Every year, Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci compiles a list of pitchers that look like they could be subject to a down year based on several risk factors. Verducci has highlighted players that are 25 and under that throw 30 innings more than they did the previous year as subject to greater risk of injury. He sums it up this way:

We can use this same principle for fantasy purposes.  Obviously, most players in your league will have identified the Hall of Fame-level talents in the game.  But we can still look to guys who have played a lot early in their career, regardless of how well they played, and look to spot breakout candidates.  For these purposes, let’s look at guys who have amassed 800 PA in the majors before age 25.

HitTracker is a recent innovation, a web site that launched in 2006 by Greg Rybarczyk with the goal of plotting every home run hit, along with its actual distance, “standard” distance and the speed of the ball when it is hit off the bat. The “standard” distance removes any atmospheric effects from the ball’s flight so we could better compare home runs. You could think of it as the equivalent of expected ERA metrics that filter out influences outside the pitcher’s control. The site also breaks down each home run into three types: “Just Enough” (JE), “Plenty” (PL) and “No Doubt” (ND), based on the actual distance the ball travelled in the park the home run was hit.

If you have played fantasy baseball for more than a year (and if you haven’t, where have you been for the last twenty years?) then you have no doubt been influenced on draft day by the fear of position scarcity. For those who are new to the concept of position scarcity, here it is in a nutshell: Certain positions (always catcher and sometimes the other infield positions) have less depth of talent so it is important that they are addressed early on in drafts. Proponents of this theory believe that owners who ignore it are doomed to fill out their roster with catchers and shortstops who barely know how to hold a bat, while owners who end their draft with outfielders get to choose between powerful hitters and speedy runners. Draft from the weakest positions early on and reap the benefits as the draft continues to unfold. But like many things in life, the argument on position scarcity is not as clear as it first seems. Does position scarcity exist? Let’s look at two very different formats to find out.

Before things get started, a definition of terms is probably in order. If nothing else, everyone along for the ride needs to have something of a roadmap, or it may be a little unclear just where things are headed. Okay. Assuming a standard 23-round draft, the bottom 10 rounds include all players drafted after pick number 156, or, all players taken in rounds 14 through 23. More often than not, these aren’t your cream of the crop type players. The later rounds are littered with a lot of has-beens, never-will-bes, and, of great import to the thesis of this article, a select few players that actually could be something special. Some, called “hot-steppers,” are even special enough to vault into the early rounds the following season.

Think of a mock draft as a laboratory. It's a place to experiment, a place to try out new strategies, gauge player values and discover how you want to construct a winning team. The goal of a mock draft should always be to learn and prepare for the real thing. That means taking risks, and the best thing about this mock draft was that everyone took some risks. 

While we are not big proponents of rules in general, we do think that there are some important tips for owners to follow. I have written this column every year for the past few years at many different sites and it always gets lots of comments, so here is our latest version of our trading tips column.