Fantasy baseball draft season is coming, so you best be prepared by delving through every major player on each team. Fantasy FanHouse is here to help with a quick once-over.
Meet the ... Team that decided not to spend big bucks in the offseason. Reversing course from the normal offseason spending spree in New England, the Red Sox team headed into 2009 looks remarkably similar to last year's squad. You'll recognize all nine hitters in the starting lineup and a majority of the starting rotation. Key acquisitions were made in the bullpen, bringing Takashi Saito from the Dodgers and Ramon Ramirez from the Royals. John Smoltz will look weird without a Braves uniform, but should make a major contribution to the pitching staff when he returns from shoulder surgery. And if Brad Penny can return from injuries to his 2007 form, he should provide a nice spark to the rotation as well.
From now until the regular season begins, Fantasy Flings is where you'll find interesting story lines about your favorite teams from Spring Training. If there is a position battle, a nagging injury, a comeback story or a youngster making a surge for the "big club" we'll let you know the fantasy implications.
Boston Red Sox What's the strength of this Red Sox club so far in spring? By looking at the numbers, it's their bullpen. The seven projected relievers in the bullpen (Jonathan Papelbon, Takashi Saito, Ramon Ramirez, Justin Masterson, Manny Delcarmen, Hideki Okajima and Javier Lopez) have combined to give up only one run on six hits in 13 innings of work. Last season the Red Sox bullpen produced 34 wins and these seven pitchers struck out 456 batters. What does all of this mean for your fantasy club? It means that Paps is still a solid, lock down closer. It also means that if you're looking for cheap wins, strikeouts, low ERA's and WHIP's you should start by scouring the Red Sox pen. And if your fantasy league uses holds, the value from this list just went up.
I got my start in this industry at a now-defunct site called The Talented Mr. Roto. The namesake for the site, Matthew Berry, now does his thing over at ESPN. One hard and fast rule he always lived by -- and I'm sure he still does -- was this mantra: Never pay for saves.
It's just as simple as it sounds. If you play in an auction league, let everyone else bid on Francisco Rodriguez. Your money can be better spent elsewhere. If you draft, just find your relievers in the last few rounds. I'm not as hardcore into the theory, but it certainly has merit.
When drafting in fantasy baseball, I often find rankings are a lot less useful than using the tier system. Simply group guys together with others who will perform similarly, and you won't focus on single players. Being frazzled when that single player is taken immediately before your pick is a good way to ruin your draft.
We're definitely not proponents of drafting closers high, but getting the last member of a tier at good value could work in the right situations.
From the Windup is FanHouse's extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.
While there is still time left in the Hot Stove season, and there are a few high quality players left on the market -- Ben Sheets, anyone? -- the Yankees have been the team who has made the biggest splash in all of baseball thus far. That splash was seemingly a reaction to missing the playoffs for the first time since the strike-shortened 1994.
Other than a dalliance with Mark Teixeira, Boston's offseason has been almost entirely about tying up loose ends -- keeping the core that has brought so much success lately intact and building up the depth around it.
The Red Sox kicked off their winter by locking up American League MVP Dustin Pedroia for the next six years. In recent weeks, they've added a host of familiar faces to their bench and pitching staff -- including John Smoltz, Takashi Saito and Rocco Baldelli. Now, they're "close" to a contract extension with Kevin Youkilis that could keep him in Boston for the next five years and pay him $53 million, according to Tony Massarotti of the Boston Globe.
The Red Sox have been among the most active teams in free agency since the calendar turned to 2009, inking the likes of Takashi Saito, John Smoltz, Brad Penny, Rocco Baldelli and Mark Kotsay to deals in the new year. Those are good signings for an organization as deep as the Red Sox, but a major hole at catcher remains on the big league roster.
Boston has already signed Josh Bard to a non-guaranteed deal this winter, but unless it is willing to hand a significant portion of the catching duties to an untested backstop like Dusty Brown or George Kottaras, it is going to need another catcher.
Longtime backstop and team captain Jason Varitek is still a free agent, but, at least for now, the Red Sox seemed resolved to pursue other options in an effort to get younger behind the dish.
As former President Andrew Johnson reported earlier this week, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox are not, in fact, the same team. I've never thought of them as an autonomous unit, but rather a set of bookends. Between them lies history, science, geography.. all of the important stuff, everything you need to know. Everything outside of them is just crap on your shelves.
As Andrew pointed out, the teams are run very differently. The Yankees have unzipped their, uh, coin purse and put their dense, cylindrical wrapped coins on the table, scooping up the available big names in a grand fashion that leaves nothing but a cloud of smoke and gold-laced footprints in the faces of the competition.
The Sox have responded by holding up a picture of Dustin Pedroia and trying to find every free agent who looks remotely like him. It's been a running gag in our strip for a while now, but the Red Sox need to sign Delmon and Dmitri Young to keep me from going snowblind next season.
The Red Sox continue to be the anti-Yankees in this offseason, choosing to take the route of signing cheap free agents to one-year, incentive-laden contracts in the hopes of hitting it big. Next on the list is former Dodgers' closer Takashi Saito.
Considering the Red Sox hardly need a closer -- Jonathan Papelbon has that pretty well nailed down -- this is a move to bolster the setup role. Saito was one of the best relievers in baseball in 2007, when he saved 39 games while compiling a 1.40 ERA and 0.72 WHIP. He regressed a bit last season, but you could chalk that up to his arm injuries.
Earlier MLB FanHouse put together a stellar roundtable -- yeah, I'm biased, I know -- about the NLCS and we briefly discussed the Dodgers' closing situation. Since then, news broke that Takashi Saito will not be the Dodgers closer in this series. So that means they'll head into the NLCS against the Phillies with Jonathan Broxton as their man. This isn't huge news, because Saito struggled in Game 2 against the Cubs and Broxton was straight filthy when he took the hill.
"There's a probably a good chance of that happening," Saito said. "I would never tell the team that I don't want to be on the roster. The decision is theirs. If they judge that I can't help the team in this series, I'm fine with that."
The Dodgers bullpen is deep and strong, but this is still a big blow to the back end. It moves everyone back one spot from where they're accustomed. Luckily for them, they dealt without Saito for about two months in the regular season.
Of course, the Phillies' offense is a ton more imposing than the Dodgers' meek NL West foes.
From now until the regular season begins, 
I got my start in this industry at a now-defunct site called 
Other than a dalliance with 
The Red Sox have been among the most active teams in free agency since the calendar turned to 2009, inking the likes of 
As former President 
The Red Sox continue to be the anti-Yankees in this offseason, choosing to take the route of signing cheap free agents to one-year, incentive-laden contracts in the hopes of hitting it big. 
Earlier MLB FanHouse 
