Fantasy Baseball Nip Style

"Hey, Jack told me you're pretty good at fantasy baseball and I was wondering if you could help me out with my draft in a couple of days..."

I love fantasy baseball. It is the most difficult fantasy sport to play and by far the most difficult to draft. There are two reasons though, that I like it more than the other fantasy sports:

1) There are so many different kinds of leagues: Rotisserie, Head to Head, 5X5, 4X4, AL/NL only on all of the previous....you get the picture. To make it even more customizable, all leagues have over 25 categories per side (batters/pitching) that can make every league even more different. The thing I like even more is that everyone likes one league setup more than another for whatever reasons. What this means is that only the best of the best are in your specific type of league, making it more competitive than any other kind of fantasy game.

2) There are 25 rounds to draft. Depending on the league you can have to fill anywhere from 9 to 14 offensive spots and 5 to 8 pitching spots. This leaves room for a whole bunch of strategies that you can employ to cruise your way on to victory.

That being said, a fantasy baseball draft can go in 1,000 different ways given the type of value each specific team puts on a player.

I've played for a five years now and I've won twice so, of course, I think my strategy is the best to win...Without further ado...I give you

The 3rd Nipple's Fantasy Baseball Rules of Drafting

1) Offense Wins Championships

What do you think is more consistent a guy swinging a bat or a guy throwing a pitch at a strike zone the size of a milk carton box? The answer should be obvious. Besides the constant ridiculous toll pitching takes on an arm, pitching is insanely hard to predict every year except for a few high priced arms.

Therefore, I think it's safe to take the Texas Rangers philosophy and outscore your opponents in batting all around and hope to steal some points in one or two pitching categories.

Which leads into...

2) Do NOT draft a pitcher before the eighth round. DON'T DO IT.

There isn't a big enough difference in stats from a pitcher you draft in the first eight rounds to one you can get in the later rounds. On top of that, the offensive value you can get at the pick if you picked a pitcher will hurt you big time in later rounds.
Here's an example w/'08 stats:

Player A: 9 wins, 3.45 ERA, 175 K's, 1.39 WHIP

Player B: 12 wins, 4.67 ERA, 200K's, 1.32 WHIP

Player C: 13 wins, 3.47 ERA, 183K's, 1.28 WHIPPlayer D: 12 wins, 4.03 ERA, 172 K's, 1.19 WHIP

So looking at those four pitchers, I would assume if you were to have two of them, you would probably pick the middle two because they rank the highest in the most categories.

Time to use your brain for a minute. Please explain to me why people are drafting player D 80 picks before player C.

Players names and ADP (Average Draft Pick):
A) Felix Hernandez - 88 B) Javier Vazquez - 126 C) Zack Greinke D) Josh Beckett - 68
It doesn't make sense, don't draft pitchers for names or teams...draft for stats, after the tenth round only.

3) Read up and draft, based on, position scarcity.

It's a simple concept, there are WAY more better 1B than there are 2B. There are way more quality OF than there are SS. You get the picture? no. Well italicized voice, let me explain further.

There are these things called tiers in fantasy...read up...and you want to choose positions based on how quick the drop off is in talent. Opinions differ from person to person, but it's pretty safe to say most would agree SS and 2B have the biggest scarcity in talent.

Here's a quick run down of each position by scarcity of talent:

Second Basemen - The top players at this position have the ability to hit 20 home run's and steal 20 bases (Utley, Pedroia, Phillips, Kinsler, Alexei Ramirez).

After that there is only a few players worth having for specific reasons: Roberts (steals, avg.), Uggla (power), Cano/Lopez (both for decent avg. and power). SLEEPER: Jose Lopez...big season coming

Although you can usually get Cano or Lopez late, If you don't have one of the mentioned players on your team you are screwed, there is no way around it.

Shortstop - This crew is a little deeper but not too far off of second base. There is a significant drop off after the first three (Hanley Ramirez, Reyes, Rollins) who are usually off the board in the first round. All three of them have the potential to steal 40+ bases and Rollins and Ramirez could both hit 20+ home runs to boot. This kind of size/power combination is seen nowhere else in the league so spend high and spend early.

Other key players in this position: Troy Tulowitzki (power/avg.), Michael Young (power), Stephen Drew (avg./semi-power)

SLEEPER: Johnny Peralta

Third Baseman - This position is a lot more thin than most people think, but you can find some bargains late so listen up. The top two players are argueablythe top players in fantasy baseball (Wright, Miguel Cabrera). After that there is significant power for 7 more picks (Longoria, A-Roid, A. Ramirez, Youkilis, Atkins, Chris Davis).

After this there isn't a lot of stats around but here they are: Zimmerman (injury risk), Aubrey Huff (solid power #'s in an improving Orioles lineup), AdrianBeltre (can someone say contract year), Jorge Cantu (streaky but when he's on he's as good as any).

SLEEPER: Zimmerman

When I draft I usually try to get one of the top seven, no excuses.

One final note on this topic; don't wait to fill out your OF's. All of the good OF'sare taken by the 15th round, and you should have good OF's in every position.

4) Draft Consistency

What does that mean? Guys that bat over .280.

If a guy bats over .280, he's a pretty damn good hitter. What that means is that he will battle out of slumps, he's likely to give you a consistent week in and week out average and won't have an out of the blue crappy season. This is a big difference between my system of thought and most others. I absolutely will not take a player that bats below .270 (exception Adam Dunn because of his insanely high number of walks and high OPS) because you have to make up for it with other players on your team.

This might seem ridiculous, but you won't hear me saying:

"Ryan Howard is batting .150 over the past month, he's killing my team"

"Pat Burrell hit three home runs tonight!" (Insert Jim Thome, Travis Hafner, Chris Young, David Ortiz or anyone they put the shift on for)

...and that makes me sleep well at night.

5) Try to draft guys who can hit 20 HR and steal some bases while they're at it.

Yeah I know they are few and far between, but they are a HUGE advantage. You should over value them and draft them before everyone else can.

Here's some examples:

Early picks - Ryan Braun (40, 15), Brandon Phillips (24, 25), Jimmy Rollins (18, 45), Hanley Ramirez (33, 33), David Wright (33, 14), Ian Kinsler (17, 33), BJUpton (15, 45), Soriano (24, 20), Lance Berkman (35, 15), Carlos Beltran (24, 24), Utley and Pedroia come to mind too...

Middle Picks - Bobby Abreu (24, 20), Matt Holiday (30, 13), Matt Kemp (17, 33),Granderson (20, 12), Rios (16, 20), Alexei Ramirez (20, 20), Nate Mclouth (23, 23), Corey Hart (20, 20)

Later- Derek Lee (25, 11), Lastings Milledge (15, 20), Johnny Damon (17, 25),Torii Hunter (20, 20), Jayson Werth (25, 20), Joey Votto (30, 10)

You can make a whole team out of 10 steal guys who will kick the crap out of a team with Jose Reyes and BJ Upton with the above guys. I usually like to play it safe and get Rollins to assure me some steals every week though.

6) Chicks dig the long ball.

Guess what you're scored on? Runs, Hits, Home Runs, Avg, SB. Guess what hits four out of those five categories? A Home Run.

Hopefully this gives you a few pretty good ideas about what to do in your draft, let me know if you have any questions and I'll be happy to answer them...Happy Drafting!