Let’s just go crazy on each other.

It’s here: my 2009 fantasy baseball preview.

Before we continue, a pitch (get it? “pitch”?). Every year in preparation for my draft, I create what is known among myself and my fantasy nerd friends as The Secret Sheet. This sheet has four tabs – hitters, pitchers, NL depth charts, and AL depth charts – and measures hitters by 20 different metric stats and pitchers by 22. It has all normal stuff (average, homers; strikeouts and wins), some deeper stats (total bases, OPS; Ks per 9, total pitches thrown) and stats I make up, like this year’s favorite, Wins per Quality Start. The league average with pitchers with a minimum of four quality starts is .747 W/QS, so this helps determine who was good but unlucky (i.e. Johan Santana and his .571 W/QS) and average but lucky (i.e. Dice-K, with an alarmingly high 1.286 W/QS). The stats come from a variety of different sites, as do the depth charts, which I update religiously. I even go through the entire Yahoo universe and put each hitter’s position down, indicating in a separate column whether he qualifies at multiple positions. I put more work into this every year than I do anything else. Yes, I give you some info like the stuff below, but there’s so much more on TSS (I think I have something like 300 players ranked in total).

And I’ll email it to you if you send me $5 via paypal to eiwwme@gmail.com, which is the email address for an old incarnation of the site. Use the “make a donation” link on the right to paypal, send me the $5, and I’ll email it to you to do with as you please. At the very least, it will put all the stats at your fingertips and entirely sortable. I usually guard this with my life and it had never occurred to me to sell this before, until I sent it to my roommate Mark. I only sent this to Mark since he totally hooked me up with a site and password for football, so I had to return the favor. When Mark saw TSS, he responded in two consecutive emails, “Holy crap!!!!” and then, “Dude, can I sell this to my friends?” Right about there, the light bulb went off.

Anyway, thus concludes my pitch. Now to the nitty-gritty: If you’re familiar with the site, you know what I’m going to do, since I do it each year. The following preview applies to roto drafts (but of course, the rankings would be the same with auctions, just I don’t provide dollar values) in a standard 5×5 category leagues: runs, rbis, home runs, stolen bases, and batting average on offense; wins, saves, strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP for pitching. I will confess that because in my two main leagues we use OBP instead of average and total bases instead of home runs, I may be slightly biased a little bit and offer insight in line with that bias.

Before we get to the position-by-position breakdown, some general, timeless, and possibly extremely obvious rules about drafting:

1) Know your enemy. Certain owners have certain inclinations. For example, if you’re drafting with a bunch of guys from Boston, you can probably expect that Pedroia, Youk, Ortiz and Beckett (and Papelbon – especially Papelbon) will go off the board sooner than they should. Alternatively, you might know that some guys favor offense to pitchers, or don’t care about closers, or will stop at nothing to get David Wright on their roster because they have a man-crush on him (Site Guy Brendan, I’m looking in your direction). Knowing whom you’re drafting against, when possible, is important in determining how to draft your team.

2) Know your categories. This only applies to those that are not in standard 5×5 leagues (again, 5×5 meaning Runs, Home Runs, RBI, Stolen Bases, Average and Wins, Saves, Strikeouts, ERA, WHIP). Some leagues only have minor changes; for example, as mentioned above, my main league uses on-base percentage instead of average and total bases instead of home runs, which makes for a much better league in our opinion.

But what you have to watch for duplicative or somewhat duplicative categories. For example, in another league I’m in, the categories are: R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG, and OPS. This means that power hitters should be especially favored in this league, for every time a power hitter hits a home run, it will affect R, HR, RBI, AVG, and OPS. That’s five different categories. I was even in a league once in which both strikeouts and strikeouts/9 innings were categories, so of course those high-K guys were doubly valuable.

3) Embrace the home run. Here’s something very simple that took me many seasons to finally realize: when in doubt, take the power hitter. You can’t think of home runs as a single category, since every home run directly results in one run, at least one RBI, and a help in average. Each homer affects four categories. Some people will get cutesy and draft speed guys (affects SB and possibly average and runs) or high average guys (will affect average and potentially runs and rbis), but let them. One home run is a guaranteed benefit for three other categories. If you have a lot of power, you will have a lot of HR, runs, and RBIs (theoretically). Let the other guy grab Carl Crawford, he who’s averaged 15 home runs and 80 RBIs his last three healthy years, with his 20th pick; you grab Prince Fielder, with his 40+ homer/115+ RBI potential, with your 30th.

(I can’t stand the fantasy analysts who get cutesy and point out that because they are so fewer in number, 1 stolen base is the equivalent of 1.5 home runs or whatever. But again, that 1 HR gives you 1 R, 1 HR and at least 1 RBI, not to mention an uptick in average. Moron analysts.)

4) Embrace the K. Few roto baseball players realize that having a pitcher on your team with a low K/9 rate actually hurts your team. To prove this, let’s take one of my leagues from last year. Each of the eleven teams maxed out their allotted 1400 innings. The person who “won” strikeouts, getting 11 points in that category, finished the year 1242 strikeouts. That’s an eyelash under 8 K/9. The person in the middle (earning a 6) averaged 6.9 K/9 and the person in last (getting a 1) averaged 6 K/9. Roughly, if you want to win you need 8 K’s per 9, if you want to finish in the middle it’s 7, and if you stink, your stats is putting up 6 K/9.

Let’s look at three pitchers widely considered in the top 12-15: Roy Oswalt, Cliff Lee and James Shields. Last year, Oswalt (208.2 innings pitched, 165 K’s), Lee (221.1, 170) and Shields (215, 160) put up very average K/9 rates of 7.1, 6.8 and 6.7, respectively. Keeping in mind that your team will never to average around 7 K/9 to just finish in the middle of the K category, if you draft one of the guys under the assumption that they’re going to get 200 of your total 1400 innings allotted (or 14% of your innings), you’re immediately putting yourself behind the eight-ball in terms of K’s.

I’m not, by any means, saying that you should avoid drafting these guys. But if you get one or two of them, and you compound them with another starter or two like Carlos Zambrano (6.20 K/9), Matt Garza (6.23 K/9), Derek Lowe (6.27 K/9), Joe Saunders (4.68 K/9), Tim Wakefield (5.81 K/9), Jaime Moyer (5.63 K/9) or Mark Buehrle (5.76 K/9) – all good quality rotation-fillers who can help in other categories – you’re shooting yourself in the foot with K’s.

Instead, when filling out your staff, keep an eye on guys like Scott Kazmir (9.81 K/9), Jonathan Sanchez (8.94 K/9), Javy Vazquez (8.64 K/9), Randy Johnson (8.46 K/9), Ted Lilly (8.09 K/9), Ollie Perez (8.35 K/9) and Gil Meche (7.83 K/9) as potential starters and innings-eaters. Obviously, draft Roy Oswalt over Jonathan Sanchez. But if you’re at least mindful of K-rates, you’ll do yourself a great service when you’re picking between three pitchers for your SP4 or SP5.

[And I realize the contradiction here: in one point, I espousing the home run, as it affects four categories. In the next, I'm advocating strikeout guys, strikeouts being just one category. My defense is that you can't compare offense and pitching drafting strategies. I'm not saying that you should abandon the other pitching peripherals, but rather suggesting that if given the choice between two similar options, always take the K guy. Whereas in offense, I'm saying that you should almost forsake speed and go like a hawk from hell after power hitters. Dig?]

5) Know when to draft and when to pass. People forget that the most important rule of any fantasy draft, much like the most important rule of love, is that the right person comes along at the right time.

An example will help. I really like Raul Ibanez this year. Sure, he’s old and decidedly “unsexy”, but the guy knocked in 110 runs last year playing on a Mariners team that was the rough equivalent of the Washington Generals. With all due respect, Ichiro-Sexson-Lopez-Vidro-Beltre can’t hold a candle to Rollins-Victorino-Utley-Howard-Werth. Smack in the middle of the Phils lineup (I believe he’s hitting 5th), he could knock in 120 with his eyes closed. I’m joking, but only sort of – I could see a nice 90-30-125-2-.295 season, which would represent only a marginal increase of his 2008 numbers (85-23-110-2-.285) despite playing in a much better park in a much better lineup.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to take Ibanez in the fourth round of my draft, because I won’t have to take him then. I know (or rather, I’m confident in betting) that other guys in my league are not as high on Ibanez as I am, as he’s being draft as a low OF2 or high OF3 (his ESPN Average Draft Position is 100). So instead of taking Ibanez early, I will wait on him until later in the draft when I feel it is the right time to take him. Until that time comes, I’m going to draft other guys I like, who I know are on my competitors’ radar screens, either because they’re highly ranked, highly touted, or they have said that they like that player.

So I will meet Raul Ibanez early in the draft, and though I may be enamored with him, I will have to let him go and set him free. If he comes back to me later, say in the 9th or 10th round, well, then it’s really meant to be. And we will be together. Forever. Or at least until the end of the season.

Tier-rankings for each position to follow shortly…