Predicting The Future

Dave Cameron at Fangraphs:

"I would like to make a plea with anyone who plans on writing anything about how a team’s off-season has gone – please, please, please do not treat 2009 as a constant."

Decent advise assuming you have other tools and indicators to help understand what affects performance. With baseball moving towards defense, ask yourself if a team has added better defensive players when trying to predict pitching improvement.

Of course, there is so little data to make projections that one must use the previous season production as a foundation. By little data, I mean seasons as sample size.

2010 Fantasy Baseball: DH-only

In 20-appearance eligibility leagues, there always exist a subset of players who did not make an appearance at any position at least 20 times. Amongst this group, there exists the dreaded DH-only qualifier thanks to his having appeared as a DH the most.

Before the final two games of the 2009 season, Texas Rangers rookie Julio Borbon was the potential poster child for this rule quirk. Thanks to his starting the last two games in the OF, he reached the 20-appearance threshhold.

That doesn't mean there aren't others whose status as DH-only will hinder there sleeper ability. Or enhance it if you have the open spot.

The list is short and inconsequential in mixed formats and nearly inconsequential in single league formats with the exception of Larrish and, maybe, Cliff Floyd.

1. Jeff Larish
2. Dave Dellucci
3. Joe Dillon
4. Cliff Floyd
5. Eric Munson