Starters offer small pockets of high skill, low risk

Over 85 percent of the pitchers at the top of the pool are established veterans. This would seem to lend needed stability to these volatile cornerstone players. However, only about 60 percent of them are free of any health concerns. Some Asset Groups are healthier than others – (F/ER,KK) has good pickings but (M/ER,k) is…

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Outfielders provide skill, experience but health risk

As always, outfield offers a little of everything. Power, speed, batting average – take your pick. However, there are mine fields as well; about 70 percent of the top names come along with some injury risk. Still, this position is also one of the most experienced; about 85 percent of the players at the top…

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Stock Up on Speedy Shortstops

In this speed-starved world, shortstop is the position where you can plant a flag in the scarce SB category, even late. This position has gotten stronger in recent years, but the current upper tier is composed of players with lesser experience and a few health issues, and thus, wider error bars. Power sources dominate the…

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2B Talent is Shallow, Concentrated

Despite some assertions to the contrary, second base is not a deep position. There are only 14 dual asset full-time players, which means someone in a 15-team mixed league is going to have to go with a lesser commodity. Of those 14, only nine are power contributors, and only two of those have more than…

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Interesting 3B profit options, even at the top

Third base is another position with sufficient power and batting average sources. It runs about 20 deep in multi-asset players, which means most mixed leaguers should have no problem finding a solid contributor. What is most noteworthy is that there are several high-end asset groups with interesting profit opportunities. That makes 3B a position where…

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Stockpile power at 1B/DH in 2017

As always, this is a position loaded with power and potential batting average, top to bottom. There are 10 extreme power options, depending upon how much BA advantage or disadvantage you want to build into your roster. There are 13 full-timers with significant or better power, which is down from 21 last year. This is…

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How bad is the 2017 catcher pool?

Catchers are the most frustrating offensive position in fantasy baseball. Yes, they offer the shallowest depth of skills, but just how bad is it? Should we really be pushing Buster Posey into the early rounds? How much damage do the end-gamers really cause? Here is a chart of the Broad Assessment Balance Sheet (BABS) skills…

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BABS comes to Music City

The industry’s annual “first pitch” of the fantasy baseball season is the Fantasy Sports Trade Association’s (FSTA) experts league draft. This year it was held at their winter conference in Nashville. This was the second time that I’ve taken BABS with me to this league’s draft. Last year, a yet-to-be-fully-realized BABS took me to a…

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BABS 2017: What’s new, early charts, more

While we all know the inherent beauty that BABS possesses, she readily recognizes that there is always room for improvement. The challenge, though, is to improve while maintaining simplicity. I didn’t want to add complexity to her natural beauty. In the end, the only changes I made were to provide a bit more consistency and…

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How BABS Optimizes the First Round

Sections of this article appear in The BABS Project. As we start inching our way into the 2017 draft season, one of the hottest topics will be the handling of the first round in snake drafts. Intuitively, you would think that first round players are the most projectable. We obsess over our draft slot positioning.…

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