Beginner Looking For Advice

[DBacks]

So I've been playing Fantasy Football for over 10 years now, but am just now trying to get into Fantasy Baseball. As I'm sure you can tell from my screen name, I'm a D-Backs fan, and while I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about them and somewhat knowledgeable about the NL, I have no more than a casual fan's knowledge of the AL.

Anyways, I'm finding Fantasy Baseball far more, subjective, than it's football counterpart. In fantasy football I have a pretty clear cut strategy that works well every year... Go RB early and often, focus on WRs next, grab a QB in the middle rounds, then just fill in back ups till you finish up with a defense and kicker. I'm having a pretty difficult time trying to figure out a decent Fantasy Baseball strategy though.

My league is 10 team H2H, 5x5 category. As far as I know it's fairly generic, except for a large bench. Positions are C, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, SS, 3 OF, Util, 3 SP, 2 RP, 3 P, 8 bench spots.

I've been doing some mock drafts and I think I've found a decent strategy, but I'd really appreciate some input. I generally like to start out my first few rounds with power, high HR and RBI guys. In the 4th, more often than not I grab McCann, but if not I'll continue with hitters looking for the best value considering position scarcity. I try to have 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 1 OF, C, and SS filled after 6 rounds, but once in awhile I won't be able to grab a 3rd, SS, or C without reaching.

In the 7th round I generally start to concentrate primarily on pitchers. I'll usually grab 3 starters in a row and end up with guys like Kershaw, Beckett, and Oswalt. Then I might grab a hitter if one presents value, and then concentrate on closers. I'll grab closers like Soria (who seems to fall way too far to me), Valverde, Soriano, Street, and Qualls. I try to get at least 5 closers, so that way I can have one for every RP and P spot.

Once I have most of my lineup filled in, I'll grab the last hitter or two I need to complete it. Usually either a OF, SS, 2nd, C, and the Util. To finish off the draft I'll generally grab a couple starting pitchers and a couple back up hitters, preferably ones that have more than 1 position eligibility.

I feel this gives me a fairly balanced team, maybe slightly biased towards hitting.

Finally, the other 9 guys in my league are pretty new at Fantasy Baseball too. I don't really know what the newbie mistakes are (maybe drafting pitching too early?), but I'm sure most of them will make them. So anything I should do differently? Any hints in general?

[MTUCache]

I think you're on the right track, especially with the power early, but you're probably over-analyzing it a bit.

Abandon the Yahoo! rankings altogether, come up with your own rankings based on your league settings, and then just take best-available for the first few rounds. Maybe that will end up getting you the same positions in the same rounds as you listed, but likely not.

If you're only considering positional scarcity and tier-levels of players, I think at some point early in your draft you need to address 3B. There's not much difference in the next few guys after AROD until you get beyond the top 7-8 guys (Wright/Longo/Stewart/Zimm/Youk/Reynolds/ARam/ maybe Figgins or Panda), but if you don't want to end up outside of that group, who are all generally going pretty quickly in drafts. Those guys (besides maybe Figgins) are all going to be off the board come the fifth round, and I personally don't want to get stuck with M.Young or Beckham holding down what should be a power corner-infield spot.

1B, MI, SP are all crazy deep this year, especially in a 10-team league. Even OF in a league that shallow (only 30 taken).

I'd focus on making my bench useful for two roles: Specialty guys I can plug-in mid-week to really rack up the SB/R or HR/RBI or complete flier prospects who could turn into legitimate starters. There's really no reason to be keeping a bunch of third-rate OF or backups on a bench that big with as many replacement-level guys there are going to be floating around on the WW. It's not like in football where there are no starting RBs out there and you have to handcuff a guy's backup. If anybody but one of your stars goes down, there's usually a roughly equivalent player sitting out there free for anybody to take.