Now that we know what kind of fantasy owners are out there, it’s time to discuss how to best humiliate, destroy and take advantage of the worst one of them. Today, how to beat the Dungeon Master. To refresh your memory, here is my crackpot definition of the Dungeon Master:

They play in so many leagues and attend so many mock drafts that you begin to worry about their safety. Chances are, if you are reading this blog (or writing on it), you may be the Dungeon Master. The Dungeon Master is always cool and collected at draft time. Even when his players aren’t making it to him in drafts, he has plan 1A at the ready. Be careful when trading with him, as he is probably looking to screw you over.

So, how do you beat the player who knows it all? There are a couple simple maneuvers you can pull on draft day and beyond to take down the Dungeon Master:

1. On draft day, you may have to reach a little for players. Since the Dungeon Master isn’t playing off the stock rankings, you shouldn’t be either. If you like a player that isn’t supposed to go for another 10 picks, but you don’t think he’ll make it back to you, take him. You cannot risk it. If you think a player is the best person left on the board, pounce on him.

2. Be social. The Dungeon Master fears four things in life: Sunlight, conversation, women and salad. He never goes out in public, so he doesn’t know how to react when he is taunted. He could take Albert Pujols with the tenth pick in the draft, and you should still heckle him. He may get thrown off his game enough to make a mistake. Don’t stop until he cries, drafts Carlos Silva, or wets himself.

3. Flooding his inbox with trade requests is another popular option. You can hope he has a moment of weakness and accepts, or simply hits the wrong button and accepts it anyway. Believe me, it’s happened.

4. Read RotoGraphs and study up enough to turn yourself into a Dungeon Master. It works, but only if you give up the rest of your life. And it’s worth it, I promise.

In the end, you are going to need some luck to beat a Dungeon Master. You have to hope his famously durable players succumb to crippling injuries (Brandon Webb) and for his team to slip in the standings. Finishing in second behind a Dungeon Master is nothing to shake a stick at.

It’s time for another episode of “You can get with that, but this is where it’s at,” boys and girls. This week, we take a look at the heroes manning what may prove to be the thinnest position on the diamond. Where shortstop had such frugal luminaries as Everth Cabrera, Ryan Theriot and Elvis Andrus, and catcher featured thrifty backstops like Miguel Montero and A.J. Pierzynski, we may have a harder time finding values at the hot corner.

As usual, we’ll start in the first tier. You can’t really fault anyone for going big with Alex Rodriguez (despite the hip and the age, 3.37 ADP), David Wright (despite the power outage, 14.76 ADP), Evan Longoria (I don’t see a problem here, 10.28 ADP) or Mark Reynolds (the king of the whiff, 20.17 ADP). Why is Ryan Zimmerman being drafted at the end of the third round (39.78 ADP)? I guess people are suspicious of his career high .233 ISO (and 33 home runs) last year. I take the view that nothing seems out of place for a 25 year-old top prospect with a .229 minor league ISO and a slowly increasing fly ball rate, who is also on the correct side of his peak. Sign me up for some of that in 2010.

The next tier has some svelte athletes (Pablo Sandoval, 44.83 ADP), some slow-footed plodders (Chone Figgins, 77.84 ADP) and some low-contact sluggers (Michael Young, 93.51 ADP). Scarcasm aside, why not take a player with possibly the same amount of risk (and yet bundles of upside) a little bit later than the fellow members of his tier? Gordon Beckham (93.87 ADP) had a good rookie season despite a low line drive percentage (16.6%) that kept his BABIP down (.294), and therefore his batting average (.270). But look at the good side, if you prorate out his stats, he had a 21-home run, 11 stolen-base kind of year, and his line drive rates were much higher in the minor leagues. Even if he just finished out the pro-rated string next year, he’d be an ADP value in his tier. Bend it like Beckham!

Let’s move past mixed metaphors to the final tier. This tier makes you realize how turdly third base truly is this year. You can gamble on next year’s Mark Reynolds with Ian Stewart (131.84 ADP) or put your grandfather Larry Wayne Jones (ADP 134.39) in the position and cross your fingers. The projection systems don’t like the bearded wonder Casey Blake (ADP 162.64) for good reason, as late bloomers are usually early exits. You could say the same about Mark DeRosa (ADP 246.44), really. Who’s to like in this tier?

The answer, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, is “I… don’t… know.” I’d probably try to avoid the whole situation altogether by drafting a third-sacker earlier. But I think I might take a pair of players from the bottom, and those two might be Adrian Beltre (ADP 199.55) and Alex Gordon (245.03). Some may say that splits aren’t statistically significant, but perhaps that’s not true in Beltre’s case, who has a grand total of 3272 away at-bats away from pitcher’s havens in Los Angeles and Seattle. In those (probably significant at-bats), he’s put up a .287/.338/.488 career line (compared to a .726 OPS at home). I’d just cover my butt with a post-hype sleeper like Gordon, who had been making nice strides in walk rate, strikeout rate, ISO, line drive rate, and reach rate before injury sidelined him last year. I’ll be owning him more than once this year, I’d reckon.

Ah! Let me stop you right there. Jorge Cantu is ranked as a first baseman.

The biggest part of fantasy baseball is the draft. No question about it. So it is important that we understand who we are drafting with when we step into the room, be it virtual or physical. The easiest way to go about this is to group all players into five simple families, which are listed and explained below.

The Dungeon Master – You all know one of those nerds who is ready to dominate a fantasy league at a moments notice. They play in so many leagues and attend so many mock drafts that you begin to worry about their safety. Chances are, if you are reading this blog (or writing on it), you may be the Dungeon Master. The Dungeon Master is always cool and collected at draft time. Even when his players aren’t making it to him in drafts, he has plan 1A at the ready. Be careful when trading with him, as he is probably looking to screw you over.

The Cockeyed Optimist – This person runs around your draft room or lobby saying things like “I can guarantee Erik Bedard starts 30 games this year”, or “I see a breakout season from Yuniesky Betancourt.” The last time he won a draft, pigs were flying and hell was still defrosting. Let him do his own thing, and don’t bail him out of his bad moves.

The Cast Away – Straight out of a Tom Hanks movie, the Cast Away hasn’t been around (fantasy) civilization for awhile. In the past, he may have been a supreme player, but those days are behind him. The Cast Away will take big name players that have faded from glory, because those are the guys he is comfortable with and knows well. On occasion, he may even select a player who recently retired. If he somehow drafts a player he doesn’t know that you may want, take a run at fleecing him.

The Rival – This league mate always knows how to piss you off. He understands who your sleepers are, as well as your favorite players, and takes them earlier than you would just to push your buttons. He then purposes ridiculous trades, hoping you really want to have your favorite player on your roster. This owner rarely wins a fantasy league. Don’t encourage him by accepting any of his trades, and hope he isn’t invited back next year.

The Rookie – In the wild, The Rookie may often be referred to by his scientific name, “N00bulus Maximus”. When at the draft, he won’t deviate from the rankings provided to him by his most trusted website. Once the season begins, he can be easily convinced to trade his underachieving players that are sure to have a nice bounce back to glory. All is fair in love, war, and fantasy baseball, so exploit this player if you can by stealing away his players.

While it’s difficult to find many glaring faults with a ball club that tallied 95 victories and outscored the opposition by 136 runs, the 2009 Boston Red Sox featured porous team defense.

Collectively, the Red Sox ranked 18th in the majors in UZR/150. Per 150 defensive games, Boston’s fielders were -2.4 runs below average. Some players turned in great years with the leather: RF J.D. Drew and 2B Dustin Pedroia were exceptional, and Kevin Youkilis really picked it at first base. However, a hip injury turned 3B Mike Lowell into a liability, LF Jason Bay was DH-worthy and Jacoby Ellsbury rated poorly as well.

Enter Mike Cameron and Adrian Beltre, two of the most skilled defenders in the game at their respective positions. It’s still unclear whether Cameron will play his customary center field, bumping Ellsbury to left, or if he’ll play left field himself. Either way, swapping in Cameron for Bay is a massive defensive upgrade. Ditto for bringing in Beltre to take over for Lowell at the hot corner.

Jeff Zimmerman of Beyond the Box Score released 2010 UZR projections in November. Jeff took four years of a player’s UZR totals, weighing them 5/4/3/2 and regressing to 125 games. He then applied a slight aging factor (more details here).

Here’s how the Red Sox project in 2010, with Cameron and Beltre in the fold. For comparison, I put Boston’s 2009 UZR/150 totals for each position in parentheses:

1B: Kevin Youkilis, projected +4 UZR/150 (+8.3 UZR/150 team total in 2009)
2B: Dustin Pedroia, projected +5 UZR/150 (+9.1 UZR/150 in ’09)
SS: Marco Scutaro, projected 0 UZR/150 (+3.1 UZR/150 in ’09)
3B: Adrian Beltre, projected +9 UZR/150 (-10.7 UZR/150 in ’09)
LF: Jacoby Ellsbury, projected +6 UZR/150 (-9.4 UZR/150 in ’09)
CF: Mike Cameron, projected +4 UZR/150 (-19.6 UZR/150 in ’09)
RF: J.D. Drew, projected +5 UZR/150 (+9.1 UZR/150 in ’09)

Youkilis, Pedroia and Drew figure to regress a bit, going from great to merely very good. Scutaro, another free agent import, is roughly average at shortstop. But look at those totals at third base, left field and center field. We’re talking gargantuan upgrades here.

Some might be surprised about Ellsbury’s projected total in left field, given his dreadful rating in CF last year. However, Ellsbury did rate as a well above-average fielder in 2008. Also, the average center fielder is about 10 runs better than the average corner outfielder, based on observations of how players perform at multiple positions.

For those of you wondering, Ellsbury projects as a -9 UZR/150 fielder in CF. Even if we say that Cameron would indeed be a +14 UZR/150 fielder in left (10 runs better than in center field), the Red Sox are better off with an Ellsbury LF/ Cameron CF alignment by about five runs per 150 defensive games.

What does this all mean for fantasy owners? Boston’s vastly improved fielding gives a boost in value to Red Sox pitchers. Plenty of Boston starters underperformed their Expected Fielding Independent ERAs in 2009, due in part to higher than expected batting averages on balls in play:

ERA-xFIP splits for 2009 Boston starters, minimum 50 IP

Lester’s fielders did him no favors in 2009. Beckett didn’t get burned too badly by a high BABIP- the difference between his ERA and xFIP stems from a higher-than-normal home run per fly ball rate (12.8 percent). Granted, those two (along with newcomer John Lackey) are going to be high on draft boards regardless. But it’s nice to know that they’ll be backed by quality glove men.

Penny’s no longer around, though you can see the dichotomy between his ERA and xFIP due to an inflated BABIP. Buchholz’s ERA-xFIP split is due to a sky-high HR/FB rate (15.7%), not a sky-high BABIP. Dice-K’s future is uncertain after a season mostly lost to shoulder problems, but maybe you’ll be more likely to take a flyer with Cameron and Beltre backing him up.

As a whole, Red Sox starting pitchers had a 4.63 ERA in 2009, but a 4.17 xFIP. The 0.46 run gap between Boston’s ERA and xFIP was the third-largest in the major leagues. A big reason for that split was a .324 BABIP for those starters. Some of that was probably poor luck, but a good portion of it was poor fielding. Luckily, Red Sox pitchers should have the benefit of much improved defense in 2010.

Still on the road visiting family and friends, I spent some time thinking about the upcoming year. I would guess I am not alone in the practice. Combining the look forward with some thankfulness for the friends and family on the interwebbings, I thought it was time to put forth my New Year’s Fantasy Resolutions.

1) I will be prepared for the upcoming fantasy season.
Using all the resources at my disposal, I will be ready for every draft that comes my way. Using the Bill James and fan projections on this site, I will navigate between the more sobering projections and the rosiest of outlooks to find the true way. I’ll check out the tiered rankings, get a dollop of the Deep League Value pieces, take a heaping spoonful of 2010 Sleeper spotlights, a couple servings of Free Agent Impact posts, and make sure I haven’t Forgotten anything on the way out. Oh, of course I have – seconds will include these great BABIP-xBABIP and ERA-xFIP split articles that can double as easy sleeper lists. And of course, there’s more on the way to help me dominate my fantasy leagues in the future.

2) I will remember to give thanks for all these wonderful helpers.
I won’t forget to let Marc Hulet know that his prospect pieces keep me on top of more players than I ever thought I would. I won’t hesitate to profess my man-love for Carson Cistulli, whether he hits the nail right on the head or slips and nicks his thumb a bit. While Dave Cameron may not help my fantasy teams so often, his insights into baseball always keep me thinking. Dave Allen will continue to blow me away with his beautiful visualizations, and he should know that. Don’t let Jack Moore slip, his piece on the save was a great one, David Appleman deserves our gratitude daily, and RJ – well RJ will get his own resolution all for himself.

3) I will play every day for the entire season.
I won’t disappear on a flagging team and leave all my trade offers to wilt. I won’t forget to set my lineups, and I will constantly monitor the wire. I will analyze and re-analyze my teams strengths and weaknesses, and I will make offers and wheel and deal until the final day. I owe that much to the people in my league, and I also know one fact: even second-to-last is better than LAST.

4) I will not rosterbate.
I told you RJ Anderson (and to be fair, draysbay.com) would get his own resolution. Number 3) and 4) are the yin to each other’s yang – you want to be active, but you don’t want to be shuttling players in and out (unless you are in a streamer league). Fantasy (and, to be fair, real baseball) success is predicated on the delicate balance the over- and under-valued, so learning when to cut a player is the hardest lesson in the business. I will refine my approach and do my best to drop only those players that will not help my team the way I need them to.

5) I will not draft the hot young rookie just to show off.*
* This was stolen from a fine young Nano Di Fino, writing for the Wall Street Journal last year. I will let him speak for himself.

Let’s not get too carried away. That’s a fine group of five resolutions I can possibly keep. Check back in a month or so to see if I kept the pounds off.

Yesterday, we took a look at the starting pitchers with the biggest difference between their ERAs and their Expected Fielding Independent ERAs, attempting to find which hurlers performed above or below their peripheral stats in 2009.

Today, let’s turn out attention to the hitters. I compiled a list of the batters (minimum 350 plate appearances) with the biggest gap between their batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and their expected batting average on balls in play (xBABIP).

What’s xBABIP? Last winter, Chris Dutton and Peter Bendix sought to find which variables were most strongly correlated with a batter’s BABIP. Using data from the 2002-2008 seasons, Dutton and Bendix found that a hitter’s eye (BB/K ratio), line drive percentage, speed score and pitches per plate appearance had a positive relationship with BABIP (the better a batter rated in those areas, the higher his BABIP). Pitches per extra-base hit, fly ball/ground ball rate, spray (distribution of hits to the entire field) and contact rate had a negative relationship with BABIP. From this research, they created a model for predicting a batter’s BABIP.

Prior to Dutton and Bendix’s work, a lot of people used to calculate a hitter’s expected batting average on balls in play by taking line drive rate and adding .120. It made some sense: line drives have the highest batting average of any batted ball type by far, falling for a hit well over 70 percent of the time.

However, line drive rates don’t show a high correlation from year to year. That makes the “LD% plus .120” method unreliable. Dutton and Bendix’s model showed a 59 percent correlation between actual and expected BABIP. The LD +.120 method showed just an 18 percent correlation.

Some of the numbers used in Dutton and Bendix’s study are not readily available. However, Derek Carty of The Hardball Times and Slash12 of Beyond the Box Score have both come up with expected batting average on balls in play calculators based on the new findings.

For the purposes of this article, I used Slash12’s calculator. It uses the following variables:
– Line Drive Percentage (LD%)
– Ground Ball Percentage (GB%)
– Fly Ball Percentage (FB%)
– Infield/Fly Ball Percentage (IFFB%)
– Home Run/Fly Ball Percentage (HR/FB%)
– Infield Hit Percentage (IFH%)

While not identical to the variables used by Dutton and Bendix, these batted ball numbers do a good job of taking into account the aspects that lead to a higher or lower BABIP.

First, a disclaimer. Like the ERA-xFIP charts from yesterday, these lists of “lucky” and “unlucky” hitters are based on just one year of data. To get a better feel for how a hitter will perform in the future, it’s vital to take a good hard look at multiple seasons worth of performance. This is just a quick-and-dirty exercise.

To provide a little more context, I also included each batter’s actual BABIP since 2007, when possible. The three-year averages help us get a better picture of each hitter, and help us figure out which batters might be “tricking” the xBABIP calculator based on one year of abberrant batted ball numbers.

Take Jason Kendall, for instance. Kendall had a 12 percent infield hit rate in 2009, compared to a 7.6% career average. The calculator doesn’t know that Kendall’s ankle exploded like a cheap Acme bomb a decade ago, and that he’s a 35 year-old catcher who has a BABIP under .270 since 2007. It thinks he has speed due to the infield hit rate. That’s why you need to look at multi-year numbers.

Here are the hitters with actual batting average on balls in play figures exceeding the expected batting average on balls in play numbers. These are the guys who might see their batting averages fall in 2010:

Higher BABIP than xBABIP

And here are the batters with actual BABIPs falling well short of the XBABIP totals. These hitters could experience a bounce-back in 2010:

Lower BABIP than xBABIP

Recently, reader Pat left a comment on an article, asking:

“Can’t alot of pitchers HR/FB rates be expected to increase in the second half just due to the weather? … [T]herefore it would seem like a good strategy in a points league to stack pitching in the first half (and then look to make moves around the allstar break to acquire hitters).”

The reasoning here is that since bats tend to heat up as the weather gets warmer, hoard pitching early and then pick up hitters when the season is in full swing and 80 and 90 degree days are the norm.

Seems like a reasonable strategy, but would it work?

Since we would hoard pitchers early, let’s look at the top 20 starting pitchers, as determined by the final dollar values from the RotoTimes Player Rater, and check out their monthly HR and HR/FB data.

If HR prevention is the goal of this strategy, 16 of our 20 top pitchers had a HR/FB rate less than 11 percent in the final month of the season. Even August, the month last year where more HR by far were hit than any other, saw eight of our 20 pitchers have a HR/FB rate beneath 11 percent.

And this does not even take into account that the pitchers who were ranked top 20 at the beginning of the year often are nowhere to be found near the top of the leaderboard at the conclusion of the year. Using my friend Troy Patterson’s 2009 Starting Pitcher Rankings, here are the ones that did not make the top 20 at the end of the year:

Johan Santana (1), Brandon Webb (4), Jake Peavy (5), Cole Hamels (8), James Shields (10), Roy Oswalt (11), Ervin Santana (13), John Lackey (14), AJ Burnett (15), Edinson Volquez (16), Scott Kazmir (17), Carlos Zambrano (18), Chad Billingsley (19) and Daisuke Matsuzaka (20).

If you went into your draft convinced to load up on pitching, you could have wound up with a staff of Santana, Webb, Peavy, Hamels, Oswalt, Lackey and Burnett and at the All-Star break found other owners willing to offer you very little hitting in return.

Now, let us look at how pitchers as a whole fared in 2009. Here are the first and second half splits for all of the pitchers in MLB in 2009:

1st half – 4.32 ERA, 1.389 WHIP
2nd half – 4.33 ERA, 1.391 WHIP

It does not always work out this close, but this is yet another example of how easy this strategy could go awry.

Finally, you also have to consider how your league will handle trading with you when you have such an obvious need for hitters. Will your league-mates be willing to help you out and offer fair or even somewhat reasonable trades given how needy you are for offense? In friendly leagues that might not be a problem but it would likely be a bigger issue the more competitive your league is.

The best pitchers can dominate (or like Rodriguez in June – get lit up) at any point in the season. Stacking up on pitching only to turn around and deal it for hitting at the All-Star break seems like the fantasy baseball equivalent of market timing and not the best way to ensure long-term success.

Here is a team that I picked during mock draft season on March 2nd over at Mock Draft Central. I had the third pick overall in a 12-team mixed league 5×5 draft.

David Wright
Carl Crawford
CC Sabathia
Joe Mauer
Dan Haren
Josh Beckett
James Shields
Mariano Rivrea
Torii Hunter
Andre Ethier
Jose Valverde
Derek Lowe
Conor Jackson
David DeJesus
Adrian Beltre
Ted Lilly
Placido Polanco
Fred Lewis
Gil Meche
Edgar Renteria
Carlos Guillen
Brandon Inge
Jason Bartlett

At the time, the projected standings at MDC loved this team. It was judged the first-place team with 94 points, a healthy 21 points above the second-place squad. The category breakdowns were:

AVG – 12
HR – 1
RBI – 3
SB – 11
R – 11
W – 12
SV – 9
K – 12
WHIP – 11
ERA – 12

This would have been a pretty decent team in reality, too. Two top 10 hitters (Crawford and Mauer) supported by three top 20 pitchers (Haren, Rivera, Sabathia) and three great late picks (Lilly, Polanco, Bartlett).

It was far from a perfect draft, with fantasy killers Renteria, Lewis, Guillen and Meche. But I believe with proper oversight during the year, this team would likely be a money finisher and a first-place finish would not have been out of the question.

While I went into this mock draft trying to build a stronger pitching squad than I usually do, I did not consciously punt power. And what looked like a poor HR team on paper was no doubt worse in reality, with the down year in homers by Wright and injuries to Hunter, Beltre and even Jackson sapping what little power this team possessed.

To me, this squad begs the question: Can a successful fantasy team punt HR, and by extension RBIs?

On paper this team had 56 pitching points, which is pretty close to what this “strategy” would need to be successful. And even if you ace the pitching categories, it could still fall flat if the non-power categories did not also average double-digits in points.

It is certainly not a tack I would recommend, especially with the third overall pick. All of the top pitchers need to come through, and one has to draft at least one closer, and probably two, in the top half of the draft.

But, as a fantasy player who always favors power, this team was an eye-opener.

As keeper league decisions loom, many fantasy managers are looking at certain struggling young stars and wondering where all the buzz went. No young star has had a more tortured young history then B.J. Upton (né Melvin Emanuel Bossman Junior Upton). What can we expect from a young man that has shown flashes of great potential and long stretches of mediocrity? Does he, in the Ron Shandler vein, “own” the power and the speed because he’s shown both in the past? Or will he be more one-dimensional as his career evens out?

His power has oscillated incredibly. Here are his full year slugging percentages, starting with his first year in the minor leagues: .431 (’03 minors), .505 (’04 minors), .490 (’05 minors), .394 (06 minors), .291 (’06 majors), .508 (’07 majors), .401 (’08 majors), .364 (’09 majors). Quite the dilemma. It’s tempting to call 2007 his fluke year, but then there’s the question of the 2008 playoffs, and his 2004-2005 run in the minor leagues. He has shown good power multiple times in the past.

Examining 2007 further, we find that he had a HR/FB number that year (19.8%) that was way out of line with his career percentage (10.4%). This year, despite a career high in fly ball percentage (41.4%, well above his 34.7% career percentage), he’s sporting his second-lowest slugging percentage and has only muscled nine balls out of the yard despite being healthy for a good part of the year.

An obvious flaw in the older Upton’s game is his ability to hit line drives. His career line drive percentage is poor (17.5%), and this year’s number is third-worst among qualifiers this year. In 2007, he owned a career-high in that category (19.8%), and looking over his minor league career, we can see that the low line-drive rate is a definite part of his game.

What we are left with is a player that has some exciting tools (speed, and the ability to get on base (11.6% walk rate career)) and some real flaws (low line drive rate, high strikeout rate (28.2% career)). This gives us a player that despite a good BABIP (.348 career, most probably built on his speed) has a poor batting average (.266 career).

Looking for a comparable player is not easy, but one name comes to mind. Hunter Pence is a year older, and his power has not varied as greatly as Upton’s. Pence does also package a low line drive percentage (15.8% career) with good speed (5.2 speed score, .325 BABIP) and some power. On the other hand, his HR/FB stayed steady throughout his short career at a higher level than Upton’s has. What we can learn from Pence, possibly, is that Upton’s ceiling may not be defined by his best year. 2007 was a great year for both players, and both players will probably never again show the pristine batting averages they sported that year.

As for the Bossman’s power, we are left guessing. It’s never a good sign when a player has such extreme power spikes. Consider that he had more home runs in 2007 (24) than he’s had in the other 1,548 non-2007 plate appearances (23). Power is his shakiest tool, and depending on it returning in the future is not recommended.

A new innovation has hit the fantasy sports world. An article in the Wall Street Journal by Nando Di Fino details the debut this year of Fantasy Sports Insurance (FSI) which “offers the fantasy owner the ability to recoup league fees and all other related costs if one of their star players falls to an injury and misses the bulk of the season.”

FSI is starting off this year with football, but has plans to expand to other fantasy sports, including baseball.

The idea began with last year’s Week One injury to Tom Brady, one of the first players picked in fantasy football drafts in 2008. Brady was out for the remainder of the season and his injury sunk the hopes of many fantasy teams. For 2009, FSI (with the help of Lloyd’s of London) is offering insurance for the top 50 players in the NFL.

Owners have three options on how to insure their players. Two of these involve coverage on one person while a third choice offers protection if three players combine to miss 15 games.

The cost of the coverage depends mainly on entry fees and transaction fees for the individual league, although other expenses factor into the equation.

Most people who I have talked with about this idea have had the same reaction, which basically amounts to, “Wish I had thought of it first!”

It seems like an idea perfectly tailored for fantasy football, where season-ending injuries early in the season seem like an annual occurrence. But will it transfer to fantasy baseball? Plenty of season-ending injuries happen in baseball, but most of those happen later in the season.

Also, as fantasy players, do we really want another dilemma? It is hard enough with the fantasy team versus real team conflict that we all face. Our fantasy team pitcher is going up against our favorite team – which side are we on?

If the fantasy insurance idea takes off, we will be faced with the possibility of rooting for an injured player to not make it back. Instead of checking RotoTimes for news of rehab assignments, we will instead be hoping for visits to see Dr. James Andrews, which will enable us to cash an insurance check and salvage our entrance fee.

Do you think the FSI idea is a good one or bad one? Do you see it succeeding in fantasy baseball? Would you consider purchasing it for any particular player? Please weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section.