Some thought the A’s were selling high when they traded Dan Haren to the Diamondbacks following the 2007 season. He was coming off a season in which he set career bests in wins (15), ERA (3.07) and strikeouts (192). However, Haren had a FIP 63 points higher than his actual ERA and in the second half of 2007 he fell from a 2.30 ERA to a 4.15 mark. Additionally, many felt Haren was the beneficiary of both his home park and the A’s strong defense.

But Haren went out and pitched even better in 2008. He set career bests in wins (16), strikeouts (206) and WHIP (1.130) while his ERA (3.33) was the second-best mark of his career. Many now consider Haren one of the best starters in the game and he ranks in the top 10 in most lists of starting pitchers. His latest ADP is 55 according to Mock Draft Central.

Despite Chase Field being a good hitter’s park, Haren pitched just as good last year at home as on the road. He is young, durable and has a fine assortment of pitches. Last year Haren threw more cutters, giving batters another weapon to fear.

The projection systems agree with popular opinion, as they show Haren in the top 10 among starting pitchers in all four fantasy categories. Haren looks to be one of the safest pitchers around, as there are neither injury concerns nor any unprecedented inning totals warnings surrounding him. Also adding to his attractiveness as a fantasy player is the expected comfort from a new contract and additional familiarity with his surroundings in the National League.

If anything, fantasy owners may be undervaluing Haren relative to his starting pitcher peers in current mock drafts.

There is a lot of disagreement among fantasy players about when to start taking relief pitchers. The one thing that most agree upon is that the first one to take is Jonathan Papelbon. The Red Sox closer has a three-year track record of success, pitches for a team that should clear 90 wins and is a young 28, with only 230 major league innings on his arm. Papelbon has an ADP of 54, which means that fantasy players start targeting relievers in the middle of the fifth round.

Papelbon’s K/9 fell from an otherworldly 12.96 in 2007 to 10.00 last year. But he compensated by cutting his walks in half. His BB/9 checked in last year at a minuscule 1.04, which was the third-lowest mark for relievers. After back-to-back seasons with a BABIP in the .230s, Papelbon had a .313 mark last year. Combined with a LOB% of 69.5 percent, he saw increases last year in both his WHIP and his ERA.

With a more typical distribution with his LOB% (the only player with 15 or more saves to have a lower rate was Brandon Lyon) Papelbon could easily exceed last year’s overall numbers. And if no pitcher challenges for the all-time saves record, Papelbon could meet pre-season expectations by being the top fantasy closer at the end of the year.

But fantasy players have to ask themselves how much they are willing to pay for Papelbon’s track record. Is it worth taking him in the fifth round, while passing on players like Joe Mauer and Dan Haren? Especially when 30-save pitchers like Kerry Wood and B.J. Ryan are available eight rounds later? Both of those players have had injury problems in the recent past, which makes the Papelbon decision not so cut-and-dried.

In six of the last eight seasons, Lance Berkman has drawn support in the MVP balloting. Last year he ranked fifth in the National League, following a season in which he batted .312-29-106-114-18. According to Last Player Picked, that was the ninth-best season by a hitter in 2008. Berkman was the second-best first baseman behind only Albert Pujols in fantasy last year, but this year he has an ADP of 15 and on average is the fifth player picked from his position.

Part of the reason for Berkman’s relatively low rank this year is his second-half fade in 2008. After going .327/.444/.613 before the break, Berkman posted a .276/.354/.449 slash line in the second half. Streakiness is nothing new to Berkman, who followed up an .839 OPS in the first half of 2007 with a .970 OPS after the break.

Berkman displayed a full season of excellence in 2006, when he posted a .315-45-136-95-3 line. That year he set career-highs in both FB% (41.8) and HR/FB (24.6). Last year his HR/FB rate was down to 16.6 percent, his lowest mark since the 2003 season.

What you expect his HR output to be will have a big influence on when you decide to draft Berkman. Is he the guy who hit 40+ HRs in 2002 and 2006 or do you think he’s the guy who failed to crack 30 HRs in 2003, 2005 and 2008?

None of the four projection systems see Berkman as a 40-HR hitter this year. Bill James is the most optimistic, showing him with 33 HRs while both Marcel and Oliver show him with 28.

It is understandable why fantasy players are opting for the easier-to-project first basemen like Ryan Howard and Mark Teixeira over Berkman in early mocks. Berkman simply has not displayed the consistency from year-to-year that fantasy players desire from their early picks.

Additionally, none of our four projection systems see Berkman repeating his career-best season of 2008 in either runs or SB, which helped him to his big fantasy success last year. Without a return to form in HR, Berkman could fall to the eighth-best first baseman in fantasy, which would hardly be worth a high second-round pick.

According to The Fantasy Baseball Price Guide over at Last Player Picked, Evan Longoria put up a $10 value in a standard 12-team mixed league last year in his rookie season. That tied him with Troy Glaus for the 12th-most-valuable third baseman in fantasy in 2008. This year, Longoria is the pre-season consensus as the third-best pick among third basemen, trailing only Alex Rodriguez and David Wright. He has an ADP of 19 according to the latest update over at Mock Draft Central.

Are we getting ahead of ourselves in anointing Longoria as a fantasy stud?

Longoria’s ISO of .259 was the 10th-highest mark in the majors last year. It was also significantly above what he did in either Double-A or Triple-A. Longoria’s slugging was helped by a 19.4 percent HR/FB rate, the 13th-best mark in MLB. Can he keep these two marks that high in his sophomore season, especially given his 27.2 percent K%, the 12th-highest in baseball?

And even if the power is real, how confident are you that he can improve upon last year’s .272 average? That came with a .318 BABIP.

The projection systems are typically unreliable with young players. Understanding that caveat, let’s use the Bill James one, since that has the most optimistic line for Longoria. That has him putting up these numbers:

.280-37-116-102-9

Last year, Adrian Gonzalez put up this line and was the 30th-best hitter in fantasy.

.279-36-119-103-0

Now, obviously the SB difference should not be ignored, nor should the difference in position from Gonzalez at 1B and Longoria at 3B. But at least some of those differences are canceled out by adding pitchers into the equation. Eight pitchers last year had a dollar value greater than or equal to the $22 figure posted by Gonzalez.

Do the net differences cancel out 19 spots in draft order?

It is fun to have young superstars on your team and Longoria certainly fits the bill. But ask yourself if you want to overdraft him by one-to-two rounds in order to have him on your squad. Because that is the current premium that owners are placing on him over his most optimistic projection.

Jake Peavy has an ADP of 45 and is the sixth-highest rated starting pitcher by this ranking. On first glance, that seems a tad optimistic for a guy who saw his win total drop by nine and his ERA shoot up 31 points last season. But Peavy’s numbers in 2008 were hurt by a mid-season bout with elbow trouble and the Padres’ anemic offense.

Peavy missed a month last year due to a sore elbow, but he got back on the field without surgery and in his first start back pitched six scoreless innings. Peavy took his regular turn the rest of the season, missing only a September start so that he could be with his wife for the birth of their son.

In 14 of his 27 starts last year, the Padres scored three runs or less for Peavy, which helps explain how he was a .500 pitcher with a 2.85 ERA.

But there are some troubling signs from Peavy last year. His SO% fell and his BB% rose. His 2.81 K/BB ratio was the lowest of his career since his second season back in 2003. Peavy was also fortunate in his LOB%. His strand rate of 82.2 percent was the second-lowest mark in the majors. Peavy’s FIP was 3.60, significantly higher than his ERA, although he has beaten his FIP in five of the past six seasons.

All pitchers are risky and Peavy is no different than most. But he seemingly had no lingering issues with his elbow and he does get to pitch half of his games in Petco. Last year in home games, Peavy had a 1.74 ERA.

There have been rumors that Peavy is on the trading block. First he seemed destined for Atlanta and then he was linked with Chicago and the Cubs. If a trade does go through, Peavy would probably suffer in ERA and WHIP but would also be the beneficiary of more offensive support, which could lead to more wins.

Wherever he winds up, Peavy should continue to be one of the top pitchers in baseball. If nothing else, he should give fantasy players more strikeouts once he gets back to the 200-IP level he posted the three previous seasons. One of the top 10 fantasy pitchers available, Peavy is a reasonable person to target for those who like to grab at least one starting pitcher in the first four rounds.

Justin Morneau checks in with an ADP of 20 in the latest rankings from Mock Draft Central. That makes him a mid-to-late second-round pick. However, it also ranks him as the sixth-best first base option for fantasy players. Should a fantasy owner really spend a second-round pick on the sixth-best option at a non-OF, non-P position?

Morneau has a first and a second-place finish in the MVP race in two of the past three years, thanks in large part to big RBI numbers. Those RBI numbers are obviously quite valuable in fantasy, but they have the disadvantage of being relatively unreliable. After having 130 RBIs in 2006, Morneau “slumped” to 111 in 2007.

It is always nice if big RBI men can buttress their fantasy case with consistent production in other categories. One of the big arguments for Ryan Howard is you know he is going to give you HR production. But with Morneau, we see inconsistent production in average and declining HR rates.

In 2006, Morneau had a FB% of 40.6 percent and his HR/FB rate was 16.4 percent. Last year those numbers were 37.6 and 11.2, respectively. After hitting six home runs in April, Morneau hit just 17 in the following five months.

Late in September, Morneau disclosed that he had been playing with a sore knee. It certainly could help explain the declining power production but it was not serious enough for him to miss a single game last year.

However, if you want something to feel optimistic about, Morneau underwent laser eye surgery in November. Perhaps a healthy knee from an off-season of rest and improved vision will allow Morneau to get back to his 34-HR, .321-AVG ways of 2006. Otherwise, you might want to hold off on drafting a bottom-second-tier first baseman with your second-round pick.

The past eight seasons, Mark Buehrle has been guaranteed to pitch 200 innings and win in double digits. That marks him as one of the most durable pitchers around. But from a fantasy standpoint, Buehrle is not on anyone’s list of must-have hurlers.

While Buehrle has been extremely durable, he has also managed to be aggravatingly inconsistent in fantasy categories. Should owners expect 10 wins or 19? Should they count on 98 strikeouts or 165? Will his ERA be closer to 3.12 or 4.99? Will the WHIP be 1.07 or 1.45? Usually these drastic swings only occur in pitchers who had injury problems or suffered one off year or enjoyed a career season. Buehrle had career highs and lows in six different seasons over the past eight campaigns.

By contrast, Barry Zito had three of his career highs in 2002 and all four of his career lows in 2008.

Perhaps due to these wild fluctuations, the projection systems all see Buehrle failing to match his 2008 season, which was his best since 2005. They all come up with him having fewer wins and strikeouts and a higher ERA. Only his WHIP do they see as being stable, and as he finished 50th in that category among qualified pitchers last year, it is not anything really to get excited about.

Mock drafters also are confused with what to make of Buehrle. A mock I participated in today he went undrafted. I have also seen him go as high as the 17th round.

Buehrle makes a fine fifth or sixth starter for a mixed league staff. He is a good late pick because he does have upside. It is certainly possible that he turns in a season like he did in 2002 or 2005 or 2008 and becomes a valuable member of a championship pitching staff. Just don’t gamble on him being your fourth starter.

Everyone talks about how fortunate that Francisco Rodriguez was to set the all-time single-season saves mark in the last year of his contract. It certainly was ideal, but Rodriguez at 26-years old and a reliable closer for years, was going to get a nice contract, regardless. Instead, the person people should point to for coming up big prior to free agency is Jorge Posada.

In 2007, at the age of 35, Posada put up a .338-20-90-91-2 line, which earned him a four-year, $52.4 million contract. The good news is that on the Yankees, that is just another contract. The bad news is that there is no way he is going to earn that salary, either in 2009 or the final two years of the deal.

In baseball history, there have been only 18 seasons in which a player 37 or older has amassed 400 or more plate appearances in a season in which they appeared at 50 percent or more of their games as a catcher. And six of those belong to Carlton Fisk.

In only one of those seasons did the player hit over .300, and that was during World War II, when Ernie Lombardi hit .307 against competition that was not really major league caliber. Only three times did a player hit 20 or more home runs under these conditions, two of those by Fisk in seasons in which he batted .238 and .256, respectively.

Catching is hard. And Posada is climbing the ranks of most games caught in a career. He has played 1,390 games at catcher, which ranks in the top 40 in MLB history. Last year, Posada broke down. He had season-ending shoulder surgery and before he shut it down for the season, Posada was a liability behind the plate.

There is no guarantee that he can bounce back in 2009. And even if he can be a productive hitter, can he play well enough defensively to stay at catcher? And if not, does Posada still have enough bat for the Yankees to carry at DH?

All of these things combine to push Posada out of the top 10 in catchers for 2009. Yes, the possibility exists that he might be one of the top three at the position if he rebounds completely. But do you really like those odds? Because of his previous level of performance, Posada has more upside than only a handful of catchers. But he is much more likely to repeat his 2008 numbers, which means fantasy players should look elsewhere.

With the uncertainty surrounding Chase Utley, some analysts have Brandon Phillips as the top second baseman in the National League and along with Ian Kinsler one of the top at the position in all of baseball. Phillips at his peak offers power, average and speed and it is no wonder why many people are bullish on him as we head to the start of Spring Training.

But the one thing to keep in mind is that Phillips has been a starter for three seasons and his 2007 season, where he posted a .288-30-94-107-32 line, is the outlier. If he can duplicate that season, then yes he is one of the top second basemen in fantasy. But what if he hits like he did in either 2006 or 2008? Here is his average line from those two seasons:

.268-19-77-73-24

Now, that is a real nice line for a second baseman. It is just beneath what you should expect from, say Dustin Pedroia or Brian Roberts, with the latter trailing Phillips’ ADP of 29 according to the latest information from Mock Draft Central.

Phillips was hurt last year by a .281 BABIP, which was about 25 points below what he posted his previous two seasons. He has seen his LD% drop from 19.2 percent in 2006 to 16.4 percent last year. Both his FB% and HR/FB rates fell by a tick, too.

In 2006, he was successful on 25 of 27 steal attempts. His percentage fell off somewhat in 2007, but he compensated by attempting 40 steals. Last year, Phillips had 23 steals but was thrown out 10 times. That is not a good trend.

The four projection systems show him basically repeating his 2008 season this year. That is a fine line for a second baseman and nothing to dismiss. Just remember that before you make him one of the top players picked at the position. If he reproduces his 2008 numbers, Phillips is a third-tier second baseman. That makes his peers Alexei Ramirez and Dan Uggla, not Kinsler and Utley.

Ryan Braun is one of the first outfielders to go in nearly every mock draft so far this year. With two solid seasons of production under his belt, Braun has an ADP of nine according to the latest information from Mock Draft Central and he is the second-rated outfielder there behind Grady Sizemore.

One of the nice things about Braun is that he will give you numbers in all five categories. He is a threat to win the home run title, but he can also steal bases and post a nice average, too. Last year, Braun finished tied for fourth in the majors with 37 home runs. The three players who hit more homers – Carlos Delgado, Adam Dunn and Ryan Howard – combined for three steals while Braun had 14.

The big question around Braun is how high you think his average will be. In his rookie season, he batted .324 but his average dropped to .285 last year. Now that is still a fine mark – Delgado’s .271 was the highest mark of the three that hit more homers – but he is a borderline first-round pick if his average remains what it was in 2008.

The Bill James projection sees Braun rebounding for a .310 average this season, which makes him an easy first-round selection. The other three projection systems all show Braun improving on last year’s mark, which certainly is a nice sign.

When Braun hit .324 in 2007, he did it in part due to a .367 BABIP. Last year his mark in that category fell to .308, which led to the 39-point drop in average. All four projection systems show Braun with a BABIP this year in the .320s, which would probably mean some combination of more line drives and fewer infield pop-ups.

Starting with the sixth pick in the draft, it is reasonable to start considering Braun for your pick. But he is just one of about a dozen players you have to review. If you think he should be the sixth player taken, you are banking on the 25-point increase in average that the James projection predicts. That is not out of the question, but it should also be looked at as the high end of his expected performance for 2009.