Walrus keepers are Carlos Delgado, Jim Thome, Curt Schilling, Billy Wagner and Rafael Palmeiro. My attempt to corner the 1B market wasn't entirely successful, and it leaves me a little thin at every other position, but hey, that's what the draft is for.

Now staying with the gashouse gorillas, Many Mota... Mota... Mota -- no, wait; Alex Rodriguez, John Smoltz, Tim Hudson, Roy Oswalt, and Mark Teixeira.

Baird Brain keepers: Helton (2), Gagne (1), Berkman (2), Thomas (1), and Young (1).

The Bashers choose to bring back Gary Sheffield (2), Magglio Ordonez (2), Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi (2), and Hank Blalock.

I think the first round of the free agent draft will be very interesting. I guess I better start putting a draft board together. :P

I'm putting in a formal protest!! I was having a proverbial feeding(trading)frenzy banquet and was forced to stop, leap years are such a pain:)I hope everyone enjoyed this trading period as much as I did. Did anyone think about the possibility of managers with their 3 years eligibility for a player ended, swapping these players in our predraft trading period. And then swapping them back again when the season started. Maybe we could have something in place where you could not own a player after you have had him for three years with a 1 year or 6 month waiting period as a deterrent. Just a thought. Have an excellent year people. Regards, Rick

Keepers(until after we draft)are Pedro, K.Brown, Huff, Tejada and Boone(not the basketball player:)

There are going to be some really nice players going back into the draft.

Here's a question: Who actually uses a system to construct their roster and who just grabs a copy of Rotoworld, watches ESPN and wings it? You don't have to give us your 11 herbs and spices, just an idea of who does what.

Myself, I have a fairly sophisticated database that kicks out a ranking list, which I adjust subjectively.

I admit last year I just kicked out a list of players at each position and ranked them subjectively according to our scoring categories and just sort of winged it during the draft. I gave each player a very simple numerical rating to help seperate potential impact talent from average talent from bottom of the barrel. I don't try to get too fancy with draft rankings; I trust my gut here because I know I'm going to be wrong on a good percentage of my rankings no matter what system I use.

The only thing I'm going to do different this year is examine what worked for people last year and what didn't work since I've never been in a league of this size with head-to-head scoring before. It was definately a learning experience.

K-Town keepers:
Jose Vidro (2), Randy Wolf (2), Nick Johnson (2), Chipper Jones (1), Jeff Bagwell (1)

Five SABR Magicians keepers:

Mark Prior (2)
Carlos Beltran (2)
Juan Pierre (2)
Wade Miller (1)
Jason Varitek (1)

I wonder who the first player drafted is going to be? In non-keeper leagues worldwide it's A-Rod or Soriano; but I'll be very interested to see who BBFLers will identify as the 101st-best fantasy player. Who gets the first pick, anyway?

Thunderbirds keepers:

Roy Halladay (2)
Javier Vazquez (2)
Johan Santana (2)
Brian Giles (2)
Eric Chavez (2)

Moscow will open the draft with these keepers:

Josh Beckett
Richie Sexson (2)
Jake Peavy (2)
Ray Durham
Miguel Batista (2)

Garces not on roids keepers:

Mike Sweeney
Jose Reyes
Manny Ramirez
Kerry Wood
Scott Rolen

The 'Topes Keepers:

Matt Morris
Sammy Sosa
Rafael Furcal
Jorge Posada
Trot Nixon

Subject to change of course.

Tentative keeper list:

Greg Maddux, Andy Pettitte, Jeff Kent, Albert Pujols, Preston Wilson

Chatsworth Halos keepers:

Garrett Anderson
Barry Zito
Bartolo Colon
Troy Percival
Troy Glaus (finally had corrective vision surgery after years being advised to do so)

Did anyone think about the possibility of managers with their 3 years eligibility for a player ended, swapping these players in our predraft trading period. And then swapping them back again when the season started.

I think that's what the Rules Committee is there to prevent.

Horse Field Hammers Keepers include:

Barry Bonds
Jason Schmidt
Mark Mulder
Mike Lowell
Orlando Cabrera

http://economics.about.com
Fish Candy Keepers:

Vernon Wells
B.H. Kim
Larry Walker
Bobby Abreu
Derek Jeter

Cheers,

Mike

R Billie - I use my own ranking system and balance that with other ranking systems. I especially like ESPN's draft rankings, where they compile an average ranking of a player based on all drafts up to that point. I use that to get a reference on "unknown" quantities; players who didn't have a lot of playing time (injury, rookie, diff. role, etc).

Being subjective is where the fun is. I try to get players I like, so the challenge is drafting in such a way that you can fill your needs with what you want, when it is worth doing so -- I won't pass up on a player who is significantly better than someone I want, if that player fits my needs.

I'd be interested in learning what people physically bring to the draft. IIRC, the pre-rankings you put into yahoo! don't translate in the draft room in that pitchers and hitters are separated and not numbered based on your individual rankings. I'm probably going to have a printed list of my rankings that I go through and cross off as we go this year.

A note to anyone still reading this, I would go ahead and place the names of everyone else's keepers in the exclude side of the pre-ranking section to avoid mistakes on drafting day. Just be sure to double check before the draft starts for any changes.

Who actually uses a system to construct their roster...?

I keep track of Ken Harrelson's "Picks to Click" from the following year and base my rankings accordingly.

Put it on the board, yes!

AGF elects to keep:

Randy Johnson
Ichiro Suzuki
Marcus Giles
Mariano Rivera

and Carlos Zambrano, Jamie Moyer or Ken Griffey Jr.

Still working on the last one...

Kudos to the Gashouse who managed to get both A-Rod and Huddy. Players I targeted from the very beginning.

I have my draft board printed out by position, seperate lists for catchers, outfielders, etc. That's the only way I think I would do it, especially in a draft this large. That sometimes leads to tough decisions when choosing between the best remaining player at one position over the best remaining player at another position. But I don't really mind that because I prefer the flexibility of calling an audible if I feel good talent at a certain position is drying up too fast. That would probably be harder to do following a single list of players.

Have all of the keepers been announced? Today is the last day, oui?

I ran the "Variety Meats League" last year, a Yahoo Roto league for Box readers who wanted something other than the H2H offered by the BBFL. FYI, I have decided not to run that league again. I think that with the two divisions of the BBFL, the Box will be sufficiently Fantasied.

Yeah plus the Variety Meats League kicked my behind so I'm kind of turned off. I guess my strategy of drafting a bad team didn't work out.

I think I sent a message to league mailing list asking if everyone had named their keepers but I'm not sure if it went out. As far as I know there were still two or three teams that had not finalized their keepers.

We're missing masssuckage and Mebion, unless I'm not seeing something obvious. I've posted everyone's keepers except AGF. I will do so today.

Today is the last to announce, though keepers can be adjusted through March 25. The current announcements are more of a courtesy to fellow owners to plan for the upcoming draft.

In lieu of having actual keepers from those teams, I might list the top five roto finishers from 2003 for each of them, with an asterisk explaining the situation.

Boy, that was an awkward sentence.

whoops

Mebion Keepers

Vlad
Lee
Jones
Gonzalez
Millwood

Handicapping the BBFL Alomar division (to keep an eye on my competition for next year).

Here's an extremely unscientific look at the average rank of the 5 keepers of each Alomar manager. All I did was grab the Live Draft rankings from March 1st on ESPN's Fantasy Games, and plugged in that rank for the keepers. Lower numbers are of course better.

A few caveats. These live drafts are for 5 by 5 roto leagues, whereas the BBFL is 6 by 6 head to head (includes on-base percentage, slugging percentage, strikeout to walk ratio, and innings pitched; does not include home runs and strikeouts). The BBFL is a deeper league, with different positional requirements, so that may impact people's decisions of who to keep. This being said, the BBFL should not distort a players value tremendously from the standard 5 by 5 league, and this method should offer a rough benchmark of which teams are at an advantage as we head into the draft. But perhaps I'm in for a real eye opener in the Barfield division, and completely wrong in thinking this way.

One other issue of note, there was one case when a keeper did not make ESPN's top 240 live draft rankings. I will not point this or any other instances of a keeper that is ranked lower than another player on that team's roster, as it wouldn't be fair to current Alomar owners to have a backseat driver barking at them. In this one instance I just plugged in the highest ranking other player on their roster instead. Oh, and for masssuckage (who has yet to declare keepers) I just plugged in his top 5.

Without further adieu, I declare Jick's Rays and Billie's Bashers the early favourites with average rankings of 30 and 30.2 respectively, and the Moscow Rats with the biggest uphill battle ahead, his 5 keepers ranking 99.8 on average. Good luck to all on April 1st!

AGF - 54.2
Austin Senators - 54.8
Baird Brain - 61.8
Billie's Bashers - 30.2
Chatsworth Halos - 70
Eastern Shore Birds - 83
Garces_not_on_roids - 44.4
gashouse gorillas - 44.6
Geoffs Grumpy Group - 45.8
Jicks Rays - 30
K-Town Mashers - 89.6
masssuckage - 63.8
Mebion Glyndwyr - 66.6
Moscow Rats - 99.8
Springfield Isotopes - 66.4
Reykjavik Fish Candy - 86.8
Springfield Isotopes - 64.4
SABR Magicians - 51.6
Thunderbirds - 40.6
Toronto Walrus - 40.6

I hate to do this, but I'm going to switch Octavio Dotel and Carl Everett for Peavy and Batista. I apologize for any inconvenience.

All keepers posted ex. one from AGF and all from masssuckage.

It doesn't inconvenience me if people switch keepers, so long as it's not a case of many people doing it all the time. I'm pretty sure I'll be making a change myself.

As noted before, March 25 is the deadline. Any change emailed or posted after midnight PST on that date doesn't count.

And to clarity, midnight is the last minute of the 25th, not the first. You have the whole day.

Spicol: I didn't mean to betray some kind of foolish strategy of my own by saying the BBFL should not distort values tremendously, but rather justify my using the ESPN draft rankings as a reasonable estimate of value. No self respecting fantasy player would fail to account for the nuances of a particular league in preparing a cogent draft strategy...

An update to account for the Moscow Rats' keeper change, their average ranking drops to 87.2 with those moves, and successful removed the one player that was not in the top 240 of the ESPN drafts (El Artista himself). This moves the K-Town Mashers into 20th place on the pre-season handicap list, just barely edging out Reykjavik Fish Candy and the Moscow Rats for the honour.

Oh, and apologies for not incorporating all the name changes.

I declare Jick's Rays [...] the early favourites...

I guess that's my fault, folks.

I'm still pretty pleased with that deal, though.

No self respecting fantasy player would fail to account for the nuances of a particular league

I have to account for nuances AND respect myself? Sounds like too much work.

An observation: Assuming one picked exactly by the value of the pick available (20th pick=20th ranked player, and so on), the average value rank varies from 48.6 for the first person in the draft order to 52.4 for the last person in the draft order. That is all.

Toronto Walrus - 40.6

David, thanks for proclaiming me an underdog; the favourite's role would make me nervous. I might have "scored" better before my trade with Geoff, which altered my team from a pitching power to a hitting threat, but I'm quite content with OBP and SLG anchors who are pretty good in 5 x 5 but have much more value in the BBFL.

the average value rank varies from 48.6 for the first person in the draft order to 52.4 for the last person in the draft order

It occurs to me that in a league like ours, where for various reasons the 100 "best" players and the 100 keepers do not exactly match, there might be some dramatic bargains for those picking early in the first round. I'm not sure how long that will take to correct itself, but potentially, it's a slightly bigger handicap for teams that did well last year.

In most leagues, the talent distributes itself fairly evenly in the first few rounds. The real advantages in any draft are those middle- and late-round picks who turn out to be productive, instead of Jeff Weaver and Brandon Larson, to name just two regrettable brain cramps.

Coach,

I completely agree there will be some tremendous bargains in the first 5 to 10 picks of the draft, which should certainly help level the playing field from last year. There is a general correlation between order of finish from last year and average keeper rank, but only a loose one. For example, Jick's Rays finished 8th in the regular season but clearly has one of the best group of 5 keepers in Pedro, K.Brown, B.Boone, Tejada, and Huff. Obviously there is a lot of roster to be filled out on April 1st. As for your additions of Thome and Palmeiro for Schmidt, O.Cabrera, and Lowell, that certainly did bump up your average ranking, with Palmeiro coming in just above 100; your other 4 keepers are quite an impressive bunch (Delgado, Schilling, B.Wagner, and the aforementioned Thome). You would have ranked better with Schmidt and Lowell instead of Thome/Palmeiro, but it'd be hard to leave a player like Cabrera on the outside of your top 5, offering no benefit whatsoever. And as good as Schmidt can and will be when healthy, Thome seems like a less risky proposition, and as you say and OBP and SLG anchor along with Delgado. That being said, the trade certainly helped Geoff's Grumpy Group, giving him a legitimate 5th keeper for giving up the best player in the deal.

Again, I'm not attempting to criticize, just biding my time with some hack analysis to get warmed up for a great drafting season in a few weeks.

Speaking of the drafting that is to come, the Barfield league has been stuck at 19 teams for a while now. Will the 20th team please come forward and join up.

Sorry for the delay in naming my last keeper. In any case , make it be known that the fifth spot will go to C. Zambrano...I think....I reserve the right to change this one, but barring injury none of the others will be changed prior to the draft. Hope this helps everyone out in the draft.

AGF keepers:

Ichiro (2)
Randy(2)
M. Giles (2)
M. Rivera (2)
C. Zambrano (2)