Bringing Baseball Back

2007 Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball is officially open for business. And, as always, I think their top 12 O-Rank, which is defined as "the player's overall Yahoo! Sports ranking, based on current and prior seasons," is worth examining.

1. Albert Pujols - no argument here
2. Johan Santana - funny, that's where I had him too
3. Jose Reyes - clearly a big upside, but this high?
4. Alfonso Soriano - seems about right
5. Ryan Howard - also seems about right
6. Alex Rodriguez - did I predict this would happen, or what?
7. Carlos Beltran - I'm still a little gun-shy after 2005
8. David Ortiz - Ryan Howard, just a few picks later
9. Chase Utley - positional scarcity with 5-category production
10. Miguel Cabrera - exactly where I had him
11. David Wright - I'd be happy to get him with pick 11
12. Vladimir Guerrero - I'd be happy to get him with pick 12

Now, just for fun, here's the top 12 statistically (in 5x5 leagues) from 2006

1. Albert Pujols
2. Johan Santana
3. Ryan Howard
4. Alfonso Soriano
5. Jose Reyes
6. Joe Nathan (seriously)
7. David Ortiz
8. Derek Jeter
9. Matt Holliday
10. Carlos Beltran (maybe he is a first-rounder)
11. Lance Berkman
12. Jermaine Dye

So what does this tell us? Well, a few things. If you have one of the first five picks this year, chances are, no matter who you take (so long as it's Albert, Johan, Howard, Reyes or Soriano), they are going to perform like a first-round pick. It's later in the first round that things get interesting. For example, if you got the unlucky 12th pick last year, I'd be willing to bet Matt Holliday and Derek Jeter were still around. If you took them back-to-back, you would have drawn immense criticism from the other 11 teams in the league, but you also would have drawn the names of two top-10 performers without one top-10 pick. Not bad.

I guess the real challenge is determining who are going to be this year's Joe Nathans (almost impossible to predict a reliever's win total, which is why he's so high), Derek Jeters, Matt Hollidays (could be Matt Holliday again), and Jermaine Dyes. It might be even more important to try to predict this year's Alex Rodriguez (could be Alex Rodriguez again), so you don't end up paying for a name, rather than paying for stats.