Have I ever used the term superkeeper? That's exactly how I refer to those types!

Giving up Kemp is significantly better than giving up Sizemore. Now, no matter how much you get in keeper savings, I wouldn't trade A-Rod or Sizemore. The reason being, with so much savings, you will need to overspend in order to insure that you get all of your money spent. Of course you'd much rather do that on top flight talent than mid flight talent. Even if Lee is a $5 savings and Hanley/Reyes/Pujols are $5 over, you'd rather have the superstar! Right now you can argue that you have the best C, the best 3b, the best OF, and the best SP. if you can pick up one of those other superstars, it won't much matter who your other players are. When you can argue #1 at five positions in a 16 team league, you are in the catbird seat.

I've looked into this PFM PT issue furthur. Abreu is definitely the guy that's completely out of whack. He had averaged 684 PA over the previous three years (681 weighted) and PFM had him at 581. That's nuts. He was a green on the team health report and healthy heading into camp. If I were projecting PT, I would have had him at ~665. When I adjust his numbers to that level, his projection goes from $13 to $21, which is a lot easier to stomach.

Looking over the entire player pool, there are only a few adjustments I would have made to PT. Abreu, of course, was to the top guy. I would have also bumped Jermaine Dye up by 40 or so. Normally I would have bumped Vlad down a little since he was banged up heading into spring, but his performance was already so beat down that I would have left his $22 projection alone.

Speaking of performance, that's another one that needs to be checked out. I've always thought that PECOTA has underrated the older true superstars, especially coming off of a bad year. This year's top example was Manny Ramirez. They had him projected at $9, a drop of $2 from the previous year. I don't think that accurately accounts for the upside of a guy who produced $35+ one year earlier and $50+ two years earlier.

What I'll do is, once we get the PECOTA and PFM numbers in, I will anylize them for ridiculous outliers, then make some minor adjustments. I'm guessing David Ortiz is going to be one guy who takes a beating with a possible other being Vlad.

I'm really enjoying this new FBB blog: http://www.fantasyballjunkie.com/

At the least, it's worth a quick perusal, imo.

Can anybody with ESPN insider share Keith Law's 26-100 ranked prospects?

anyone else here use rotolab?

I know I discussed it last year with peru and some others. it's really a great piece of software...though if you do your own valuation model, probably redundant or perhaps inferior.

I just bought this years version and have been playing with it using the Baseball HQ projections...trying to get the valuations close to the 'last player picked' valuations. when I get comfortable with it I go through the ugh process of editing each projection to pecota

Pujols projection seems to breaking it, though, lol. his line of 107 runs / 39 HR / 119 RBI / 7 SB / .343 / 55 K's (!!) / 450 ish TB's + BB's has him worth $68, or $20 more than the 2nd best player, Reyes. I have no problem thinking that he is #1 in my league...and there is a gigantic gap between him and other 1b...but he can't be $68

$68 seems reasonable, especially if you start a CI. In my league last year, Pujols was 2nd, worth $56. The next best 1b was Berkman, who will not project there this year. Then came Howard. While he'll project slightly better than last season, the Ks knock him out. The likely #2 1B in your league is Tex, who was $16 behind in my league. Pujols had 48 Ks less, so even if it's 30 K/Pt, you're looking a 1.5 pts, or $4.50-$6.

There is definitely a gigantic gap between Pujols and the next 1b, and if you start a CI he's a better target than Hanley or Reyes. Get one of those three for Lee and something other than Sizemore/ARod/Lincecum.

There's no list for me to C/P, so I don't really want to type out all 75. If you're interested in a single player's ranking or a couple from a team or something I'd be glad to help.

If you really want to look at it you can sign up for ESPN the Mag at an online magazine sub site for like $2.50 a year and it comes with Free Insider.

I saw on another site he had Pedro Alvarez #38. Any other surprises up or down?

Who does he have higher Aaron Hicks or Ben Revere?

He almost has Mike Stanton (#31) ahead of Cameron Maybin (#29)

Hicks is 56, Revere 63.

Jose Tabata seems a bit high to me at 32. Moustakas seems low at 44. No A's besides Cahill/Anderson in the top 100.

Yonder Alonso is at 76, and he seems just to have just decided to stick a bunch of speedy OF in the 80s (Borbon, Dominic Brown, Stubbs, Gorkys).

Not a big fan of the list in general, mostly because of my Oakland bias, but also because his description of how he formulates his list

doesn't seem all that cohesive to me.

Kieth Law's list is very useful, but you've got to read the comments and ignore the rankings. That's probably excatly what his employer wants.

Thanks Peru, pretty enlightening for this noob.

Many thanks for the link...incredible. Wish I'd known about it last season.

24-team, 10-category HTH keeper league with no salaries. This is the kind of league where you can draft a player while he's still in AA and potentially keep him for 15+ years. For example, I've owned Manny since 1994 and Vlad since 1996.

We can keep up to 15 players, though it costs "transaction points" to keep a player and I'm running low due to having been in the playoffs a lot recently.

My list of definite keepers:

Justin Morneau
Ian Kinsler
Aramis Ramirez
Stephen Drew
Manny Ramirez
Vladimir Guerrero
Chad Billingsley
David Price
Jonathan Broxton
Matt Lindstrom

Potential keepers for 5 spots: Jeff Clement, Taylor Teagarden, Willy Taveras, Bronson Arroyo, Randy Wolf, Chris Perez, Tony Pena.

(1) Jeff Clement, Taylor Teagarden, or both?

(2) Does Willy Taveras (my only consistent source of SBs last year) still have value now that he's left Colorado?

(3) Is Chris Perez worth keeping, or does LaRussa's hate-on eliminate any value?

(4) What are Tony Pena's chances of closing for Arizona this year?

(5) Are either Bronson Arroyo or Randy Wolf top 40 pitchers going forward (top 50ish SPs tend to get retained from season to season in this league)?

Wowza!!

I'd say both. I don't like the idea of giving up on Clement's bat just yet, and Teagarden is good defensively with just enough offensive upside that I'd be hard pressed to dump him.

I like the upside/Ks of Perez between these two. That Arizona bullpen is still crowded with Qualls, Rauch and Pena. Perez is already the closer and has more upside. To me, that's worth the risk of having to deal with LaRussa. The bottom line is, if Perez gets the job done, he'll be the closer.

He should steal bases and maybe hit for an empty average. It just won't be as high of an average. He's boderline IMO. I'd keep all the upside ahead of him.

We need to see where Wolf signs since that will have a big impact on his value. Dusty Baker isn't going away, but in the short term that could end up a good thing for Arroyo. He didn't come close to the top 40 last year, but his FIP was right in line with his career average.

Overall, I'd say Teagarden, Clement, and Perez for sure. Then you're looking at two of Taveras, Arroyo, Wolf, and Pena. The decision is probably based on how you plan to replace them and perhaps the transaction point cost.

I like the idea of Tavarez managed by Dusty. Hell, you might get 65 SB and 65 IP! The ballpark is pretty hitter friendly and having Votto/bruce hitting behind him won't hurt.

do you mean pre-draft? that would leave me with about $135 spent on the 3 stars, and another $50 ish on my other 5 keepers. that gives me about $60 free to spend on the other 12 positions. I already know I'm not gonna spend more than $1 on a few of those but it doesn't leave much flexibility for the others. I guess the argument is that if you have Pujols/Arod/Sizemore/Lincecum/Martin/Hart/Capps then it's hard to **** up the rest of your team (provided you manage categories, work the waiver wire, etc etc). I guess my 8 keepers would be worth... nearly $250 alone

Yeah, that's the basic idea. This would be a near flawless preseason in excecuting the stars and scrubs philosiphy. It would then become a matter of roster construction and targeting a few players at certain prices. Assuming you don't forget to keep Kelly Johnson, I'd say the only thing you really need is another reliable starter. When you only have one need, you have tons of flexibility, even if you don't have cash. You can just sit and wait to buy the right guys at the right price.

Rank these three injury-risk arms for '09: Joba Chamberlain, Scott Kazmir, Francisco Liriano. Who will generate the most value? Who ends up with the most innings pitched?

Related question: Weigh this trade offer, Kazmir and Brett Wallace for Joba and Angel Villalona. Keeper league format, Joba has some extra value as a keeper for '10 that won't count against our 6 ML keepers.

Thoughts?

per Tim Dierkes:

I asked eleven of my favorite baseball writers to predict Chamberlain's 2009 regular season Major League innings total. Here are the results:

* Will Carroll, Baseball Prospectus : 175
* Peter Abraham, The Lohud Journal : 160
* Ken Rosenthal, FOX Sports : 155
* Peter Gammons, ESPN : 145
* Joe Pawlikowski, River Ave. Blues : 142
* Jerry Crasnick, ESPN : 142
* Ken Davidoff, Newsday : 141.6
* Rick Wilton, Baseball Injury Report : 140
* Rob Neyer, ESPN : 137.6
* Keith Law, ESPN : 125
* Jon Heyman, SI : 109

The average comes to 142.9 innings. If Joba pitches 143 innings, I'd rank him 18th among fantasy starters - after Cliff Lee but before Rich Harden . It's quite conceivable that Chamberlain could have more fantasy value (in just 143 innings) than John Lackey , Felix Hernandez , Scott Kazmir , and Daisuke Matsuzaka , who are all being drafted before him.

I think Joba > Kazmir > Liriano

I also think Joba is going to be underrated going into most drafts this year, which is hard to believe. of course by the time most drafts actually happen in March, the pendulum on this will probably swing and Joba will go too early.

Great info, thanks for posting it. That was my inclination as well (I own Joba). His rate stats are pretty sick starting or relieving. Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster has a pretty sick projection for him too. Add in the keeper value and I should probably hold onto him. Just needed a sanity check.

Related prospect question from above. Consensus is Josh Vitters > Brett Wallace > Angel Villalona, right?

Liriano has the highest cieling of the three named pitchers to my mind. Kazmir scares the crap out of me after his second half; I see Steve Avery age 25 drop off written all over him...soooo many innings on that arm.

I don't understand the theory of stars and scrubs. When a premium is paid for a player, it seems counter-intuitive to think it will increase your team's expected performance. To me, it makes more sense to pay discounted prices for players than premiums. You may argue that it's a defensive approach as well, as you'd like to have such a potent player on your team instead of another, and your premium will prevent another team from acquiring that player. But isn't it actually more destructive to the expected performance of the team that overpays for a player?

I just can't see paying a $7 premium, basically for a name, when such a price would likely only be mathematically justified with an 80th percentile performance, or better. Thanks for pointing out what I'm missing.

hrrm I guess I forgot how good Liriano was in 2006. It's fairly comparable to Joba 2008 I guess, just a few more innings.

but last year Liriano was a good bit worse than in 2006 - look at the difference in the K/BB #'s.

well I think you need to do both. I think a team which pays book value for every player on their roster will end up fairly average.

here is something I wrote earlier on it

I think that last part is key. you can typically find $20 talent for cheap, either at the draft or shortly thereafter. 2 years ago Corey Hart was drafted in my league for $1...Ervin Santana $5...Ryan Braun and Tim Lincecum undrafted...there are tons of examples like this, and I play in a bigger than average league. so spend money to get guys that you CAN'T find anywhere else (the superstars), find good value at the draft in your $1/late round picks, and plug holes where necessary on the waiver wire/trade desk.

and in the event your team sucks (and you play in a keeper league) you will always be able to get a bounty for the Hanley/Pujols tier of players, b/c they are ALWAYS an upgrade to another team, usually a sizable one.

now the strategy above sounds nice, but yes it depends on you being able to draft well and find good bargains and work the waivers well. otherwise you end up with stars + trash, when (as peru said) you really want stars + guys who could become stars. drafting via stars/scrubs won't necessarily get you out of the gate with the best team, but can put you in a good position to have a sick team when you fill out the back of your rotation with Volquez and Danks types who noone saw coming

Damn, I'm super jealous. Had four guys bail out from my keeper league of four years, so it basically collapsed.


Question: If you're entering a new/1st year 12-man 5x5 keeper league with the fifth overall pick, are there any good arguments for taking Sizemore over Wright?

Well this isn't exactly what I was asking, but given a choice between 2 $20 players and a $40 player, I'll take the option with the greater discount to what I estimate to be fair value. I am under the impression that the stars and scrubs method involves paying a premium on your fair value estimate for the better players available..is that not right?

My line of thinking is that, the more value I am able to extract, the more high-quality players I'll be able to obtain; the less value I extract (or the more premiums I pay), the fewer higher-quality players I'll be able to afford, which will increase the number of crap-shoot, $1-$3 players I'll have to buy.

Stars and scrubs seems high-risk to me, and I'm just trying to think about how it affects potential reward...my initial reaction is that it decreases it.