Fantasy Baseball, 6 Week Report

It's been a while since I've broached the fantasy baseball topic on the blog. That's primarily because all of my genius picks are either injured or performing like slugs. Naturally, the league I'm performing the best in is my 20 team, 10x10 Roto Keeper League that is worth zero dollars if I win. Big money league... I'm somewhere around 8th. Ahh, the beauty of fantasy sports: Where a month before the season, we're all winners!

Thoughts so far...

• There are very few reliable players this year. Guys who are annual locks for AVG, RBI, and HR are few and far between this year.
• You're probably winning if you quickly jumped onto the right bandwagon. Anyone who hitched their wagon to Jered Weaver and Lance Berkman are probably running away with it right now. If you locked onto Sam Fuld and Ike Davis, you're probably headed in the wrong direction.
• Injuries are as frequent as ever and have depleted some already weak positions (3B)
• Stolen bases are coming from some pretty strange places. Ian Desmond leads the majors and his career best is 17.
• Saves are as tricky as ever. The list of reliable closers is no more than 5-7. Every other job is up for grabs and managers are going with a committee more than I've ever seen.
• I was right about cheap pitching being the way to go. The Bud Norris and Justin Mastersons the world have been just as reliable as the perrenial aces.

On this day where I finally decided it's time to "blow the whole damn thing up" with a couple of my teams, here's some educational fantasy baseball links. 

• Elmhurst Pub Roundtable is a blog that I stumbled upon via a retweet. Excellent, yet quick, read for daily league players looking for matchup advice and good leads on spot starters. 

• An article from h2h Corner got me thinking about the beauty of Roto Leagues being a full year drag race to the finish. While some h2h leagues in baseball and football crown a regular season champion, then go into the playoffs, Rotisserie Baseball is the best because for the most part playoffs aren't involved. In professional sports, the best team over the course of a season doesn't win a championship very often. You can go 162-0 in baseball and get swept out of the first round by a Wild Card team. The idea of adding more teams to the playoffs only increases these odds. But in Roto Leagues, you can't just back into the playoffs and hope for a couple of monster weeks from Ryan Howard and win the whole thing. Roto Leagues keep you interested for a full 162 games when playoff teams may otherwise be set by August.

• Imaginary Diamond features semi daily fantasy profiles on players that might be worth taking a second look at. They have a ton of rankings, lists, and draft kit style information that's worth reading too. 

• Advanced Fantasy Baseball has weekly pickup advice that as far as I'm concerned has been pretty spot on. If only I followed the advice a little more. A few weeks ago I was looking at his suggestion to pick up Ryan Roberts and I thought it was nuts. .283/.400/.511 later and now I feel crazy. 

• Roto Savants is probably a little more in depth than anyone would need in a standard league. But if you have the free time to analyze how certain umpire crews and the weather are going to impact your players, this is probably your kind of site.