2009 Fantasy Baseball

MockDraftCentral.com is hands down the industry leader for fantasy sports mock drafting.  They had a mock draft system up and running in 2002, long before the big dogs in the industry even considered offering practice drafts.  ESPN and CBS are now offering their own mock drafts but have yet to master it like MDC.  This review will focus on their actual Mock Drafting process.  MDC is also highly touted for the Average Draft Position reports, which may be covered in another article.

MDC has both free and premium options.  The free account will allow you to hop into a handful of mock drafts and test out their offerings – one draft per day, maximum of three per week.  A free account will also get you samples of their ADP reports and their Draft Day Cheatsheet.  If you are serious about your fantasy baseball then this free subscription should be enough to convince you to go premium.  MDC premium membership is $4/month.

With a premium account on MDC you not only get to participate in unlimited mock drafts, but you also get the ability to create your own custom mock drafts.  So, if you’re league is a little different than the standard offerings, no problem.  You create your mock draft settings, create a time, and it will appear right in their draft lobby along with all the standard drafts.  Anyone on MDC will be able to sign up and participate in your draft.  If the draft doesn’t attract enough real players to fill all your spots then MDC’s Artificial Intelligence players will fill the hole.

The AI players draft directly from the MDC ADP report.  It’s always fun to have a full draft of real players, but that is rarely a reality in the mock drafting world, especially for the early birds.  The AI players following the ADP is a solid approach as it keeps your practice drafts close to what you should expect on draft day.

The MDC Mock Draft Room loads quickly, works well in any browser, and has all the tools and featuers you need to run an efficient draft.  Here is a screenshot:

The running list along the left makes it very easy to follow the draft.  This is on of MDC’s best features.  You can scroll up and down the list to quickly see what happened in previous rounds.  The only issue with this feature is that it does return to the bottom automatically when someone makes a new pick.  So if you are trying to scroll up you have to do it quickly before someone else makes a pick.  MDC could improve this list by giving it it’s own html scroll bar that stays in place as the user moves it.

MDC lists all the players by ADP and gives you their relevant stats.  To the right is your Queue list, where you can queue up all the players you are interested in.  The dropdown menu in the bottom left allows you to see your full team or any other team in the league.  Right of that is the chat box, which is always busy in MDC drafts.  The guys that hang out on this site are highly opinionated and very hardcore baseball players.  I love talking with them (the mature ones) about their picks.  You’ll definitely pick up some intersting draft ideas and strategies by chatting with your draft “competitors.”

The Draft Lobby lists all the upcoming drafts by sport.  At a glance I see a variety of 8, 10, and 12 man leagues about to start drafting.  Most of them are 5×5 roto with 20-28 rounds.  Drafts are going off every 15 minutes.  Picks are almost always set to 45 seconds and the AI drafts immediately.  If you have a draft half full of real players going 20 rounds you should expect to be drafting for an hour.  A 28 round draft full of real players, however, may keep you in front of your computer for over two and a half hours!  Here’s a screenshot of what to expect in the draft lobby:

Mock Drafting is the number one way to prepare yourself for your real fantasy baseball drafts.  MDC is heating up for the 2009 fantasy baseball season – give it a look!

CBS continues to assert its leadership in fantasy baseball.  With Yahoo and ESPN barely even thinking about Fantasy at this point, Sportsline has opened up an impressive mock drafting system. I used it a couple of times today and was pleased so decided to put up a review for it. NOTE: I did have some trouble getting the console to load completely when first entering the draft lobby. If this happens to you simply hit “F5″ and you should get a full load.

CBS Mock Drafts Home

Sportsline gave their mock drafts an entire section on the site. The Mock Drafts home page features fantasy baseball drafting articles, Draft Prep links, and a mock drafting console that takes you into a currently running mock draft with one click. I suggest not clicking on “Join the Next Mock Draft” in the console because it takes you into a draft that is already running. Instead, click on the draft lobby link. That will take you to a page that looks like this:

The times listed in the lobby are Eastern. That’s important to know so that you don’t think you have to wait hours or so that you don’t click on one that is already going, depending on where you are. I don’t know why CBS doesn’t tell us this, but we’ll cut them some slack. They offer a ton of drafts – 5×5 roto NL/AL, heads up, AL only, NL only, and all of them are prescheduled. The traffic, as of today, does not keep up with the number of drafts starting. Therefore you end up with a lot of AI players in your drafts. I had a draft earlier today that had 4 slots out of 10 filled and another draft where I was the only player. Players also come in and out of the draft due to the “Join a Draft Now” feature, which is a bit annoying.

Choose the draft that looks good to you and then wait for it to start. When it’s time for it to start the draft window doesn’t open automatically – you have to click “Join Draft” on the Home or Lobby pages or the “Draft in Progress” link in the horizontal navigation bar. The draft lobby loads instantly and smoothly. If it does not fully load for you hit the F5 key to refresh. I’ve had to refresh many of my lobbies today. The Draft Room is pretty straightforward, which is appreciable. There is a lot of information to pack into this one little room. Here is a screenshot:

The drafting experience can be confusing at first, especially if there are a lot of AI “Autopickers” in your draft. The drafts move very quickly because the Autopickers draft immediately. If you are the only person participating in the draft it will almost always be your turn. You have to use much of your 45 second time clock looking at who the computer just drafted. Once more players are participating in the drafts this won’t be an issue.

The draft has four major sections – Sortable Available Players list, Queue, Sortable Drafted Players list, and a chat box. You can sort available players by position, projection, and three year average. You can sort drafted player by team and round. When you click on an available players name a window pops up immediately. This window gives you the ability to draft the player or queue the player. It also gives you a helpful preseason outlook and a graphical fantasy trends analysis. This extra information is a very cool addition to the mock drafting experience. I felt like I was learning while I was drafting.

When my first draft was over I was expecting to get an option to send the draft results to email (like on MockDraftCentral.com). That option never appeared. I searched the site for an option to see draft results and didn’t find that either. Maybe I just haven’t found it, but this was my biggest disappointment with the system.

Overall CBS Sports’ Mock Drafting is a nice addition. I’m happy to have another venue to practice mock drafting, even though MockDraftCentral.com still has a much superior product. Both sites have plenty of room to make improvements, and I’m sure we’ll see some improvements to both sites as the fantasy industry grows. Please leave a comment if you guys know of any other Mock Drafting options available now (Mid January). Thanks!

MockDraftCentral.com plows us with great content every preseason.  I tend to hang out there a lot January-March for baseball and July-August for baseball.  I even got the chance to participate in one of their Expert Football Drafts last season, which was a blast.  MDC assembled an impressive list of experts for this draft – Brandon Funston from Yahoo, Alex Cushing from MLB.com, Doug Anderson of RotoExperts, and others.

Here is the link to the draft results.

As usually happens, pitchers really fell in this draft.  Only three were taken in the first four rounds.  Lots of teams look really weak in the pitching category.  The most balanced team, and the favorite to win this league imo, is Brian Pelowski’s team.  He’s got Peavey, Harden, Sheets, Verlander, Weaver, and Carpenter for his Starters.  He got good value at RP, with Lidge in the 9th round and Sherill in the 19th.  Couple that pitching crew with Cabrera, Holliday, and Ellsbury and this team is set.

Notice that Papelbon was taken in round five and then not a single RP was taken until Nathan in the 8th.  The RP run started in the 9th, with Rivera, Rodriguez and Lidge going.  Usually a run gives someone bad value, but I love the value here for all three of these guys. I think this is a phenomenon just in this expert draft – expect closers to be more spread out in the 5th-10th rounds in average drafts.

There are lots of interesting sleeper picks here.  Supersleeper Nelson Cruz was no secret here – Doug Anderson took him in the 12th round.  You can probably wait on him a bit longer in your drafts but this could be the kid to reach for.  There was a flurry of sleeper activity in the 16th round with Denard Span, Shin-Soo Choo, and Cameron Maybin going in a series of four picks.  Pitchers Joba Chamberlain and David Price went in the 11th and 12th rounds.  That seems about right for these potential breakout stars.

Commentors, which teams do you like best?

CBS Sportsline has long been a leader in fantasy baseball with a variety of solid offereings.  This year, like others, you can find free leagues, premium commissioner leagues, and premium competition leagues.  You can find a home here no matter what level of commitment you are willing to make.  While most fantasy baseball owners still prefer the Yahoo interface Sportsline has some fetaures that allow it to hold its own.

Sportsline’s free offering, like ESPN but unlike Yahoo, gives you free live scoring.  If there are a few people in your Yahoo league that cry every year about paying the $10 for StatTracker then Sportsline could be the better option.  If you are a commissioner in a premium league you should definitely check out what Sportsline can offer.  They give you perhaps the most flexibility to create custom leagues in the industry.  If you’re interested check it out soon = early signups for their premium leagues save $30 and get a free trophy for the league winner.

Even if you comfortably call another site home for your regular baseball leagues you should check out the Premium Games and Sportsline.  In these games you can win hefty cash prizes competing against anyone else in the world who happens to sign up in the same league as you.  There are four levels of buyins – $30, $100, $250, and $500.  Prizes are $150, $600, $1600, and $3500, respectively.  The competition in the higher leagues can be intense, but you will also run into some donkeys with too much money that are just playing for fun.  Give these leagues a shot if you want to make a serious time and money investment this year.

I’m not sure if I go to Razzball.com more for entertainment or info, but they’ve got a great combination of both. Check out Grey’s post on 2009 fantasy baseball sleepers to see what I’m talking about:

http://razzball.com/category/2009-sleepers

Razzball highlights a handful of guys who should perform much better than the “schmohawks” near their ADP. Mentioned in this post are Blake Dewitt, Chris Young, Joey Votto, and the Rangers catchers.

I am totally on board with Chris Young for the sleepers list this year. I owned him last season in two leagues and cringed every time I saw the replay of the Pujols line drive. Of all people to take a line drive from, he got hit square in the nose by Albert Pujols. Any mortal would have called it a career, but Young came back to post killer numbers late in the season. He’ll be falling in drafts and I plan to reach for him as my SP3 to be sure to lock him up.

I’m also on board the Joey Votto train, but with all the love he is getting from fantasy baseball sites across the internet right now I’m not sure how much value he’ll have come draft day. If the Votto man love keeps going this strong he will be as the 12th first baseman by the time you do your drafts.

Razzball has quite a few individual posts about fantasy sleepers that don’t show up on this page. I’m not sure why they don’t keep updating this page with their new sleeper posts, but you can find their other posts about sleepers by navigating through their recent articles. At the time of this posting I see articles on Alex Gordon and Chris Davis as well. These posts are worth are worth a read, just like everything Razzball produces. Check out Razzball.com.

The 2009 Fantasy Baseball Rankings list on this site is not complete at the time of this writing – they still have Starting Pitchers and Closers to go, but I really like what they’ve done for batters.

RotoSavant is basically a blog site from some guys who really know their stuff.  They break their rankings down by position in a simple blog post, which is a nice change of pace from the usual impersonal list.  Each player ranked has a brief but valuable description.  The only downside to these rankings is that they do not integrate the rankings list to produce an Overall Cheatsheet.

Take a look at the RotoSavant rankings at the link below.  Their site says SP and Closer rankings should be coming within the week.

http://www.rotosavants.com/2008/11/2009-player-rankings-for-5×5-drafts.html

There isn’t much more enjoyable than watching your late round minor league prospect blossom into a fantasy baseball star.  Minor leaguers emerge every year to make a huge impact on your league.  Evan Longoria’s performance last year sent him from deep sleeper to a solid second round choice this year.  We saw it with Ryan Braun two years ago.

Who is it going to be this year?  Fantasy Baseball Dugout advises you to look at Texas OF Nelson Cruz, Orioles OF Lou Montanez, Orioles C Matt Wieters, and A’s pitcher Vince Mazzaro.

I especially like Wieters and Cruz from this list.  If you end up with an A.J. Pierzynski as your starting catcher then look to reach for Wieters later in the draft.  If he does turn into this year’s Soto you’ll be set.  As for Cruz, my gut is that his bat will prove to valuable to keep out of that lineup often.  He may not make it to every game status this season but his PT should increase steadily throughout the season.  I plan to take him over guys like Bourn and Swisher in the late, late rounds.

Here’s the full write up for your reading pleasure:

http://www.fantasybaseballdugout.com/2008/12/01/2009-minor-league-fantasy-baseball-prospects/

Click Here for Fantasy Man early mock draft results.

This is a 2009 Mock Draft organized by TheFantasyMan.com that features an impressive list of experts.  It was held on 11/7/2008, exactly a month before this blog post.  Many of the fantasy baseball experts participating were gracious enough to give analysis on their picks.  Their work, found here, is quite thorough and entertaining.  This is a great place to start your research for the 2009 season.

Note that five second basemen, including Brandon Phillips, were off the board by the end of the third round.  Thats something to keep an eye on as more mock drafts are posted.  After seeing five go that early some of the drafters may have decided to wait and take Kendrick late, but then he went off the board in round 7.  Interestingly, Alexi Ramirez did stay on the board until round 11, so there was second base value to be had.

Shortstop is also of note in this mock draft.  The big three went in the first seven picks and then not a single SS was taken until Michael Young and Derek Jeter went in round six.  Troy Tulowitzki and Stephen Drew in round 8 may both prove to be excellent values.

The guys at CBS Sportsline went balls to the wall and posted their first list of 2009 fantasy baseball player rankings during the 2008 season!

Take a look at their rankings here:

Sportsline Player Rankings

Chase Utley at #4 tells us right away these rankings have been out for a while.  Putting that aside this is a valuable list for the early researcher.  They give you the overall cheatsheet and break it down by position.

This list is pretty safe overall.  No major gambles stick out so it won’t help you much if you’re looking for a super sleeper.  HanRam cracks the top of the list, which we will probably see a lot of this year.  Last year’s concensus number one, Alex Rodriguez, comes in at 4th when you take away Utley.  Rodriguez is an every other year sensation so a lot of drafters may take him higher after a bit of a down year this year.  It appears they weren’t sure what to do with the Boston fantasy dynamos.  They rank them all in a row – Ortiz, Youkillis, Pedroia, and Bay are 30 through 33.  While I’d like to see some separation and Bay a little higher this is not a bad way to handle this crew.

Santana is still the number one pitcher here, but Sabathia and Lincecum are right on his heels.  They are ranked  13-15 but I would be surprised to see all three of these guys go by the middle of the second round in your drafts.  The list also features three closers in the top 40, which also seems too high for actual drafts.  Rodriguez, Papelbon, and Rivera are studs but it’s tough to draft them over the sluggers and  aces that will be available in the third and fourth rounds.  Rich Harden comes in as the 28th pitcher and 92nd player overall.  Harden will be one of the most hotly debated players in the fantasy realm this season.  On the off chance that he does stay healthy he could easily be the top fantasy pitcher.  Someone in your league will jump on the Harden train earlier than this, so if you want him don’t expect him to be around in the 8th or 9th round.

As always, leave some comments below if you’d like to comment on this list or if you have any other rankings lists we should discuss.  Thanks!

Fantasy Baseball Consumer: We are here to help!

The sheer volume of information available to the fantasy baseball player can be overwhelming.  The internet has turned fantasy sports into a thriving industry where any Joe Plumber with a computer can suddenly be a fantasy pundit.  That said, there is a ton of amazing information available to help you win your league in 2009.  Our major goal on this site is to help you find it.  We will be posting our own opinions, rankings, blogs, etc., but we feel we can be most valuable as a hub that reports on the best information we find.

For example, for our 2009 Fantasy Baseball Mock Drafts page we will scour the web and provide you with links to all the free expert mock drafts that we like.  One mock draft is never enough, and a single mock draft is hardly relevant even a couple weeks after it is posted.  So we will provide links to mock drafts as they happen.  Look through all of them and you will get a sense of average draft position.  Looking at others mock drafts and understanding players’ average draft position is the single most important kind of fantasy baseball research you can do.

Our 2009 Fantasy Baseball Player Rankings page will be a great resource for comparing player rankings across the fantasy information sites.  Our 2009 Fantasy Baseball closers page will keep you updated on one of the most frustrating positions in the game.  The 2009 Fantasy Football Leagues site will show you the variety of fantasy games available in 2009.  You don’t just have to play on Yahoo, ESPN, and CBS every year.  There are tons of free and pay leagues out there to keep you occupied.  Have an idea of what we are all about now?

So bookmark us and check back in often.  We’ll be continuously updating all of our pages.  If you have any suggestions for what else you’d like to see on this site please leave them in the comments box below.  We know that the only way to make this site a valuable resource is to listen to what our readers want.  If you would like to write for us leave a message in the comments as well.

Kick some ass this season!