December 17, 2010

Fantasy Beat

Offseason Content

by Marc Normandin

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Now that my contributions to the heavy lifting on Baseball Prospectus 2011 are (mostly) concluded, and the World Series is well behind us, we can all turn our attention back towards the things that really matter, like whether or not your fantasy team has enough production coming out of its third baseman. As you have probably noticed, our friends from Heater have restarted an offseason edition of the Hot Spots column in order to keep you appraised of player movement and the fantasy implications of those shifts. Rob McQuown is handling the Monday and Wednesday columns this time around, but Michael Jong, Mike Petriello and Bill Baer can all be found on their regularly scheduled days this winter. 

As for my own offseason fantasy content: very soon I will start going through my 2010 rankings to see how I held up, just like last year. The reason is so that I can see where my line of thinking went right or wrong--getting caught up in which specific players were hits or misses isn't as important as the process behind getting those rankings right. Since we changed over to the new tiered format this year, it will be interesting to see how well players fit into the tiers they were placed in. I haven't decided if I should do those all at once, as in, should all of the second baseman be covered in one piece, or should I stick with the Five, Four and Three star players in one, then the two and one star players in another piece. Splitting it up means I can probably go a little more in-depth within the piece, so mostly let's just gauge how much of a rush you are all in to see how 2010's thought process did. Just so everyone has something to point to when the inevitable comments come up: no, the reviews of the rankings are not my 2011 rankings, and yes, I will be doing a combined outfielder rankings piece as I always do, but not until after I do the three individual ones.

That is the main goal of the winter at this point, and after that, the actual rankings will be compiled. Last year we used a tiered system as I mentioned--for anyone who missed that, have a look at this piece to see what I mean--and that seemed to be enjoyed once some of the kinks were worked out. If you have any suggestions for the 2011 version though, please leave them in the comments, as I am always open to suggestions to improve your experience. 

As for 2011's content, we are going to be introducing a few new angles--some which you have asked for in the past, some of which you have not but we think you will dig--into our content stream. Feel free to reiterate your desires in the comments, as I have a running list on my desk I am currently looking at with my own plans for Fantasy Beat's 2011 season.