Welcome to the inaugural edition of the deep league waiver wire. Join me every Wednesday morning decked out in your scuba gear ready to dive into the free agent pool searching for hidden treasure. I have limited the pool of players to those owned in 10% or less in CBS leagues, which should be deep enough for most. Unfortunately, Only leaguers sometimes have to choose between any Major Leaguer with a roster spot or going empty, so it’s a much easier decision!

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We here at RotoGraphs preach patience. There is nothing worse than making a reactionary transaction based on a small performance sample and then a month later looking back and realizing your mistake. Unfortunately, every league has at least a couple of owners who simply cannot stop themselves from dropping the slow starter after a week and adding the flavor of the day. This means that your patient approach is going to almost guarantee you will miss out on the breakouts who went undrafted. So with that in mind, let’s look at the ultra tiny sample of one game to analyze some of the lesser owned hitters who launched a home run on opening day.

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BASEBALL! The season is officially under way and that means that I will have absolutely no life outside of watching and analyzing this wonderful game through October. Over the past couple of days, roster decisions were made, position battles sorted out and rotation slots won. Some of those rotation spot winners were quite the shock. Let’s discuss a few of them, shall we?

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Yesterday, I got outrageously bold with predictions for the league leaders in the five fantasy hitting categories. Today, I check in on the pitching side of the ledger with some equally crazy forecasts.

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I have initiated the turbo feature on my crystal ball and lo and behold, it now has the capability of sharing with us the 2013 league leaders in all five hitting and pitching categories! Who knew crystal balls were so useful. Yesterday, I was bold about individual players doing various random things, and today I will be bold about individual hitters doing specific things.

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I love making bold predictions. In no other post could I make a claim like I can here without getting laughed at. It’s easy coming up with the names you want to make a prediction for, but slightly more difficult coming up with interesting ways to express your optimism/pessimism about said players. I typically shoot for predictions that have around a 20% chance of coming true, so the hope is that I get at least two of these right. Here we go…

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OMG, we’re a week away from BASEBALL that counts! You’ve seen the consensus starting pitcher rankings, questioned them and have been eagerly anticipating the tiers for a more detailed breakdown. Your wait has ended. It’s time to continue spurring comment arguments as I unveil the first edition of the American League starting pitcher tiers.

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Finally, we get to the starting pitchers, my favorite position. If you thought there was room for disagreement among the outfielders, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The many disagreements of value among starters and the multitude of later round sleeper options is precisely why my strategy in every single draft/auction I participate in is to pay the least for my staff or wait many a round to draft my first starter. For this last episode of Pod’s Picks, I will only look at those I ranked in the top 84 as bullish picks, while the bearish group will include those in the consensus top 84. I went with 84 assuming about seven starters per team in a 12-team mixed league would earn positive value.

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Outfield. The position with a ton of required starters that gives us much room for disagreement. In fact, I try my hardest to avoid drafting them early in a snake draft because I know there will be a whole bunch in the middle rounds I think are being drastically undervalued. If only I was in a fantasy league with 10 OF slots. One can only dream. In the outfield, I will only look at those I ranked in the top 64 as bullish picks, while the bearish group will include those in the consensus top 64.

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The third base position just took a hit with news that Chase Headley is going to be out 4-6 weeks due to a thumb injury. I was actually the least optimistic about his performance given my ranking, so looks like I will be closest before the season has even begun. Victory! For the hot corner, I will only look at those I ranked in the top 20 as bullish picks, while the bearish group will include those in the consensus top 20. Inside that top 20, there really aren’t a whole lot of players I am particularly bullish on compared to the rest of the rankers.

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