Van Lee42 posts

Join or start a fantasy baseball league at Fantrax today! Keeper, dynasty, re-draft. Fully customizable. A+ customer service. Play for free! Pitching is one of the most unnatural things a human being can do to their bodies in all of sports, so actually projecting or evaluating a pitcher is often purposeless folly. Just taking a look at an old draft and looking at highly drafted pitchers is always good for a nice chuckle. In today’s instance, I took a look at the 2009 draft that also produced the greatest baseball player in…

Join or start a fantasy baseball league at Fantrax today! Keeper, dynasty, re-draft. Fully customizable. A+ customer service. Play for free! It’s that point in the year where if you’re either a die-hard lunatic or you’re part of the fantasy baseball industry, you’ve participated in a fair share of mock drafts. Since I somehow manage to fall into both categories, I have certainly had my fill of them. I’ve even done some “Draft and Hold” league drafts (which, if you aren’t doing, do yourself a favor and get in a few. We host…

Stolen bases have been on a steep decline over the last several years. Whether it’s from a talent decline (doubtful) or teams understanding that they are often a risky venture not worth taking (probable), the prevailing thought is that we are on the downswing as far as this one statistical category in the game we love. I too have fallen victim to this thought, and it’s a big reason a player like Jonathan Villar was getting so much love going into the 2017 draft season.I remember my draft strategy in the early 2000s being…

The calendar has turned to 2018, and the Hot Stove is officially … a bunch of tepid embers. With a majority of the top free agents still unsigned, it’s obvious to say that not much has happened so far this offseason. Sure, the Angels have made some major headlines, but guys like Yu Darvish, Eric Hosmer, Jake Arrieta, and J.D. Martinez still haven’t found a home. And while free agency is always exciting, moving prospects like Christian Arroyo always tends to be pretty exciting in its own right, and the trade front has been…

It’s been no secret that power is up in the Major Leagues. Home runs are at a record high, and whether you believe it’s the result of a juiced ball or just a mental shift in the way players approach the game, it’s up and likely to stay this way for a while. Of course, for power to be up, that means that something has to be down, and that something is most definitely pitching.I can remember back in the earlier days of my fantasy baseball career, and the one true rule to live by was to wait on pitching. As a general rule…

I always preach adaptability when evaluating and drafting baseball players, and that mantra has definitely been tested after the last few years. I recently went over the ever-changing evaluation landscape as it pertains to the insane number of home runs that are being hit at the Major League level (link here in case you missed it), and now that I have established the new baseline and concepts have been put in place, it’s time to put those ideas into practice. No longer are pure mashers like Brendan Rodgers my main target,…

These past few seasons (roughly around midway through 2015, actually), we have seen a pretty meteoric rise in the number of home runs hit. You probably know this from the countless articles written about the topic. That, or you know it because Scooter Gennett hit four homers in one game this past season. Either way, from 2007 to 2015, the number of home runs hit in a season averaged between 4,186 (2014) to 5,042 (2009) for a true average of 4,748. In 2016, the total number jumped to 5,610, an increase of roughly 18% from the…

When trying to construct our fantasy teams, we are always looking for a bargain. Sometimes that means we are targeting young players who might make their debut, and sometimes that means we are targeting players who struggled the year prior that just might return to prominence. The inclusion of the Comeback Player of the Year award reinforces this concept and seeks to recognize the MLB talent that has overcome either injuries or poor performance. Sometimes minor league failures and numbers don't tell the whole story, just…

Ah, prospects. One of, if not the most exciting things about dynasty baseball, is drafting a young player and watching him develop over the years. We all salivate over a player with 80-grade power like Eloy Jimenez, but there is always a wide range of outcomes when following a prospect’s career. Sometimes it works out and you have the next Bryce Harper on your hands, sometimes it doesn’t work out like with Mark Appel, and sometimes it just takes a while to get there like with Byron Buxton.And while there are always…

OK, ladies and gentleman, it's time for the finale of our off-season first-year player draft rankings for dynasty leagues! We've seen studs like Mackenzie Gore, Jo Adell, Hunter Greene, and Heliot Ramos, and today's list may have some players that are a bit more flawed. However, the talent pool is still pretty deep, so there's reason for optimism across the board. Where will two-way stud Brendan McKay end up? Read on to find out!If you're picking at this point in the draft, that means you likely finished higher in the…