At my previous website, The Fantasy Baseball Generals, we had a written version of the Roundtable where writers from other sites opined on various fantasy issues. We are going to be doing it again this year, and the participants include RotoExperts.com, Fantasybaseballgeeks.com, RotoAuthority.com, Adam Ronis from Newsday.com, Jason Collette from Fanball.com, FantasyPhenoms.com and others. To start things off, I wanted to share the responses on what stories we were most looking forward to in 2009 as of the end of the season in 2008.

For our last Roundtable of 2008 we asked the participants what stories they are most looking forward to for 2009.

-Clayton Kershaw vs. David Price - Price will be drafted first but who will deserve to be?  

-Drafts-Will people believe enough in players like Ryan Ludwick & Cliff Lee to make them high draft picks?  Has 2B become the new 1B?  It is no longer Chase Utley and a bunch of other guys.  Will people draft accordingly?  

-Lincecum and Sabathia-My favorite 2009 storyline has implications for both fantasy baseball and the real game.  I want to see where Tim Lincecum and C.C. Sabathia end up drafted and how they perform during the year.

So much virtual ink was spilled this year on pitch counts and whether they have any predictive value and it will be fascinating to me to watch these two test cases.  Lincecum and Sabathia were the top two hurlers in Pitcher Abuse Points.  Lincecum racked up a high pitch count in a meaningless September start and went well over Tom Verducci’s magical line of 30 additional innings pitched for a young pitcher.  Meanwhile, the Brewers worked Sabathia like a rented mule (which he kind of was), continually pitching him on three days rest down the stretch.

It’ll be real interesting to see if fantasy owners shy away from these two guys and to see how they do during the season.  And it will be just as interesting if Lincecum and Sabathia do well in 2009 if other clubs will loosen up their vice-like grip on 100 pitches being a magical number.  And wouldn’t it be great if a team decided to go back to a four-man rotation at some point?  What a fantasy advantage to have a SP make 5-10 more starts a year because his team varied from conventional wisdom in the makeup of its pitching staff

--Matt Holliday-The story I’m looking forward to most in 2009 is the Matt Holliday saga.  Could the Mets part ways with Fernando Martinez and John Niese this offseason in an effort to get Holliday for one full season with the intention of resigning him mid-year?

Everyone will speak of how much better of a hitter he is in Coors Field.  Frankly, everyone is a better hitter in Coors Field, no?  Holliday’s numbers in Coors are on par with the likes of Dante Bichette, Larry Walker and Andres Gallaraga in their hay day. Holliday’s .332 home AVG ranked 15th in the majors.  More importantly, his .308 road AVG ranked 18th.  There isn’t much of a difference there.  He’s a great ballplayer both home and on the road.  His lack of RBI or runs on the road, considering his .308 AVG, suggests that his teammates played a role in Matt’s lackluster totals.

Despite what many consider “sub par” road splits, let’s take a moment to think about where he plays most of his road games: San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.  Those are three of the best pitchers parks in baseball… parks that we dare start the likes of Greg Maddux and members of the Washington Nationals staff.  So while he gets one of the more favorable parks in the league half of the time, he spends a significant portion of his road games in some parks that provide the polar opposite of what Coors Field does.

-Johnny Cueto-There are a lot of stories that are already interesting to follow and I’m sure there will be plenty more that crop up as we get closer to 2009. But, I’m most looking forward to the progress of Johnny Cueto. I went out on a limb and nearly put him in my Top 10 for 2010, so I have high expectations for the hard-throwing righty. His numbers were erratic this year (4.81 ERA, 1.41 WHIP), but he showed his tremendous ability to get people out via strikeout (158 Ks in 174 IP). Maybe I am completely overestimating this guy, but I’m certainly interested to see how 2009 plays out.

What stories are you looking forward to?
 

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written by Wayne Provost, January 15, 2009

Holliday now plays half his games in a pitchers park...we'll see...

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Check out an Expert take on Mock Drafts
written by tonycincotta, January 14, 2009

www.FantasyPros911.com was well represented in an outstanding piece over at www.TheHardballtimes.com. We want to thank Derek Carty for including us !


http://www.hardballtimes.com/m...ck-drafts/

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