Fantasy Baseball Time is Here!

It's that time of the year again.  My annual addiction disease has returned.  It's fantasy baseball draft week!

Every year since I was about 13 I've done fantasy baseball.  As each year passes I tell myself I'm only going to do one team... So far this year I have 5 teams, 4 of which were live drafts, one of which was a 20-person, 31-man-roster auction draft. (which, if you're familiar... is insane.  It held me in front of a computer for a good 5 hours)... It's a problem.

For those who aren't familiar with the 'fantasy' craze, you draft a team of players who you think will have good statistical seasons, which in turn earns you the most fantasy points.  There are two main kinds of drafts: snake and auction.  In a snake draft, there is a draft order, and team owners make picks from the total pool of available players in order 1-10, then backwards 10-1, and again until all of the teams' rosters are full.  In an auction draft, there is no real order, just an order to nominate players for bid.  Each team owner has a set amount of money with which to bid on players, and anyone can bid on any player if they have the money.  An auction draft takes a little more strategy.

Fantasy football is great because pretty much all the games are played one day a week, so it's not much of a time sink...

But fantasy baseball is a 162-game season.  Games every day.  Constant roster changes.  Over that large a sample size statistical analysis becomes much more reliable.  Which gets into why the drafts are so much fun.  With a little work, you can try to find the guys who are undervalued, the 'sleepers', and any guys who are primed for a breakout season.  But sometimes it's fun too just to go by a 'gut' feeling.

I could go on and on about this, but I'd guess most of you probably aren't interested and have already stopped reading.  Sufficed to say I'm well versed in this subject, and if you are interested and want any sleeper picks... let me know in the comments.

And if you have an addictive personality and love sports, STAY AWAY