All-Purpose Fantasy Baseball Thread, 2007 version ...

Might as well get it started. Let's post some questions, get everyone chirping in with advice, throwing out sleepers, etc. etc.

My question: I'm in a 10 team, 5x5, four keeper league - two pitchers, two hitters. I had Liriano, Zambrano an Halladay, then traded Halladay last season for hitting before Liriano's injury.
Hitting, I'm a mess. I need some SportsJournalists.com advice. Give me one from each list:
HITTERS (I'm keeping Miguel Cabrera): Aramis Ramiriez, Garrett Atkins, Derek Lee
PITCHERS (keeping Zambrano): Ben Sheets, Brian Fuentes, John Lackey, Huston Street.

I'm looking at Ramirez and Sheets.
Let's get this going.

 

I agree that Cabrera and Zambrano are no-brainers.

I would keep Lee and Lackey for your other two spots.
I know Lee was hurt most of last year, but he was as good as Ramirez or Atkins before getting hurt. This is a guy who had been incredibly durable before the freak wrist injury and he came back strong late in the season. Neither Ramirez nor Atkins is so much more valuable than Lee to justify keeping two guys at one position.

Atkins has only had the one big year and Ramirez is forever tweaking one thing or another.

I would take Lackey over Sheets because Sheets cannot stay healthy and Lackey has been progressing toward elite status anyway.

 

Yeah, Lackey is lights out. I would keep him if I could.

 

I pick eighth in a 10-team league with a snake draft. Any chance that Lance Berkman makes it to the 28th pick, given that there are two idiot Mets fans (one drafts almost exclusively Mets, ex-Mets or current Red Sox), one Red Sox fan and one Braves fan that ain't too swift.

And is it wise to draft two elite closers back-to-back, i.e. Nathan 48th and B.J. Ryan 53rd?

 

I'm not a big fan of drafting elite closers because every time I have, they go to hell in a hurry (thanks a lot, Bobby Thigpen!) But then it depends on what kind of pitching categories you'll have. My league does wins, saves, ERA, Ks, WHIP and ... holds. Can't quite explain it, but there's no money riding on it, so whatevs.

I can't imagine Berkman would last to the late third round, unless you had a couple more homers in the league. Is it a Yahoo! league? Because if it is, Berkman rates pretty highly on it, and between autodrafters and people who use the Yahoo! rankings as Scrpiture, someone will probably take him in the second.

 

It's a CBS Sportsline League, and Berk is both a 1B and OF. I'm deciding between him and Hafner (DH only) for my second pick. Offensive categories are OBP, HR, RBI, R, total bases and steals - caught stealing. As for pitching, we go ERA, WHIP, W-L, S and Ks. Berkman is ranked 26th according to Sportsline.

The guy drafting ahead of me (seventh) is a pure dope. Wasted his fourth round pick last year on Adrian Beltre (OUCH) and also asked if the phone on my wall was real. Quite possibly the dumbest question I've ever heard in my life. Everyone was laughing for a good 10 minutes.

 

I agree with Lee and Lackey. Do not underestimate what having Soriano in that lineup will do for Lee, who is one of the few Cubs who knows how to draw a walk. Consider his numbers after coming back from wrist injury/before he left the team to take care of his daughter (didn't get injured again, which a lot of people forget): .345 Avg/.455 OBP/14 RBI/9 R/4 HR, 3 SB. He's still a stud, I think. Expect lots of runs and a good # of RBIs. I can see his final #s being .315-36-115-120r-10-12sb. AND, he's probably pretty undervalued right now for a guy who will likely put up top 5 #'s at his spot.

And I think you have to go Hafner over Berkman with those offensive categories. He's an OBP monster, will top 40 HRs in his sleep (think he would have had 50+ had he not gotten hurt), collects RBI by the bushel in that lineup and should score a good number of runs.

 

Sorry, but another question from me: is Chase Utley worth the eighth overall pick? The guys that will probably be gone as Pujols, Soriano, Reyes, Howard, A-Rod, Santana & Ortiz. Converse.

 

I think so, yes. Cliche by now but 2B is such a thin position, and Chase is head and shoulders above the others, sort of like the Johan Santana of 2nd basemen. The only other guy I'd briefly consider taking at #8 is Carl Crawford, who kicks ass in the SB dept and could post similar #'s to a Reyes (who's going several slots earlier), but whose OF position is much deeper, therefore making him slightly less valuable...or I'd mayyybe think about Vlad (Pujols lite in avg and power) or Beltran (could go 30-30), but those guys are more like 9-12 picks, in my opinion. If you want sure thing SB's, go with Crawford, but Chase is the choice here, I think. I'd rank em:

1. Pujols
2. Soriano
3. Reyes
4. Santana
5. ARod
6. Howard
7. Papi
8. Chase
9. Crawford
10. Beltran
11. Vlad

and then at the turn (assuming a 12-team league) we get into the Cabrera/Hafner/Wright/Berkman/Teixeira territory

If it's me, I might even go Chase before Papi. I've also seen Crawford going as low as #4/#5, so if you got him at #8 it'd also be good value.

 

I agree on Lee, but prefer Webb to Lackey.

 

Utley is definitely a worthy pick at that point. I'd take him there over Crawford, but I wouldn't argue with either guy.

Crawford is younger and his power is developing. I doubt Utley can do more than he did in '06, but Crawford is still getting better.

 

I prefer Webb to Lackey, too...but Webb wasn't one of the choices.