TG Fantasy Baseball

Fantasy Baseball Draft Hints
Written by MadAlan
March 7, 2010

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Fantasy Baseball Draft Hints from a Multiple Expert League Winner By Madalan

Important Draft Hint: Forget all kids regardless of the hype unless you are to draft in a Keeper League. Remember, less than 4% of all Rookies achieve any Fantasy value; that means 1 out of 40 will be important to your roster. Let others gamble while you pick the smarter, safer choice; each rookie drafted by others opens the door for you to pick a better player who far is less of a gamble.

Beating a Pre-Rank Draft
The best method to control a pre-rank draft is called “bunching.” Bunching is exactly as it sounds. The concept is to disregard names and only judge groups by numbers.

Example: This works, use it, guaranteed to get one great First baseman and likely receive two:

	HRI	RBI	R	SB
Player A	47	135	124	16
Player B	45	141	105	8
Player C	46	141	103	2
Player D	34	103	96	6
Player E	39	122	103	2

The top 5 First baseman listed above, sorted by their 2009 numbers and their likely 2010 expectations will create a roster cornerstone; here is how you can own one of them and probably another from the top 10 First baseman as well. Two prime power sources. Begin by placing Player A (Pujols) as the top pick on the Pre-rank list as he deserves to be. Then place Player B (Howard), Player C (Fielder), Player D (Cabrera) and Player E (Teixeira) all bunched together as second pick, third pick, fourth pick, etc. Two Rounds after the dust has settled repeat the bunch play with the next First baseman group and place this bunch together on the Pre-ranking list; once again grab another player with similar numbers as the first bunch. One or two may possibly see a reduction from 2009 (D. Lee), while others are likely to improve (K. Morales) (Votto) (A. Gonzalez).

Derrek Lee	35	111	91	1
Joey Votto	25	84	82	4
Mark Reynolds	44	102	98	24
Adrian Gonzalez	40	99	90	1
Kendry Morales	34	108	86	3

Consider this method to possess a few top Pitchers quickly to build a solid staff around. Below are 13 Starting Pitchers who are most likely to Win 15 games or more in 2010. I place them as before when I explained the bunching concept using First baseman; split the list below into two groups and place them grouped completely as before. Every pitcher listed is also an extremely powerful trading tool for tweaking purposes later and should be used accordingly. This method had twice last year landed me 6-7 pitchers from the list allowing me enormous latitude in most any trading plan. 15 Wins or more are almost a sure 2010 thing with:

Tim Lincecum
Roy Halladay
CC Sabathia
Zack Greinke
Chris Carpenter
Félix Hernández
Adam Wainwright
Justin Verlander
Josh Johnson
Jon Lester
Josh Beckett
Matt Cain
Scott Baker

- Madalan

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