[crockpot]

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If you seem to be the authority on fantasy baseball leagues (not that I'm not an opinionated individual and have my own ideas), I just want to hear a few pieces of advice:

For a standard fantasy league (not that I know what "standard" means here, I'm talking about a typical H2H or rotisserie Yahoo league of 12-16 players), what order of players would you be on the lookout for, in terms of position? By this, I mean what positions would you look to fill immediately? Obviuosly you'd take the best player available or one you deem the best, but given an order, how would you rank importance of positions? OF>P?

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'importance' of position is not really a useful term. if you judge that an outfielder and a second baseman have the same overall value after adjusting for position, you should be indifferent between the two.

in terms of positional depth this year, in order of most scarce to least, with approximately sized gaps:

C



2B


SS
3B
1B
OF

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What do you think of the Rockies sluggers? (Holliday, Atkins, Helton, Hawpe) [I thought Atkins was very underrated last year]

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holliday and atkins should retain most of their gains. coors was less of a hitter's park last year than usual, and it's likely this will rebound, balancing the effects of their natural regression. they are also at good ages.

it seems clear that helton is no longer a 30+ hr hitter. hawpe is really blah corner guy, but if he plays full time he could generate a line like .280-90-25-100-5 thanks to coors and the high-OBP guys ahead of him. one of the dangers, though, is that he gets forced out of the lineup since his real-world value is marginal. fortunately, the rockies are not bursting at the seams with outfield prospects, so he should be safe for 2007.

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EDIT: Here's one more thing: I've been reading in a few places that there are a clear top 7 overall fantasy picks, broken into three groups, which are as follows:
1-2:
Albert Pujols
Johan Santana
3-4-5:
Carlos Beltran
Alex Rodriguez
Jose Reyes
6-7:
Ryan Howard
Chase Utley
(with Vlad Guerrero and Miguel Cabrera flip-flopping in 8-9)

To what extent do you agree/disagree with this?


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i don't think anyone should be taking santana over pujols. he is great, but the year-to-year consistency for hitters is so much better than for pitchers, and his injury risk is greater.

i wouldn't take beltran in the top 5. you can't pretend 2005 never happened. ron shandler and pecota take very different stances on his 2007 projection. a-rod is also too high for my tastes; i'd rather take soriano or cabrera.