Top 25 outfielders: 2009

Vladimir Guerrero, Ichiro Suzuki, Manny Ramirez in their prime.
Ryan Braun, Carlos Lee, Ichiro Suzuki right now.
Notice a trend? Those are great outfields. Take a wild guess who has owned those guys? Yes, The Greatness. In yet another installment of TheBaseballStars draft advice, you will be receiving the know-how from the bona fide pro. A lot of fantasy experts will tell you to stay away from outfield and grab the harder to fill infield positions.
Screw them.
Get a good outfield. It is a one-stop shop for every stat you need. It is the only place you can a plethora of .300 hitters with 30 to 40 homers with a 100 runs and RBIs thrown in. Want speed? Then this is the best source to get them. Take a look at those two outfield groups above and respect the balance. Get a troika like that and you are way ahead of the curve for offense.

Fantasy baseball draft myths & advice: Done or Dunn?

There might not be another player in fantasy baseball that has such wide-ranging opinions.There are those that believe that he is an absolute albatross.
That simply by drafting him, you damn your team to an eternal hell of enduring rather lengthy droughts in exchange for some homers.
You know I’m not one of those people. I won a title with Dunn last year and will happily draft him if I get the chance this year.
Convince me otherwise.

Convince you not to draft a guy you already said you would draft? Look, The Jon has respect for what Dunn does.
He just gets drafted to high in a spot that is usually reserved for secondary fantasy producers. Dunn is a third option at best because of his up and down weeks of consistency. The only consistency the guy has is unpredictability. If you are drafting a team from scratch, you really need to be committed to offense to get the guy and can count on a rag-tag bunch of pitchers to be your staff.

Here’s the deal:

That’s Benito Teixeira, not Mark

I’m trying to wrap my head around the notion that Mark Teixeira might be a Red Sox soon. It seems almost too good to be true. Initially I thought the BoSox might be fine without him, but when it donned on me that this talented slugger is only 28years old and in the prime of his career, this suddenly became a must-have acquisition.
Teixeira in a Sox uni would make me very happy. While all of Red Sox Nation is forever grateful for Mike Lowell’s contribution to the ’07 title, the addition of Teixeira — which would result in Lowell’s departure via trade — could be a move that really turns the Sox into a force to be reckoned with for the next decade. If the Sox sign Tex, Boston could head into 2009 with Teixeira, Pedroia and probably Youkilis all locked up for the next half-decade.

On a mission from … Day 1

So in this week’s These things to be true, The Jon said The Jon would try to write everyday since this is now TheBaseballStar.com. So here we go and stuff. First up to bat is Adam Dunn, the most oxymoronic fantasy player of all time. He is the antithesis of the type of player The Jon drafts. Hitting in the .240s while being a league leader in homers with 32, he is everything The Greatness hates about risk/reward players. H2H league success is dependent on reliability, and Adam Dunn is not it.

Still, if you have the right team, Dunn could just very well be your team’s MVP. Confused? Well, let’s go down memory lane … as if you had a choice.

The Jon knows these things to be true: Week 18

It finally happened. After five years of finishing in the money, the dynasty is over.
The Jon has accepted that The Jon aka The Greatness will not make the playoffs this season.
It is time for reminiscing.
A calming of the mind if you will … aw screw it, this sucks.

Take a look at that again. Five seasons straight. Two championships. The memories are all The Jon will have left from now on. A moment of silence, now.

OK, that’s somewhat better, let’s talk baseball, shall we?

The Jon knows these things to be true: Week 9

At the beginning of the season, this is how The Jon’s offense walked into a weekly matchup. The squad was stacked with Jorge Posada, Adrian Gonzalez, Placido Polanco, Rafael Furcal, Chipper Jones, Ichiro, Vladimir Guerrero, Magglio Ordonez and Curtis Granderson.
After three weeks of no RBI futility, The Jon’s team heads into a matchup like this:

But instead of Chip and Dale, uhhhh …

It’s more like Vlad and Granderson.

Losers.

But enough of the bleeding heart routine, lets talk fantasy baseball.

The Jon knows these things to be true: Week 5

The Jon has been gone for a week and you have seen the true beauty of this site. The Oz has stepped up, Newspaperman wrote some stuff and FreeSanJose made an appearance. A day late mind you, but he still showed. PoiDog on the other hand hasn’t. After reading some intelligent writing, there is always room for mindless, rah-rah banter.

But we can forgive the guy, can’t we? PoiDog has been salivating over the Iron Man movie since it was announced two years ago and has been indisposed. Sorry, all Silver Web Surfers aside, The Jon only knows of only one Ironman and he is down below.

And, uhhhh …. you have to click on the read more under the video to get to the rest of this riveting reading.

But enough of all of that Jibber Jabber. Now onto baseball, shall we?

Draft advice: Top 20 outfielders

After a week of tedious and arduous calculations that involved The Jon saying: “Hey, email me your OF rankings, suckers,” TheBaseballStars have finally compiled our top 20 list. PoiDog broke out his calculator and has recorded the most accurate rankings ever made. No stats, no hype. Just guts.

Welcome to the money position in fantasy baseball. Outfiled has every category you could need. Power, hits, speed, runs, SB, it is all there. And they could be had in the later rounds of a draft or off the wire. Outfield is the deepest postion in baseball. Some strategists say to grab infield and pitching and wait for outfieled picks. They only say that because they want to dupe the fantasy baseballer so they can grab all of the studs in the outfield. Screw that, any of the top 3 outfielders can be top 5 overall picks. Out of your first five picks in the draft, get a top outfielder as one of the selections. Do it. Let’s get cracking, shall we?

1. Matt Holliday (100 votes)
2. Vladimir Guerrero (90)
3. Grady Sizemore (88)

Another victim of the hype: Roy Oswalt

Francisco Liriano. Two seasons ago, he was the hottest pitcher in baseball and possessed the best slider in baseball.
The guy was real talk. Every pitch in his arsenal had that zip. That extra kick that hasn’t been seen since the 1999 version of Pedro Martinez.
And then it happened, the exploding arm trick. It seems Liriano’s best slider ever caused too much movement and he went this side of Tommy John.
of course the jon had him. He fell into the category of the rookie keeper in the jon’s SLO and San Jose league named after respective college alumnus. And this is where the sordid tale of the jon went against all of his natural championship instinct. The Jon has just pulled a deal in the SLO league to secure Liriano as one of his keepers. Oswalt was traded for an 8th round pick so Liriano could be a keeper. A bad deal all the way … or was it?

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