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Preparation is always important if you want to do something well, or at least if you want to give yourself the best possible chance of doing something well.\u00c2\u00a0 Fail to prepare and you prepare to fail, as the saying goes.\u00c2\u00a0 However, you need to be careful not to take that too far in the wrong direction.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to out-think yourself in fantasy baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 You need to be careful that your ranking sheets and mock drafts don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t simply become a recital process in which you practice precisely what you want to do.\u00c2\u00a0 The preparation is there to help you make good decisions when the real draft comes along, not for you to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclearn your lines’.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a small distinction, but a very important one.\u00c2\u00a0 All it takes is a couple of unforeseen events and your carefully rehearsed plan suddenly falls apart.<\/p>\n
The main unforeseen events that can impact a fantasy draft are injuries and as noted in my recent Rounding the Bases column<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0 players are dropping like flies.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n This can be an acute problem for casual fantasy players, like myself, if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take it into account.\u00c2\u00a0 While I have a fair idea of how plenty of players have performed in recent years, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t study them closely through a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfantasy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pair of eyes.\u00c2\u00a0 I rely on ranking sheets from fantasy experts to form the foundations of my own lists.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, at first glance it might seem that getting your ranking sheets in order well in advance of your draft would be a diligent, sensible thing to do.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true to a great extent, but clearly you need to keep a close eye on how the expert ranking lists change as your draft approaches.<\/p>\n This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always as straightforward as it appears.\u00c2\u00a0 Some websites publish their rankings in February and then don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t change them, while others will make amendments without making it immediately obvious that they have done so.\u00c2\u00a0 The printable sheets on MLB.com\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fantasy section all still have \u00e2\u20ac\u015302\/08\/2010 8:00 AM ET\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on them, but they are being updated on a regular basis.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, Joe Nathan was originally 4th on their overall list of relief pitchers and now he is a long way down the rankings with a note to warn you that he is a risk to miss the whole season.<\/p>\n Nathan perhaps is not the best example because his \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcstar closer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 status and the potential severity of his injury ensure that his situation is well known and understood.\u00c2\u00a0 Lower profile players or those who will not be fit for the start of the season are the guys you really need to concentrate on.<\/p>\n A good player who is currently struggling for fitness may still be a valuable contributor in 2010, you just have to weigh up the risk and factor that into your decision on when you select them and what back-up plan you put in place.\u00c2\u00a0 Joe Mauer was an excellent example of this last year.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only was he still injured at the time of most drafts, there was no firm timetable on when he would return.\u00c2\u00a0 That dropped him down the rankings, but if you were able to draft him in a good spot (i.e. not so early that you missed out on selecting a strong contributor who was winning you points from day one, rather than from May onwards) and picked up a serviceable temporary catcher, you were on a winner.\u00c2\u00a0 Keeping a check on the expert rankings and any associated columns can give you some useful pointers on when players are likely to take the field and at what point it make sense to draft them.<\/p>\n Injuries are inevitable so there’s no point in worrying about them, indeed they can create some excellent opportunities.\u00c2\u00a0 You just need to keep a check on all the latest news, right up to the draft itself, to make sure that any decisions you make are based on as much information as possible.<\/p>\n The Yahoo Fantasy set-up includes a note icon next to each player and if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s yellow with a red star, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re best to click on it because that means there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an important update that you might need to be aware of.\u00c2\u00a0 The Injury Reports page doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to help very much though.<\/p>\n MLB.com\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fantasy section includes a handy team-by-team injury list<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 This tells you when the update was last amended, gives an indication of when the player is due back and offers a brief note on their progress. Their \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcFantasy Player New and Updates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 page<\/a> provides further injury details and other useful information, such as position battles, while including various different navigational tools that allow you to check up on specific players or positions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the third part of our Fantasy League preparation series, we take a look at the importance of keeping up-to-date on all the injury news while leading up to your draft<\/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-6987","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\/6987","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=6987"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6989,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987\/revisions\/6989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Where to look<\/h3>\n