Just When I Think I’m Out, Fantasy Baseball Pulls Me Back In

Joe Mauer is clearly the best fantasy catcher, but he'll never be on any of my teams

I said I wouldn’t. I said that I had too many other priorities to take care of this summer. I said I couldn’t give the amount of time I needed to honestly compete.

But fantasy baseball is a drug and I’m hooked. As we’re now in March, I always know that I need a fix, so I’ve joined a league for my ninth year in this little “hobby”. I have yet to buy a fantasy magazine, which is quite a change for me. In other years, I’ve bought three or four draft guides before February ends. So at least that’s one thing I’m not wasting my time on.

But I guess I’ve spent that saved time competing in 10 or so mock drafts so far on Yahoo! and the best mock drafting Web site for any fantasy sport, mockdraftcentral.com. I use ESPN for content, but the mock drafts there are just horrible. Everyone basically checks out by round five.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed that much space is taken up by my love of fantasy sports. That’s the main reason why I have refused activating the tag cloud widget for this thing. The word ‘fantasy’ towers over every other tag like Hasheem Thabeet at a kindergarten birthday party.

I would love to see a photo of exactly right now.

Anyway, from what I’ve seen in mocks through March 3, here is my position-by-position take on how I would approach a draft. And one note: Much of my opinions are based on drafting for a 12-team, 5-by-5, head-to-head league.

Catcher: More than any other hitting position, wait!

Joe Mauer is the undisputed No. 1 pick at the position, as he should be. In typical build-them-up-before-you-tear-them-down fashion, I’ve got to say Mauer is a special player. You can’t find a catcher with 30-100 production potential with a low projection of a .320 average and a few stolen bases. But he is being outrageously over-drafted, selected around the end of the first round recently on MDC. Mauer hit 28 home runs last season, but it was more than double his previous career high. Supporters are going to say his numbers would have been larger if he hadn’t miss all of April due to injury, and that’s valid. But what’s to say that he can’t go back down to 13-15 homers with a .330 average? That’s still fantastic, but not worth that high of pick for a very real possibility. At that point, you’re reaching for batting average and would be better served to pay attention to other positions, such as third base or outfield.

To me, the best route at catcher is to wait. You can get someone very useful such as Kurt Suzuki, Miguel Montero, Geovany Soto, Bengie Molina, etc. 10-12 rounds later. Remember, drafting is all about value. Mauer will always be the king of the position at batting average, but you can find suitable fill-ins who can give you plenty of home runs, RBIs and runs much later on.