Handing out pre-season awards

American League: MVP: Mark Teixeira – With Arod out for a couple of months Teixeira will have to step up. He will. Last year he made massive, massive strides in plate discipline, walking more than he struck out and raising his CT% to 83. He reached a career high OBP, and the power is still [...]

BJ Upton: Where did the power go?

If I told you BJ Upton regressed in 2008, you would probably say duh. Just look at the numbers.. 2007: .300, 24 HR, 22 SB, 82 RBI, 86 Runs. 2008: .273, 9 HR, 44 SB, 66 RBI, 85 Runs. The thing is, I don’t think Upton regressed. Not at all. Sure his power numbers plummeted, [...]

Pedro Martinez – A return to greatness?

Pedro Martinez doesn’t have to do anything this year. He is easily one of the greatest pitchers of all time, and based off his performances in 1999 and 2000, I would argue he’s the greatest pitcher to ever live. But the vast majority of baseball analysts think he’s done. Their argument is that Pedro has [...]

Who will be this year’s Cliff Lee?

So last year someone in your AL only auction, or mixed league draft, or whatever league you are in picked up Cliff Lee for a buck or two or in the last round. He went on to win 22 games with an ERA of 2.54. To figure out who “the next Cliff Lee” is we have to [...]

ARod replacements

 Alex Rodriguez’s surgery was successful but he’s still out until mid-May so all you Arod owners (including me) need to replace him with someone for now.   For mixed league owners:  Hank Blalock (14.6% owned in ESPN leagues) – If he’s healthy Blalock should be owned in every league. Combine 07 and 08 – that’s over 460 ABs [...]

2009 MLB draft: top 21 prospects.

Dustin Ackley’s move to centerfield helps his draft stock. This is a fantasy blog and in fantasy leagues minor leaguers don’t put up stats. Neither do college guys, or for that matter high schoolers. But you want to know who these prospects are before others to get them in dynasty leagues and the draft is one of the [...]

Top 15 catchers – 2009

Mike Napoli? Seriously? Yep.   My first positional rankings are out and they are a little bit unusual but the catcher position is rather unusual to start with. One thing I have to say: there is no excuse not to own a good catcher this year. You don’t have to spend an early pick on [...]

Top second year hitters

With all the hype around David Price and Matt Wieters it’s easy to forget that amazing crop of offensive rookies we had last year. Forgetting them would be dangerous though as quite a few are poised for a break. Here I’m going to rank the top few second year guys. Some of these guys had [...]

Rangers best outfielder may not be named Josh.

I’m going to pull a Matthew Berry on you. Sorry, I have to. Player A – .302/.357/.551, 34 HR, 20 SB Player B – .300/.369/.530, 30 HR, 9 SB Now you probably guessed by now that your supposed to pick player A, and then I’ll say “But wait, player A is going 5 rounds after [...]

Saturday column – Chad Billingsley, I told you so!

Well its 2 AM and I want to get my Saturday column, so for some ideas I took a look at my old blog, and found this post: Most likely to join games elite at the pitchers position? This is not a list of breakouts because some of these guys allready have. Not even ecatly [...]