shoot me an email or post a comment using the link below.
Finally, tomorrow will be my first weekly article on Sports Blurb. It's a good site and I will post up the link to that tomorrow. Also, don't forget to check out what the Fantasy Man has going on over at Fantasy Baseball Express. You should definately consider buying his Fantasy Man F.E.E.D. It's a lot of great information emailed straight to you for only 20$!
Speaking of which: You can now subscribe to recieve a nightly email from MLB Front Office with all of the articles from the previous day in it! It's easy to do and its FREE! Just enter your email in the bar on the right hand side.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Roto Hog, Myself and More!
If you haven't heard of Roto Hog yet WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!? It's sweeping the Fantasy Baseball World and well...YOU NEED TO JOIN. My referal code is: MLBFRONTOFFICE.
Anyway, no more shameless plugs. My article Statistical Oddities is the featured article up there right now. I posted this article on here a little while ago and it was also featured on LennyMelnickFantasyBaseball.com but if you missed it, you can see it on Roto Hog right now. In addition, I will be releasing part 2 of the article tomorrow. It will appear on here, LennyMelnickFantasyBaseball.com and Roto Hog as well. Although it may not appear on Roto Hog or Lenny's Site tomorrow, it will be up there soon.
In addition, I'd like to thank those of you who have signed up for the nightly MLB Front Office email and for those of you who haven't yet its not too late! Just enter your email in the space on the right hand side bar and your ready to start recieving the email.
Also this Thursday will be my 1st weekly article at sportsblurb.com. The article is about Head 2 Head leagues which is a vastly underrepresented type of play in the expert world. I'm here to change that! I will post the link to that once the article is up.
Thanks for listening to all of my plugs, even though I promised I wouldn't.
Anyway, no more shameless plugs. My article Statistical Oddities is the featured article up there right now. I posted this article on here a little while ago and it was also featured on LennyMelnickFantasyBaseball.com but if you missed it, you can see it on Roto Hog right now. In addition, I will be releasing part 2 of the article tomorrow. It will appear on here, LennyMelnickFantasyBaseball.com and Roto Hog as well. Although it may not appear on Roto Hog or Lenny's Site tomorrow, it will be up there soon.
In addition, I'd like to thank those of you who have signed up for the nightly MLB Front Office email and for those of you who haven't yet its not too late! Just enter your email in the space on the right hand side bar and your ready to start recieving the email.
Also this Thursday will be my 1st weekly article at sportsblurb.com. The article is about Head 2 Head leagues which is a vastly underrepresented type of play in the expert world. I'm here to change that! I will post the link to that once the article is up.
Thanks for listening to all of my plugs, even though I promised I wouldn't.
Tiered Rankings
Positional Rankings are a great way to compile your rankings to decide when scarcity in a position is running short. However, in order to fully utilize these rankings, you must break them up into tiers. Here you can find my tiered positional rankings.
How did I come up with these ranks?
I first took my top 250 players list and sorted by position. I then broke the positions up into groups based on their numerical value only. Group A was players 1-20 (aka rounds 1 and 2 in a ten team league), Group B was players 21-40 (rounds 3 and 4), Group C was players 41-60 (rounds 5 and 6), Group D was players 61-100 (rounds 7-10), Group E was players 101-150 (rounds 11-15), Group F was players 151-200 (rounds 16-20) and Group G was players 201-250 (rounds 21-25). After dividing players up by numerical value, I went through and made any minor adjustments I thought were necessary to finalize the groups.
Why is this valuable?
Not only is it helpful on draft day to spot when a position is running dry, but it is a helpful tool to analyze your own player rankings. If two players that are considered to be fairly equal value have vastly different status in the groups then you know you need to fix something. In this exercise, I was using the rankings that I completed long enough ago that there has been a lot of movement since then. In this case, I did not make any changes to my list because this is just to demonstrate how valuable grouping your players can be. The only thing I did was to remove Taylor Tankersley because it does not appear he is the front runner for the closers job (he appeared at # 229 in my original rankings). Rankings will also help you not reach for players too early.
What do the groupings show?
These groups confirm many of the things I have been stressing all season long. The first thing that jumped out at me was the catcher scarcity. The whole year I have been stressing to not take your catcher too early. As you will see, that is backed up by the groups. The next is my 2B theory. Utley is the only player in Tier A, there is no one in Tier B, 2 2B in Tier C and then everyone else follows. It just goes to show that if you don’t draft Utley, you might as well wait as long as possible to get your 2B. The next note-able point is that the SS groupings are exactly as I would expect them to be. They are front heavy and then tail off significantly after group B. If you don’t get a SS from group C or higher, you are going to struggle from the SS position. Again, my waiting on 3B strategy was re-confirmed. There are 5 3B in group A and B combined, 0 in group C and then 10 in groups D and E. On the pitching side, Santana is the only Tier A starter and no RP appears before Tier C with a lot of value at the end of the draft in both the SP and RP groups.
I strongly suggest that you take your own rankings and break them up into tiers. It will not only help you on draft day but it will help you become a much more knowledgeable fantasy player. Grouping players is something that experts have been doing for a long time but many regular fantasy players don’t do because they don’t recognize its importance. It takes less than an hour and can help you get much more value out of your draft.
Again, the Groupings can be found here and as always, please post any questions or comments or feel free to email them to me.
How did I come up with these ranks?
I first took my top 250 players list and sorted by position. I then broke the positions up into groups based on their numerical value only. Group A was players 1-20 (aka rounds 1 and 2 in a ten team league), Group B was players 21-40 (rounds 3 and 4), Group C was players 41-60 (rounds 5 and 6), Group D was players 61-100 (rounds 7-10), Group E was players 101-150 (rounds 11-15), Group F was players 151-200 (rounds 16-20) and Group G was players 201-250 (rounds 21-25). After dividing players up by numerical value, I went through and made any minor adjustments I thought were necessary to finalize the groups.
Why is this valuable?
Not only is it helpful on draft day to spot when a position is running dry, but it is a helpful tool to analyze your own player rankings. If two players that are considered to be fairly equal value have vastly different status in the groups then you know you need to fix something. In this exercise, I was using the rankings that I completed long enough ago that there has been a lot of movement since then. In this case, I did not make any changes to my list because this is just to demonstrate how valuable grouping your players can be. The only thing I did was to remove Taylor Tankersley because it does not appear he is the front runner for the closers job (he appeared at # 229 in my original rankings). Rankings will also help you not reach for players too early.
What do the groupings show?
These groups confirm many of the things I have been stressing all season long. The first thing that jumped out at me was the catcher scarcity. The whole year I have been stressing to not take your catcher too early. As you will see, that is backed up by the groups. The next is my 2B theory. Utley is the only player in Tier A, there is no one in Tier B, 2 2B in Tier C and then everyone else follows. It just goes to show that if you don’t draft Utley, you might as well wait as long as possible to get your 2B. The next note-able point is that the SS groupings are exactly as I would expect them to be. They are front heavy and then tail off significantly after group B. If you don’t get a SS from group C or higher, you are going to struggle from the SS position. Again, my waiting on 3B strategy was re-confirmed. There are 5 3B in group A and B combined, 0 in group C and then 10 in groups D and E. On the pitching side, Santana is the only Tier A starter and no RP appears before Tier C with a lot of value at the end of the draft in both the SP and RP groups.
I strongly suggest that you take your own rankings and break them up into tiers. It will not only help you on draft day but it will help you become a much more knowledgeable fantasy player. Grouping players is something that experts have been doing for a long time but many regular fantasy players don’t do because they don’t recognize its importance. It takes less than an hour and can help you get much more value out of your draft.
Again, the Groupings can be found here and as always, please post any questions or comments or feel free to email them to me.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Could Joe DiMaggio Play Again?
There is an interesting article over at Yahoo! Sports. You'll have to read it to believe it. What if Joe DiMaggio was alive and well? Could he play SS? Would he play for UNLV and hope that he could somehow find a way into the Pros? Check it out.
Young Pitchers
Two young pitchers that many people were high on this year will not be starting the in the rotation. Chad Billingsley of the Dodgers will be starting the year in the bullpen and Matt Garza of the Twins will be starting the season (most likely) in AAA. Both of these pitchers will probably be starting by the end of the year and are still worth a very late round draft pick but lower your expectations for them slightly. Drop them down a round or two.
In focus: Lance Berkman
There is an interesting article about Lance Berkman over at Yahoo. The intent of the article seems to be to mix humor and facts to portray Berkman as very underrated; however, to me, it seems to portray Berkman as lazy and unmotivated. Take a look at it and tell me what you think.
Either way, he is a very valuable fantasy commodity, even if he doesn't provide many steals. A late 1st round or early second round selection is certainly warranted. Still, this article intrigued me and I wanted to see what everyone else thought.
Either way, he is a very valuable fantasy commodity, even if he doesn't provide many steals. A late 1st round or early second round selection is certainly warranted. Still, this article intrigued me and I wanted to see what everyone else thought.
MLB Front Office Via Email
As you will notice, you can now get all of the MLB Front Office articles emailed straight to you! Don't hesitate to sign up for this amazing service...ITS FREE! Just enter your email in the box on the right hand side of the page and your ready to start recieving great fantasy insights by Brad Stewart in your inbox!
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Top 150 Prospects: 1-25
For the past couple days I have been unveiling my top 150 prospect list. Today. the rankings will conclude with players 1-25. Please note: that these rankings are for long term success, not immediate impact and only Players with NO major league experience qualified for this list. So players like Delmon Young and Matt Garza who still qualify as rookies will not make an appearance. Also, I may have missed a couple AB or IP in the majors in which case I appologize. As always if you have any questions or comments feel free to email me.
1. ALEX GORDON, 3b, Royals
2. PHILIP HUGHES, rhp, Yankees
3. HOMER BAILEY, rhp, Reds
4. BRANDON WOOD, ss, Angels
5. JAY BRUCE, of, Reds
6. CAMERON MAYBIN, of, Tigers
7. EVAN LONGORIA, 3b, Devil Rays
8. JUSTIN UPTON, of, Diamondbacks
9. YOVANI GALLARDO, rhp, Brewers
10. ANDREW McCUTCHEN, of, Pirates
11. TIM LINCECUM, rhp, Giants
12. REID BRIGNAC, ss, Devil Rays
13. RYAN BRAUN, 3b, Brewers
14. BILLY BUTLER, of, Royals
15. FERNANDO MARTINEZ, of, Mets
16. JOSE TABATA, of, Yankees
17. ANDY LaROCHE, 3b, Dodgers
18. ADAM MILLER, rhp, Indians
19. CARLOS GONZALEZ, of, Diamondbacks
20. SCOTT ELBERT, lhp, Dodgers
21. LUKE HOCHEVAR, rhp, Royals
22. CLAYTON KERSHAW, lhp, Dodgers
23. COLBY RASMUS, of, Cardinals
24. NICK ADENHART, rhp, Angels
25. JEFF NIEMANN, rhp, Devil Rays
1. ALEX GORDON, 3b, Royals
2. PHILIP HUGHES, rhp, Yankees
3. HOMER BAILEY, rhp, Reds
4. BRANDON WOOD, ss, Angels
5. JAY BRUCE, of, Reds
6. CAMERON MAYBIN, of, Tigers
7. EVAN LONGORIA, 3b, Devil Rays
8. JUSTIN UPTON, of, Diamondbacks
9. YOVANI GALLARDO, rhp, Brewers
10. ANDREW McCUTCHEN, of, Pirates
11. TIM LINCECUM, rhp, Giants
12. REID BRIGNAC, ss, Devil Rays
13. RYAN BRAUN, 3b, Brewers
14. BILLY BUTLER, of, Royals
15. FERNANDO MARTINEZ, of, Mets
16. JOSE TABATA, of, Yankees
17. ANDY LaROCHE, 3b, Dodgers
18. ADAM MILLER, rhp, Indians
19. CARLOS GONZALEZ, of, Diamondbacks
20. SCOTT ELBERT, lhp, Dodgers
21. LUKE HOCHEVAR, rhp, Royals
22. CLAYTON KERSHAW, lhp, Dodgers
23. COLBY RASMUS, of, Cardinals
24. NICK ADENHART, rhp, Angels
25. JEFF NIEMANN, rhp, Devil Rays
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