{"id":6933,"date":"2010-03-09T08:30:15","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T08:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=6933"},"modified":"2010-03-10T08:48:04","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T08:48:04","slug":"bgb-fantasy-league-preparation-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=6933","title":{"rendered":"BGB Fantasy League preparation: Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BgbFantasyHeadline\"The 2010 Baseball GB Fantasy League draft is all set for 20.00 GMT (4 p.m. Eastern Time) on Saturday 20 March; less than two weeks away. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got our 14 teams now and Mark\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in-depth primer<\/a> is online, passing on all the details about how the competition works.<\/p>\n

That means it’s time to get on with some preparation\u00c2\u00a0to avoid making a\u00c2\u00a0complete horlicks of the draft.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’ll be posting\u00c2\u00a0some semi-serious updates of my preparation over the next week and a bit, leading up to the big evening.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m happy to pass on some of my tips because I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do anything clever when it comes to my fantasy research.\u00c2\u00a0 Custom stats and databases aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really my thing.\u00c2\u00a0 There are a lot of fantasy experts out there devoting countless hours to this sort of research, so you may as well piggy-back on to their efforts rather than completely reinvent the wheel.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The place I start with is the Yahoo Fantasy Baseball section.\u00c2\u00a0 They produce position-by-position articles that give you a sense of how several fantasy experts rate the players.\u00c2\u00a0 I use this series mainly to become familiar with which players are eligible for each position.\u00c2\u00a0 In a lot of cases, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty obvious (expert tip number one: Albert Pujols is a first baseman and is quite a good guy to pick), but you do come across some players who are eligible for several positions that might come in useful when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re putting together your roster.<\/p>\n

From there, I dip in and out of several different ranking websites just to see where there are great divergences of opinions.\u00c2\u00a0 Do a quick Google search and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find loads of ranking resources.\u00c2\u00a0 Every now and then you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll come across a player who is boosted\/demoted in one set of rankings and you can then look into the player a bit more deeply and decide whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good idea to be similarly optimistic\/pessimistic or not.\u00c2\u00a0 However, the more rankings you consult, the more you find that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s often not a great deal of difference between them.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I stock up on a set of free ranking sheets, overall and position-by-position, and then I mess about with them.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, I go to the trouble of finding ranking sheets by fantasy experts who know infinitely more about this than I do and then I decide that in some cases I know better.<\/p>\n

Okay, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, I do mess the ranking sheets about, but not in the misguided belief that I know more than others.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Playing fantasy baseball is purely a bit of fun for me.\u00c2\u00a0 As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking over the ranking sheets, some players will stand out for both rational and irrational reasons and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get a star next to their name or a minus.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the sensible way to go about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Upgrading someone purely on a hunch formed on the back of a few stats and some positive quotes from the player in question isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sound fantasy strategy, yet heading into the draft with a few \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdark horses\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 on your list adds to the enjoyment.<\/p>\n

Last year I went into the draft with stars next to the names of Javier Vazquez and Zack Grienke.\u00c2\u00a0 I was able to select both of them and they repaid me with excellent seasons.\u00c2\u00a0 That may mean I know more about this fantasy lark than I think, or it may mean that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve used up my luck for the next five years.\u00c2\u00a0 The latter is more likely.<\/p>\n

Putting together your own modified ranking sheets is only part of the battle.\u00c2\u00a0 You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to be able to use that research when the big day comes and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where mock drafts can help you.\u00c2\u00a0 That will be the subject of my next fantasy post later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first of a semi-serious series, we take a look at the first part of your fantasy league preparation: player ranking sheets<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[68,555],"class_list":["post-6933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy-baseball","tag-baseball-gb-fantasy-league","tag-fantasy-baseball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6933"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6955,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6933\/revisions\/6955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}