Phew. After a nearly four and a half hour snake draft online, I have officially completed the earliest draft in my fantasy baseball career. LABR stands for League of Alternative Baseball Reality, and along with Tout Wars, is one of the two most publicized “expert” leagues. In the past, LABR has had only two leagues, an AL-Only and NL-Only, with both formats using a live auction in Arizona to select players. Last year, a mixed league with an online draft was formed and I participated in the inaugural season as well. With that background out of the way, let’s get into more league specifics.

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In the coming weeks, we’ll be covering each team’s potential depth charts in an effort to shine a spotlight on the interesting playing time battles that will be waged this spring. Obviously none of these depth charts are set in stone — rather they should function to focus your attention in the right places to find cheap fantasy value.

Today we head out to San Diego to check in on the Padres rotation, which could be legitimately labeled a mess at the moment. The good news is that there are some intriguing options, the bad news is for the forecasters (like me!) trying to project innings total for their potential starters. It’s not fun, let me tell you. I won’t pretend to really have a clue as to which five starters will open the season in the rotation, but I will do my best to analyze the options.

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In the coming weeks, we’ll be covering each team’s potential depth charts in an effort to shine a spotlight on the interesting playing time battles that will be waged this spring. Obviously none of these depth charts are set in stone — rather they should function to focus your attention in the right places to find cheap fantasy value.

This week, we begin a team-by-team look at depth charts in the infield, outfield, starting rotation and bullpen, and we’ll be highlighting position battles and any other interesting stories. We start with the National League West division and today I will be analyzing the starting rotation in Arizona. The top four are pretty much set in stone, with Ian Kennedy, Trevor Cahill, Wade Miley and Brandon McCarthy slotted in. That last spot, however, is very much up for grabs and is worth monitoring.

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The names just keep coming. Yesterday, the name of yet another Major League player was reported to be found in the records of Tony Bosch, the director of the Biogenesis wellness clinic in Florida. This time, Tigers shortstop Jhonny Peralta finds himself in the middle. So far, we have learned that a number of players relevant to fantasy owners have been linked to this clinic. They include Nelson Cruz, Gio Gonzalez, Melky Cabrera, Jesus Montero, Ryan Braun, Francisco Cervelli, the aforementioned Peralta, and of course, Alex Rodriguez. Some of the names were tied directly to performance-enhancing drugs in the records, while the connection isn’t as clear for the others. With a full investigation sure to follow and the very real possibility of multiple suspensions handed down, what’s an early drafter to do?

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In what is likely to be my last hitter Pod Projection, Desmond Jennings topped the list of remaining vote getters. The sophomore was a bit of a disappointment last season and was hampered by a knee injury that cost him nearly a month. I have been a big fan of Jennings in the past. Let’s find out if we can expect him to rebound this year and enter the upper echelon of fantasy outfielders.

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Yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere, the Astros acquired first baseman Chris Carter from the A’s. Carter was a one-time top prospect in the White Sox system, boasting elite power and above average plate patience. Of course, that came with its share of strikeouts, making Carter the prototypical slugging first base prospect. Carter is no spring chicken though, he is already 26 years old as he moves onto his third team. Sadly, last year represented his most expanded audition in the big leagues, even though he recorded just 260 plate appearances. His massive power was on full display, though, as he launched 16 homers to notch a .275 ISO. So now in Houston, does he shoot up sleeper lists?

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It’s been nearly two weeks since I posted my last Pod Projection after the journey to estimate/project HR/FB ratio took over my life. Surprisingly, Jason Heyward tallied nary a vote when I first asked you readers who you wanted me to publish a projection breakdown for next. Instead, fellow RotoGrapher Howard Bender requested Heyward, while kickin’ rocks of course. Big things were expected of Heyward as a rookie and big things are still expected. As such, I thought he was a hitter more than worthy of a statistical dissection.

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**For those of you who have listened to the Fantasy Baseball Roundtable radio show in the past, I wanted to share that we are officially back on the air! And if you have never listened, well here’s your chance to hear my manly voice talking about nerdy stats. Listen live every Wednesday night at 9-10 PM EST.

The quest continues! On Monday, Chad Young and I set out on a journey to try utilizing the fly ball and home run distances and angles found on Baseball Heat Maps in an attempt to answer several questions regarding a hitter’s HR/FB rate. As expected, we found a strong correlation between it and batted ball distance. But, distance alone wasn’t telling us the whole story. Chad decided to incorporate batted ball angle and the previous season HR/FB rate and that certainly improved our equation. Then yesterday I took that another step further and found that including the HR/FB rate from two seasons ago was even better. But, I wasn’t satisfied. A hitter’s HR/FB rate in 2012 should not be affected by how he performed in the metric in previous years. We pinpointed what we thought may be one of the major hindrances and that was the way the angle data was presented as an average.

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On Monday, I set the groundwork for a quest to try to predict a hitter’s HR/FB ratio utilizing the new data first made available last year that tells us the average distance of a hitter’s batted balls. Our goal was to answer several questions:

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Yesterday, Eno Sarris published the results of our epic mock auction draft. Lucky for me, I have no life and I love auctions, so I was happy to draft for as long as it took. Heck, I’m ready for another seven hours of drafting already! I am a veteran of auctions, having participated in leagues that use this style since 2001. All the rules were standard, except we had 14 teams, instead of the 12 I have almost always valued players for. In all my years of experience in auctions though, every single draft has taken unexpected twists and turns. This one was no different. This is my crazy mock auction draft story.

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