Over at www.chinstrapninjas.com I posted a few things you should do to get ready for your draft and a few things to remember while drafting.
Here’s an excerpt from each, followed by a link to each. We’ll start with 7 great steps to prep for your fantasy draft:
2. You research, you research your butt off
Just read. You don’t have to spend hours a day, but go to a respected Web site, like www.chinstrapninjas.com — our team previews are a couple quick hits about the more mention-worthy layers on major league rosters — or any of the other more well-known sports outlets out there. Read up, see what people are saying. Has someone busted onto the spring training scene and earned a roster spot. Maybe that talented young player hasn’t won his spot yet and was banished to the minors (Wieters!) for a little while. You need to know as much as you possibly can before moving on to the next step.
Read the full article by clicking here.
And, today 10 ways to kill like a Ninja at your fantasy baseball draft:
5. Don’t pick a catcher until you can’t stand not having one… then wait a little longer
Seriously, there’s no need to take a catcher early. Brian McCann and Russell Martin are going to go too early. Joe Mauer might be the most overrated hitter in baseball. Will Geovany Soto grind to a sophomore slump? Meanwhile the end of deep drafts will leave you with guys like Jeff Clement, Chris Snyder, Kelly Shoppach and Ramon Hernandez. Check their projections. Not bad for the end of the draft.
Read the full article by clicking here.
Tags: fantasy baseball, Fantasy sports, Sports
It’s been too long since I last posted and tons of things have happened since then.
First off, I’ve been posting like mad at www.chinstrapninas.com, in particular I’ve dumped a bunch of 2009 fantasy baseball team previews and have nearly completed my 2009 rankings.
If you haven’t been checking them out regularly, why not go check them out now. You can click the links above, or click here to go to the fantasy baseball navigation page at Chinstrap Ninjas.
As for posting here, I’ve got some Halo Wars for you. Yes, it’s completely Halo, and completely awesome. I also purchased MLB2K9, which rocks, and finally plugged in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
I also pulled DiRT out of the I’ve-really-gotta-play-that pile and basked in the glow of mud, dirt and fast metal on my new flat screen TV. It’s not your 50-inch 1080p plasma, it’s not quite that hi-def, but it’s hi-def enough to make 360 games look amazing, and that’s without an HDMI cable.
DVDs look amazing, too.
Maybe I’ll throw in a little Gamerscore Update. I haven’t done one of those in a while, so that could be interesting.
Oh, and that whole line of posts on media — in particular the newspaper world, which I love, and how it’s going to survive this economic apocalypse.
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How do you determine your fantasy baseball rankings? There are a number of ways.
What’s the best way, well I’ve created a checklist over at www.chinstrapninjas.com. Here’s an excerpt:
The formula works well, too. I play in a 10×10 league, I dislike the 5×5s in case you didn’t hear, so I have to factor in other categories. My formula adjusted the typical 5×5 rankings to include the stats like total bases, OPS and holds. /stats geek pats himself on back/
After a few hours, I realized that all I had done was take someone else’s opinions (again) and tweak them to fit another format. While this will be more helpful in my draft, it didn’t really do what was intended. I was still going to have to weed out the players I’ve pegged as overrated and dig for the players I think will be sleepers.
The cheatsheets are not getting dumped yet, but I am going to make a new list. My own list. Here are the steps that need to be taken to pull this off, feel free to steal this for your own draft prep:
- Toss the projections. Projections are merely someone’s opinion about how a player is going to perform. To calculate formulas, etc. based on fake statistics is ridiculous. Instead I’ll determine a tiering system for each position.
To read the whole post click here.
Tags: fantasy baseball, list
Over at Chinstrap Ninjas, I beat down — cut up, if you will — the standard 5×5 that sits on the counter of fantasy baseball like a stale loaf of bread.
Time for a change and I’ve got some suggestions. Here’s an excerpt:
While innovation in baseball moves along at the pace of a dead snail — the designated hitter was a good idea. Shut up — fantasy players don’t need to fall into the same pattern. In fact, I think the standard 5×5 should be assassinated. That’s right. Get rid of it. We don’t need homers and runs and RBIs and stolen bases or average. They are old numbers from ancient times.
Yes, these are the numbers the Baseball Writer’s Association looks at when they are thinking of electing people to the Hall of Fame. Then again, this is the same group of jackasses that haven’t allowed Pete Rose or Mark McGwire into the Hall. (Steroids were not illegal during McGwire’s career, and apparently everybody including Mickey Morandini used them. And Rose racked up all his best-in-MLB-history hits before getting caught betting on baseball).
To read the whole column, click here.
Tags: fantasy baseball
If you came here looking for fantasy baseball news — and judging by my site stats, you’ probably did not — you are in luck. I just posted a big ol’ hunk of value at www.chinstrapninjas.com. Want to know five fantasy baseball players to avoid in your 2009 draft/auction? Of course you do.
Here’s an excerpt:
David Ortiz, DH, Red Sox
Key ‘08 stats
109 games
.264 AVG
.507 SLG
.876 OPS
Like Derek Jeter and Atkins above, when you pay for Ortiz you’re paying for what he did in the past. Ortiz is 33 and his numbers have declined incrementally in each of the last two years. The one sure thing with Ortiz in recent season were his sterling percentages, but his batting average and OPS numbers were both 3-year lows last year. He hit just .264 with a .507 slugging. From 2004 to 2007 he had a .600+ Slugging percentage and hit over .300 in three of the four years. You could blame some of his other numbers on missing 50 games, but not the percentages. I look for his numbers to be solid — 20+ homers, 100+ RBIs, .290 average — but because of his name and team you’ll have to overpay. And don’t forget, he is only a DH, so in most leagues he can only play at the UTIL spot.
Click this link to read the whole list.
Tags: fantasy baseball, list
Over at Chinstrap Ninjas I’ve posted my response to an email I received from DraftSharks, my old favorite fantasy football site. The correspondence was a year late and a couple drafts short.
I talked about such craziness before the season started at Sloppy Potatoes and made that play this year, picking Moss and Wayne in one of my leagues. While I started slow out of the gate with the duo, they picked it up in enough time for me to back into the playoffs and make the final with a less-than-intiimidating rotation of Jonathan Stewart, Mewelde Moore and Kevin Smith as my starting running backs (I had Chris Perry and Rashard Mendenhall, but they didn’t pan out, obviously).
Click here to read the whole post
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