It’s time to start bringing back all those “shriveling testicles” and “Manny being Mary” jokes again, folks, as the always enthralling Manny Ramirez has signed a minor league deal with the Oakland A’s and has himself, not only an invitation to spring training, but a new opportunity to return to the major leagues.  There are certainly a boatload of questions surrounding this move, but as we look into them all, the one question that I have for you is — would you draft Manny for your fantasy team?

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From Martin Perez to Wil Myers.

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Matt Joyce season endured a roller coaster season in his first year as the main right fielder for the Rays. Batting .370 over the season’s first two months, Joyce hit just .226 for the remainder of the season. Joyce was expected to be a platoon player, but he was hitting so well during the early parts of the year that the Rays allowed him to start 15 games against left-handed pitchers. The experiment did not go well, as Joyce hit just .151/.244/.233 against left-handed starters

Entering this season, it looks like the Rays are accepting the fact that Joyce is a platoon partner. In signing Jeff Keppinger, owner of a .302/.360/.432 line against lefties, the Rays will most likely employ a platoon of Keppinger playing second base against lefties and Joyce playing right field against righties, with Ben Zobrist moving back and forth between the two positions. This is a wise baseball decision, as both struggle against pitchers of their same handedness but are very good against opposite handed pitchers.

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Zach Britton (BAL – P) – In 2011, Britton started his first season in the majors on a tear. After his first 10 games, the ground ball pitcher had a 2.35 ERA and 5 Wins. The good start to the season was because of an extremely low BABIP (0.242). Over the next 10 games, he had an 8.00 ERA that was BABIP (0.410) driven. At this point in the season, he went on the DL for 17 days with should inflammation. After the short DL stint, he came back and pitched much better, with an 4.47 ERA and a 0.282 BABIP. During the whole time, he was able to maintain a relatively constant strikeout rate, walk rate and fastball speed.

This off season, he stated that his shoulder has still been in pain. He had an MRI on it that came back negative. With that news, he has begun long toss sessions to get ready for the season. The 23-year-old stated that he will just have to deal with the inflammation at various times over his career.

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Due to the rampant success of the first FanGraphs staff ottoneu league — and the fact that the FanGraphs staff has grown tenfold over the past year — we put together a second FanGraphs staff fantasy league for this season, figuring our readers can never have too much ottoneu content. See the labors we go through for you, our loyal readers? This league is a selfless endeavor, and its sole purpose is to educate and entertain the masses. Please, don’t thank us. We do this for love.*

*And by “love”, I may or may not be referring to you, our loyal readers, or fantasy baseball.

This league is a FanGraphs Points league, and since this is the league’s first season, we have to complete an epic, 8+ hour auction draft that is standard fare for ottoneu leagues (it gets quicker in subsequent years). We chose to break this draft into two parts, and completed the first four-hour block last night.

Chad Young will have a general recap of the draft a bit later, but in the meantime, I want to pass along some thoughts about my strategy and observations. Because, you know, fantasy baseball is a selfish endeavor, and even if nobody else cares about my fantasy team, I sure as hell do and I’m going to make you all suffer with me.*

*Actually, I think there were some good take-away points from last night’s draft about player valuation and draft strategy. So hopefully my observations will actually be useful, and not just self-aggrandizing. 

Without further ado, let’s get on to the draft. I have three main points I’d like to focus on, which as general strategies should make sense in any league format.

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I was invited to Fantasy411’s industry slow mock to open the mocking season. Now, what feels like a month later, only two picks remain. Because I love my team, I thought I’d brag about it.

The mock has some serious competitors involved. Jason Collette, Paul Sporer, Derek VanRiper, Will Carroll, Joe Sheehan, Todd Zola, Steve Gardner, Ray Flowers, Cory Schwartz, Lawr Michaels, Zach Steinhorn and Jeff Erickson were the 12 other managers, listed from last to first pick. A good gaggle of go-getters.

I had the last pick of the first round — which was fine with me. I love this team. Here are the overall results so far, but after the jump I’ll take you through my picks round by round. It’s mocking season!

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Over the last few weeks we’ve spent some time crowdscourcing Yu Darvish’s expected 5×5 stats and ottoneu points production, and now I want to use that data to crowdsource his expected draft round and various auction values. But first, a quick recap of our previous crowdsourcing escapades…

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A year ago, there was talk of Astros’ rookie backstop Jason Castro being a quality late round sleeper in fantasy leagues.  But then he tore his ACL and, with surgery needed, Castro missed the entire 2011 season.  He made it back to play in the Arizona Fall League and was returning to “potential sleepers” lists until he injured himself again during the final game and required foot surgery in mid-December.  He was expected to miss atleast three months.  But on Sunday, Brian McTaggert, an Astos beat writer for MLB.com, reported that Castro has already declared himself good to go and is ready to ease his way back in.  An early return?  Is that enough to put him back on your watch list?  Is he worth a late round/$1 pick on draft day?

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We all know the old saying: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, I’m never drafting that player again. It’s one thing to be disappointed with a player’s performance in a single year, but if a player doesn’t pan out in multiple seasons after having been a previously valuable player, well, it’s hard not to take personally sometimes.

It’s been a few years since A.J. Burnett was a sought after fantasy property — his last truly strong season was 2007, which means the 2008 draft was his last time as a potential top tier pitcher — but was still getting drafted in the 200-215 range on most servers last year. Prior to his move to Pittsburgh, Burnett was getting drafted…sometimes. His ADP isn’t that different from 2011, about 222 according to Mock Draft Central, but he’s being drafted in fewer than 10 percent of mixed 5X5 drafts.

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Like, next week.

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