Overall Player Rankings

Like all baseball fans, fantasy owners love to argue. Head-to-head or roto? Positional scarcity or best available player? Mike Piazza or Ivan Rodriguez? And I won’t even go near the discussions about clutch and contract years recently held in the Cafe Forums.

Another recent debate asked whether rankings are more useful if they are broken down by position, or whether all players should appear in the same list. We may not be able to answer that question, but at least we can offer you both options. To complement the positional rankings, fantasy vet John Rafferty, familiar to forum regulars as swarmee, has compiled a list of this year’s top 250 players.

John’s rankings were designed for single-season 5×5 mixed leagues with the goal of creating a strong, well-balanced team, and are intended as a starting point to be modified by your own strategy and opinions. Building a pitching staff around an ace reliever? Bump Eric Gagne up. Drafting without an eye on positional scarcity? Lower Bret Boone’s value. Think Esteban Loaiza is the real deal? Are other owners eyeing sleepers like Jon Lieber? Adjust your rankings accordingly. Also keep in mind that injuries (keep an eye on Jim Thome’s status, for instance) and transactions (if Ugueth Urbina doesn’t sign, his value plummets) can still change players’ values significantly as we head toward the season.

Thanks again to John for sharing his cheat sheet with us!