Fantasy baseball draft myths and advice: The training bras come off

The Jon thought everything was cool between The Jon and FreeSanJose. There was some bondage between the two of us during the hallowed Edinson Volquez and Cliff Lee conversation. FreeSanJose even left with his handcuffs. It is our intention to try and help y’all prepare for a draft by highlighting players and strategies. The Jon thought FreeSanJose was on board with that and then we got into a big argument where insults and racial epithets were thrown.

FreeSanJose truly believes we agree on many of the same points in fantasy baseball.

The Jon is great.

FreeSanJose is not.

So to show FSJ the error of his ways, it is game time.

Two suckers looking from the outside

The Oz has been called many things.
Whipped. Bustah. Little Boy Blue.
And now he can be called loser after being knocked out of the playoffs by PoiDog. On a separate note, Newspaperman, FreeSanJose and PoiDog are all in the playoffs, and the only one who is writing about any semblance of the playoffs is The Jon.

Not like you would want to read PoiDog, that guy is out of here. The Jon feels Like KRS-One when he stated on one of his albums “D-Nice is not a part of BDP.” Actually come to think of it, PoiDog bears a striking resemblance to D-Nice … but The Jon digresses yet again.

Back to The Oz. The Jon e-mailed The Oz after his debacle and all he did was gripe about how he lost, blah, blah, blah.

Hey The Oz, The Jon is a dynasty, you should be asking The Jon questions, not the other way around. But alas, here is the official transcript, fools.

Pitcher’s duel

It started off sweetly enough. The Oz e-mailed The Jon saying how much he respected The Jon and wished he could be like The Greatness … but it quickly turned ugly.

One bitter fantasy player with only one title talking about his poor excuse for a pitching staff to the best Fantasy Baseballer of all time … Like The Oz could ever be the champ that The Jon is with his sorry excuse he calls pitching.

Come to think of it, The Oz has always been a Magnum T.A. to The Jon’s Ric Flair. And so has his pitching staff.

Read on and judge for yourself …

Which BaseballStar are you?

So to get a better understanding of how TheBaseballStars differ, lets play a little game shall we? The fun begins with pitching, or which type of pitchers each individual BaseballStar goes for when creating a team. It is a vision of what the perfect pitcher is so to speak.
The game is figuring out which BaseballStar you are most alike in terms of which pitcher you go for when selecting your team.

The Jon fully expects you to read this post and spend one second saying you are like The Jon, Newspaperman (heaven forbid), PoiDog (you sheep), FreeSanJose (get anger management classes), or The Oz (MIA). So why the Roy Halladay video? The Jon thought you would never ask …

Draft advice: Top 20 Starting pitchers

Every league has a pitching guru. Not to toot my own horn, but more times than not, I proudly proclaim that mantle. Once upon a time, I insisted on keeping five pitchers. But even I know that’s not a sound strategy. I prefer to take one or two studs early and fill in my staff with high-upside hurlers on the young side of 30 who are capable of becoming dominant. I’ll leave low-WHIP, low-ERA, low-K, low-risk guys for someone else. Our rankings largely reflect that philosophy. Although The BaseballStars had a pretty wide level of varience — some of our top-10 pitchers didn’t even appear on everyone’s top-20 list — I would feel perfectly comfortable following this list straight down.

Draft Advice: The top 5 value picks

Fantasy baseball drafts are all about hype. As fantasy baseballers we feed off of it. When Jose Reyes, David Wright, Hanley Ramirez and Ryan Braun all have big seasons forever changing the fantasy landscape, we want to be the ones that said we saw it coming and that we told you so. That’s why Parrish was at this top of this post before the video becam no longer available seeing how his solo career was so successful. We all remember when Parrish Smith broke off from EPMD and the Green-Eyed Bandit. Yeah, that was successful. But guess what sweethearts, like a lot of solo careers, you can’t win by the rule of “I saw it comin” without solid producers — the value guys that keep on churning 180-plus hits, 30 or more homers, 100 RBI or 100 runs season after season. Your own Green-Eyed Bandit so to speak. What a weak piece of writing that last paragraph was. Videos no longer available sucks.

But still, we have humps out there saying Wright will drop 40 bombs along with Ryan Braun because they are under 26. Screw that. Let the other guys grab the sexy picks of Jose Reyes, David Wright, Hanley Ramirez and Ryan Braun, while you grab the sure things that are four-to five category studs. Get results, not predictions. Get value not teenage fandom. Here are the top 5 value picks in the draft:

Purple Lips: Yeah, no brainer right? Well, you would be surprised how many people

It’s in the stars: More letters

Keep Erik Bedard? What about Alex Rios? Is he worthy? And is Dan Haren worth these three guys? TheBaseballStars answer to more questions concerning keepers and trades.
Check it out here.

Just win, Ozzie

I grew up in the area where “Just win, baby!” is the mantra. But don’t confuse me for a Raider fan – I grew up watching McGwire and Canseco bash forearms and good ol’ Eck notching saves. I grew up watching Montana and Young throwing TDs to Rice and putting on Super Bowl rings.

What I’m getting at here is that, when it came to sports, winning was something I came to expect.

Yet, if you look at my recent history in fantasy sports – specifically fantasy baseball – my exploits look a lot like the 2008 versions of the great teams I watched as a young’n. Rebuilding has been the order of the day for my franchise, too. For a few years now actually.