Cody from Milwaukee asks:
I can only keep three for next year 07 (11x10 ten team keeper league )
Vladi, David Wright, Carl Crawford, Sexson, Vernon Wells, Glaus, Chone Figgins, Todd Helton. Categories for offense are Hits, HR's, SB's, RBI's, Total Bases, BB's, runs, OBP, AVG, SLG, OPS. I am pretty sure the first three are the guys what is your opinion?
Cody
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Cody,
I’ll try to make this as suspenseful as I can and do this one-by-one. Looking at the eight players, I automatically throw out Todd Helton. In the fantasy world, this future Hall of Famer is done. With his fading power, the only time Helton’s name should ever again be mentioned in a fantasy conversation is one between two Jeff Francoeur owners looking to find way to spike their team’s abhorrent OBP.
As for Chone Figgins, I quickly disregard him as well because — not to offend the Freddy Guzman owners out there — you don’t build winning baseball keeper teams around the stolen base category.
That leaves Vladimir Guerrero, David Wright, Carl Crawford, Richie Sexson, Vernon Wells, and Troy Glaus as the six from which to choose your three.
I’m sure you don’t need any help deciding the first two because they really stand out from the bunch: Guerrero and Wright. While both of these guys can really mash, they give you 30-40 collective stolen bases with great percentages to boot. When comparing the career vitals of the six players remaining, Guerrero and Wright are No. 1 and No. 2 in each vital category. And Wright is only 24….to make a long story short, you should be feeling pretty good about building a team with these two at the forefront.
That leaves us with four players remaining with one to choose.
Richie Sexson is by far the most intriguing player on this list. He quietly put together one of the best second halves in baseball, bashing 18 home runs to go along with .322/.399/.613 vitals and 48 RBIs in 70 games. In a league such as yours where all these percentages are factored in, I’m sure you took notice. Also, by not missing a single post-All-Star Break game last season, he removed any doubt as to whether or not he had put that nightmare of a season in Arizona behind him, further propelling his fantasy stock to the best it’s been in years. All of that being said, looking at his career vitals, I don’t expect his efficiency to continue, and apparently, neither do the Seattle Mariners. Sexson has been oft-mentioned in trade rumors this off-season as the organization looks to find a place for its 2006 Minor League Player of the Year, Bryan LaHair. While a trade may actually benefit Sexson’s stock (his vitals have been much better away from SAFECO Field in his two-year Seattle stint), he is underrated in just about ever fantasy draft out there, so you could get away with snagging him in one of the later rounds. The verdict: Pass on him but monitor which team he goes to for draft day.
Troy Glaus…The good: he is coming off his best season since leaving Anaheim and is shortstop eligible in most leagues (that’s huge). The bad: his percentages aren’t too pretty. The ugly: he is a 30-year old in a keeper league. The power from shortstop is great, but I’ll take a younger guy with his best years still ahead of him.
Down to two, now. The big decision: Carl Crawford or Vernon Wells. I’m going to preface this by saying that I love Wells for fantasy. The average, the power, the speed…what’s there not to love? And I have never drafted Crawford in a one-year league because any first-round guy whose value depends that much on speed is always deserving of my ‘overrated’ tag.
OK, now I choose Crawford. At 25, he’s three years younger than Wells, and while all his vitals are worse than Wells’, Crawford’s have increased every year since his first full season in 2003. If he maintains this steady improvement and keeps developing his power as future stars Delmon Young, B.J. Upton, and eventually Elijah Dukes get situated in the MLB, the sky is the limit. You can’t pass on the upside from a guy who could some day hit 25 HRs, steal 45+ bases, and hit for a .315 batting average all in the same season. I can understand your hesitation to pass on a stud like Wells, but go Crawford with confidence. You are going to want him on your team for years to come.
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