Guys to get…

Well, here comes the first FAAB this weekend — and there are some good players out there.

Jay Bruce is on the wire. Everyone keeps asking me about him. Currently 7 for 28 with a double, a triple, and a homer for the Louisville Bats. (www.minorleaguebaseball.com) He’ll probably be up in May or June.

Joey Votto is having a slow start, but all the projections have him mashing – 23/24 HR, 15-17 SB, 820 OPS. He’d be worth a buck, I’d think.

Velez on the Giants won’t give you power, but he’s free steals — maybe 30?

Everyone seems to think that speed can be had on the cheap this year. Not like it was 4-5 years ago, when you could practically win the league with 60 SB.

Of course, right now Uncle Bud is beating the Termites with their -2 nSB. Heh.

Bengie Molina is a better option than some of these catchers… like David Ross.

I still think Clark’s team is looking pretty good… he’d need a really good reason to trade. After that, I’d go with the Termites and the ‘Topes.

Matt Murton doesn’t suck, either.

And, of course, Barry lurks out there somewhere. He’ll probably go to the AL, but still…

Draft is in…

Well, the draft is in.  Hope you guys had fun!

After a whopping 2 minutes of looking at the teams, I’m going with Clark.   A little weak in speed, perhaps, but strong at all the positions, and a good rotation.  Closers?  Eh, he’ll get a few.

I’m not building a projector for this year, sorry.  If I wanted to work that hard I would have played.  But if Mike and/or Patrick are Real Men, they’ll post their projector results.

Good to see nearly the entire Reds rotation was drafted.  What, nobody wanted Josh Fogg?

How to make a Man’s League

Well, they got 8 players, so they are going to do the full NL. There was some debate on how to make a 7-player league deep enough to be fun. The consensus seemed to be forming around eliminating a couple of real teams. I proposed what I still think is the best idea: Take the best 25 players in the league, and make them ineligible. It would be simple to define — just use the CBS rankings to ID the top 25.

This is the fastest way to make the league deep, because you know every one of those guys would have been drafted. Plus, it makes it more interesting. Everybody knows David Wright is pretty good. The only question is whether he’s worth $45 or $55. There’s a whole lot of random in that. Much more interesting to make the $20 players into the effective superstars, and push the whole league that much deeper.

Smackdown

I must confess, I don’t know all of the new folks in the league.  However, they are quite adept at the smackdown.  Hopefully the trash will continue; as a dispassionate but interested observer, it’s like free entertainment.

Feel free to use the comments section as a smackdown arena.

lawyerfest

Well, the lawyerfest has begun, and there is much debate on the rules.  I’d suggest AL only, and putting the transaction dollars at about $30, but that’s just me.

Correia got it right — 25 weeks in the season, budget about $1.50/week.  That puts you at $37.50.  I’d lower it to $30, just to annoy Patrick.

Year of the Living Dangerously

Well, since I don’t have to calculate player values and research AAAA players this season, I figured I’d blog it a bit.  Especially since it’s looking like I’ll be the non-playing commissioner this year of the famous Fighting Dungeon Masters fantasy baseball league.

I plan to use this blog to comment on the moves of the various teams.  I promise to be unbiased, and to make fun of all of them.  I may even use this opportunity to publish the correct way to do fantasy player analysis, so that some of these yay-hoos will have a chance.