He probably only cost you a buck in your auction or a 23rd round pick in your 12-team, two-catcher, mixed league snake draft.  Not a very steep price to pay at all.  But the handwriting is already on the wall and it’s only a matter of time before Ramon Hernandez becomes a wasted pick for you.  Wilin Rosario is the catcher-of-the-future in Colorado and when he made the 25-man roster over this past weekend, Hernandez and his owners are learning that the future is now.

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Come on, man.  It’s one day out of the year.  That’s all we’re asking for here.  We’re not asking you to split the atom or anything; just give us your undivided attention for only a few hours on one day out of the year.  You better have one hell of an excuse for your absence because even just one team on autodraft messes with the draft strategy of everyone else.

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As Eno pointed out the other day, six of us from FanGraphs/RotoGraphs joined up with six writers from The Hardball Times to do battle in a 12-team rotisserie league for both bragging rights and charity.  The winner gets to donate the prize to the charity of his choice while the site for which he writes gets to reign supreme in the fantasy universe.  Sounds like fun?  Well, you weren’t there for the four-plus hour auction.

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So a buddy of mine calls me the other day in need of a 10th team for his home league.  Apparently someone dropped out at the last minute due to work obligations and he needed to find someone competitive to fill the slot.  Shallow league, very basic.  10 teams, mixed, 5×5 roto, standard snake draft.  Happily, I obliged and decided that this would be a great opportunity to see just how long I could wait on drafting a starting pitcher while still maintaining a competitive staff in the league.

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For those that love to follow industry leagues, the Tout Wars drafts took place this past weekend in New York City.  In addition to their usual rundown, this year introduced a brand new Mixed League and as I was looking over some of the rosters, Josh Donaldson’s name stuck out to me.  He went for $4 to Rotowire’s Derek Van Riper who went with a “stars and scrubs” approach, but considering some of the other names that went for a buck, along with RotoGraphs’ reader Jeff’s question in the Catcher Tiers piece, it seems that Donaldson is on quite a few people’s fantasy radar these days.  Now the question remains, is he worth a look?

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It’s been somewhat of a bittersweet spring for the Kansas City Royals.  On one hand, Eric Hosmer and Alex Gordon are off to great starts and look like they’re going to build on last year’s success while Lorenzo Cain has emerged as a strong force both with the glove and the bat.  On the other, you’ve got Salvador Perez down with knee surgery for 12 to 14 weeks and Joakim Soria likely headed for Tommy John surgery…again.  The first hand?  Music to fantasy owners ears.  The second?  Not so much.   The closer situation will be handled in-house so hopefully you handcuffed your Soria pick to the pair of Jonathan Broxton and Greg Holland.  The catching situation, though, forced the Royals to go outside.

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I was involved in a 15-team keeper league auction the other day and after staring at Adam Dunn in my queue for what seemed like and eternity, I finally made a move on him.  It wasn’t until very late in the draft and I had held back some extra cash but when I ended up shelling out $14 for him, I questioned whether or not I overpaid.  Did I not think that Dunn was worth that kind of money so late in an auction or was it simply just a temporary case of buyer’s remorse after strapping myself for cash with another few roster spots left to fill?  Then I remembered my rationale after taking him in the 13th round of the KFFL Baseball Analysis Draft & Experts League and Mike Axisa’s 10 Bold Predictions and mental order was restored.  Dunn is headed for a big rebound this year and if you can get him on the cheap (and yes, $14 for 40 HR certainly qualifies as cheap), then you make that move.

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So we’ve been through the Catcher Consensus Rankings and we’ve heard some of my initial thoughts on said rankings.  Well, now it’s time to put these guys into tiers so that you can see which players are most comparable to each other in expected production and where you can likely find them in your draft.  I’ll also chime in with a few thoughts here and there…

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As beloved editor/writer Eno Sarris continues to roll out the RotoGraphs Consensus Positional Rankings, those of us not included in the Fab Four (with the handsome mugshots) but that cover a specific position were asked to chime in with our thoughts after the rankings were released.  You can find my personal rankings either on FantasyPros or on my site, but for now, let’s just talk backstops and the consensus rankings.  Also, don’t forget that next week we will be rolling out the position tiers as we did last season.

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Well, since the last installment received so much attention — both positive and negative — I figured we should have another go-around here.  Only this time, in an effort to create more dialogue and draw even more of your ire, I took the advice from some of you and looked more towards the upper rounds of the draft.  Personally, I think telling you not to waste your time with a particular player in the lower rounds is a bit more helpful than this — sure, there’s less risk in the 19th round and you don’t care if you eventually drop the guy, but why waste the pick in the first place?  But alas, this is what you asked for my dear RotoGraphs readers and this is what you get… Read the rest of this entry »