Fantasy Baseball Cafe Forums

by **BitterDodgerFan** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:52 pm

who are some of the players that are ranked too low in yahoo's pre-rankings?

many of the lower tier closers were ranked really low, much lower than many of the useless MRs.
like franklin, jenks, and many of the other crap closers like woods, dotel, etc.

i also noticed that i kept ending up with guys like berkman, carlos lee, and quentin and was wondering if they're ranked too low.

by **giambiformvp** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:19 pm

Reyes. I usually get him in the 3rd round of every Yahoo mock draft.

by **MTUCache** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:32 pm

Cross-posted from: Yahoo! Pre-Ranked Notables

I'm up to about a dozen 12 team mocks and haven't noticed any changes in rankings or notables since this group a week ago.

Did five mocks over the weekend, looked at a few projections and MDPs yesterday, and came up with the following conclusions (based on the Yahoo! ranks as of 3/1/10):

These may be a bit overboard, so I'll try to keep it to a minimum and combine names/categories when possible.
Top 36 Notables:
Under-Valued:
Fielder
Reyes
Reynolds
Morneau
Over-Valued:
Tulo
Pedroia

Rest of the Top 100:
Under:
Bay/Lind
Verlander/Lester
Dunn/Hamilton/Ethier/ManRam (check league settings)
Papelbon
Peavy
Over:
Ichiro/Choo
Zobrist
Morales/D.Lee
Carpenter/Gallardo
M. Young
U. Jimenez/W.Rodriguez
McCutchen (horrible at 60)/Span (even worse)

Notables for later in the draft: (i.e. absolute STEALS where they're at)
C - Montero still seems to be a reasonable value, unless somebody jumps early.

OF - Soriano/Beltran both look to be dropping further than I feel they should. Both were typically available as a #4 OF. Borbon and Kubel looked to be early, and at least in the mocks the word is definitely out on Heyward. Saw him go as early as the 10th on Sunday, which would be a joke in any real league. Once the non-mockers get to the real drafts I'd say you could probably still look for him around the 17th/18th rounds.

DH (late power guys or safe bets) - Pena/Ortiz/Vlad, depending on how you feel about their numbers and your league settings. Chris Davis, Nick Johnson, and Magglio have all gone undrafted in multiple mocks. Again, your mileage may vary, but at least you've got some numbers there late if you decide you need them instead of a flyer.

SS - Not sure how the rest of you guys feel about Tejada, but he's been around at 13+, which I feel is a deal if you're not grabbing one of the top 5 (Hanley/Tulo/Reyes/Rollins/Jeter). Elvis and Asdrubel were similar.

SP - Some absolute gold all over the board in here. Hamels, Webb, Sheets(?) were the first that jumped to me outside of the top 100. After that there's still enough there to build an entire staff past round 10 if you want... Price, Scherzer, Buchholz, Cueto, Kazmir, Liriano, Penny, Harang. Just so freaking deep here. Once you've got an ace (or two if you prefer) secured you can wait forever on this board to grab these guys. If you're looking to scalp some bad-ratio wins late you've got DiceK going undrafted in many leagues as well.

RP - This is one spot that they MUST be making some fixes on, because they were all over the place. They've got setup guys before their closers and some guys with pretty secure jobs well off the draft board. Hoffman, Jenks, Lidge, Aardsma were all getting picked up here an there, but only by guys who made the effort to go down and get them. Bottom-feeder closers like Capps, Lyon, and K. Wood were going undrafted in multiple mocks as well.

Hope that about covers it... and that I'm not ruining my own draft strategy by putting this up for everyone to see, but I just wanted to share what I've found so far that I thought you may find helpful come the real deal later this month.

RP and OF seem to be the two easiest categories to exploit.
Catchers rankings are iffy, but they seem to be running at round 10-13 anyway.

In the 12 team leagues I've done, I've been the most happy with my rosters when I've gone 1B/3B/OF in some order through the first three rounds. Extending that a bit more, I've noticed my most successful patter for rounds 4-8 have gone: 2B/SP/OF2/RP/+ OF3 or RP2. Some of that has to do with how deep SP is (after your ace you can wait until rounds 9+), but mostly it has to do with how poor the OF rankings are. There's great value at the second OF spot if you hit it at the right time, and if you don't grab a third early you can probably wait until round 15+ for the rest of the pack.

Every time I've gone outside of 1B/3B/OF in the first three rounds I've been very disappointed with the players I've ended up with there. This is my real weak spot right now, as I need to figure out what I'm going to do if I end up with the #2 pick and decide to get Hanley. At this point I may have to pass him up (sacrilege!) for ARod.

The spots I've had the most success at, surprisingly, have been #10-12. Being able to double up on Wright/Longo/MCab/Tex/Howard makes me feel the most comfortable. Even slightly before that still feels good with Fielder/Holiday or Fielder/Crawford, but then I'm really scrambling to make sure I get Pablo, Zimm or Reynolds at the end of round 3. The ranks on Tulo, Mauer, and Lincecum generally ensure that you'll get those two stud picks at the end of the round (assuming you can ignore them, as I do).

Personally I'm happy with just about any of the SS ranked 6-15, so I'm taking them very late. 2B on the other hand I don't feel so good about waiting on. I'm leaning now towards going early on them (4th or 5th). If I wait I seem to end up with Weeks/Polanco/Prado, which I'm not very happy with.

Giving away way too much of my personal tastes and strategy here, but that's my take on the Yahoo! mocks so far....

by **Mortician** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:42 pm

reyes, quentin, peavy, webb (depending on the recent injury news), reynolds, jenks, aardsma, franklin, beltran (for h2h), berkman, lee

those i would say are the blatently obvious ones who are ranked way lower than a large majority of the rankings sheets I've seen so far.

In my own personal opinion, i'd add:
longoria, morneau, verlander, burnett, kazmir

by **SpecialFNK** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 7:59 pm

im not sure exactly where Berkman is ranked, but hes not one of the better 1B anymore. through the years he has been a 2nd round type 1B but now hes on the decline. last 3 years in HR have dropped.. 34, 29, 25.
his AVG in the last 3 years- .278/ .312/ .274.

what is really Carlos Quentin value? he had a monster season in 2008, but that was the only season in which he had alot of success. he could have a good full season if healthy, but based on his career i wouldnt consider him one of the top OF.

by **fcnick** » Mon Mar 08, 2010 8:07 pm

SpecialFNK wrote:im not sure exactly where Berkman is ranked, but hes not one of the better 1B anymore. through the years he has been a 2nd round type 1B but now hes on the decline. last 3 years in HR have dropped.. 34, 29, 25.
his AVG in the last 3 years- .278/ .312/ .274.

what is really Carlos Quentin value? he had a monster season in 2008, but that was the only season in which he had alot of success. he could have a good full season if healthy, but based on his career i wouldnt consider him one of the top OF.

After Quentin's monster year, he injured himself and dealt with it for much of last season. I'd say this is the year that he needs to prove himself as one of the elite OFs in the game. On pure upside, he is definitely under-valued.