Last Friday, we looked at some AL lineup gems – guys who are slated to bat in the top four of their order while going at pick 200 or later in NFBC Drafts. Sometimes just batting high in the order regularly can spike a guy’s value and spur a breakout. When Charlie Blackmon was having his insane April back in 2014, one of the main reasons anybody took a shot on him was the fact that he was batting atop the Colorado lineup. Even if he couldn’t maintain that pace (he couldn’t), he would at least be collecting plenty of PAs atop a stellar lineup in the game’s most hitter-friendly environment.

Here are 15 National Leaguers projected by Roster Resource to bat in the top four of their team’s lineup, available at pick 200 or later:

LEADOFF

Scooter Gennett [MIL, 454th pick overall] – Gennett got off to a brutal start last year and then a hand injury cost him two weeks in late-April. He wasn’t much better upon return and then got sent down for about a month. He was kinda left for dead at that point and so I don’t think many realized he returned and looked like the guy we’d seen in 2013-14. He hit .287 with 5 HR in 322 PA the rest of the way. The 26-year old got a late start to his Cactus League campaign, but is expected to be ready for Opening Day.

John Jaso [PIT, 533rd] – Unfortunately Jaso is DH-only in most leagues with just 8 games in the outfield last year, but the dude can flat out hit when healthy. Of course, health has eluded him as much as defensive skill, so he’s yet to log 110 games in a season. He’s best deployed in leagues with daily lineups so you can slot him against righties-only. He has a career .797 OPS against them in 1631 PA and has batted under .272 just once. He will add 1B eligibility pretty early into 2016, though he doesn’t really have the power to carry that position, so he’s more of a CI/UT option.

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I don’t know if y’all are familiar with Tanner Bell. He recently joined the RotoGraphs staff and has wasted no time churning out quality post after quality post. He performs analysis, but he also offers technical advice regarding the “offline” components of fantasy baseball such as building cheat sheets in Microsoft Excel. It’s good stuff, even for people who consider themselves proficient in Excel — I do and, alas, it never occurred to me to conditionally format my draft prep workbook to strike out players already drafted.

Similarly, it seems Tanner recently experienced an epiphany (or two) of his own in regard to player projections and valuations. I mentioned to him I wanted to respond, so to speak, to his post, not as a criticism but as an expansion. A validation, I guess.

Also, rarely, if ever, do we engage in back-and-forth call-and-response posts. I don’t intend for this to be one of those. It’s just that Tanner inspired me, but I have some thoughts of my own to add.

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You have no doubt heard the phrase “playing time is currency” at some point in the last couple of years. I didn’t make it up and I don’t know who did, but it was probably Todd Zola or Ron Shandler because they have all the best catchphrases for fantasy baseball. I use it all the time, though, because it’s true and good to remember. It’s particularly pertinent in this era when PED use is less rampant (not eradicated, but certainly down).

To my mind, staying on the field was biggest advantage to be had by using. Consider that from 1996-2008, we saw an average of about six guys per year play all 162 games, but in the seven years since, that average has plummeted to just two per year with a high of four (2012, 2013, and 2014). Teams aren’t shy about using the disabled list these days, either, so just being in the lineup is a boon for a player, especially in deep leagues.

I think we’ve long known how important it is to roster guys who bat high in the order, but the DFS era has put a fine point on that factor. Combined with the drop in guys logging 162 games, it’s more beneficial than ever to get guys who regularly slot in those top four spots of a lineup – even a modest-to-bad lineup. Of course, those are usually the best guys in the lineup and as such they go in the first several rounds. However, you can still find guys going late in drafts who are slated to bat high in their order. These can be draft day gems just by virtue of that abundant playing time high in an order even if they don’t show any tangible skills growth to justify their slotting. Here are 15 American Leaguers projected (by Roster Resource) to bat in the top four of lineups while going after pick 200 in NFBC drafts:

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Successfully “rebuilding” your fantasy team into a contender is an epic challenge that requires vision, skill, patience, and a little bit of luck.  Since there is no perfect blueprint that ensures success (some people say never rebuild), it’s not surprising that owners take a lot of different routes to the same ultimate goal.

I recently polled a group of savvy, successful fantasy owners to get their advice for rebuilding in Ottoneu, asking five key questions that are related to the idea of effective rebuilding.  Regardless of whether you play Ottoneu, much of the (anonymous) feedback below should be relevant to a wide variety of fantasy baseball leagues and may be helpful if you find yourself in a rebuild this season.

What is the best advice you would offer an Ottoneu owner who is rebuilding their roster for the future?

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How’s that for a clickbait headline? (Not so good). Yesterday’s post on the interaction between keeper values and inflation generated a lot of great discussion. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, I recommend wading into the comments.

As one commenter noted, when calculating inflation, the industry standard is to use pre-inflation price times the sum of one plus the inflation rate. Or written another way: Post-inflation price = Pre-inflation price * (1 + inflation %). Said commenter thought I preferred: Post-inflation price = Pre-inflation price ^ (1 + inflation %).

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This is a topic I probably should have brought up earlier in the draft season when more owners could use the concepts to select their keepers. I’ve decided there’s still a reason to talk about keeper value and inflation as it could inform your trade talks or how you think about the game in general.

A couple of my auction keeper leagues included hefty inflation this year. We’re talking prices over $10 above retail. As I’ve said in previous posts, the best way to handle the craze is to join the fray for a few big names then position yourself to be the king of dollar days. But let’s take a further step back. How should we prepare for rampant inflation before the draft even begins?

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Each year, before the season, I try to run a set of projected standings for my leagues. It’s not super difficult, though you do have to set aside probably about one hour per league to set it up. But once you have these projections, they can be extremely useful in figuring out your strengths and weaknesses, and giving yourself a realistic outlook for your team.

The specifics below are based on ottoneu, but the theory can be applied to any format.
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I’m always torn when setting a draft date for a fantasy league, particularly a redraft one. Most people I play with generally want the draft to be as close to the start of the regular season as possible, which makes sense – the longer you wait, the more information becomes available, and the more certainty players have, especially when it comes to playing-time estimates.

Depending on your level of risk-seeking, the depth of the league, and your confidence in finding early-season waiver-wire sleepers, an earlier draft might be your preference. It’s certainly mine. In those cases, I’m comfortable using picks in the later rounds on sleepers who may or may not make a team, trusting that if they wind up optioned to the minor leagues (or designated for assignment, as it were), I’ll be able to plug someone in out of the free-agent bin comparable to a “floor” pick I could have otherwise used that selection on.

The longer you wait to do your draft, the less opportunity there is to take those playing-time-uncertain fliers. Either those players will be deemed to be without a job, or others will have grown wise to their hold on a job, bidding the price up.

My favorite example to illustrate the impact of draft timing this year is Trea Turner, the No. 2 prospect of the potential NL East-champion Washington Nationals.
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Co-ownership. In my 10 years of fantasy experience, it was something I’d never tried before, nor had I given it much thought. It always seemed like a chore, and (given that I tend to have strong opinions) I assumed that if I ever did co-own a team I would end up “running” the squad, while my counterpart would be left to sit on his hands. It just didn’t seem like much fun – for me or my counterpart – or like an experience that would be any different from Ottoneu leagues I had already participated in.

Until recently.

Fellow Rotographs contributor Trey Baughn and myself were paired up in a newly formed Ottoneu league. Neither of us are experts on the topic of co-ownership, but I wanted to talk through several observations we have quickly realized in our month long trial run.

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Another AL-LABR draft is the books, and after finishing top half in 2014, and then at the very bottom in 2015, I figured I should change my strategy a bit going into this year’s draft. In some ways, I built the same team I always do for the League of Alternate Baseball Reality — I hate dollar players, and hate spending for the most expensive players, and I dive for the middle — but my preparation was different. You can’t completely change your stripes, in the end. You can only hope to tweak em.

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