Welcome all. Anyone who is a fantasy/roto baseball player is no doubt familiar with many sites and blogs. Some of these are for projections, some are oriented to “real” baseball, some are team by team blogs. But what we are about here is the overall general strategic principles of fantasy baseball and their application to various leagues. Now, we are not talking about things like “dont bid highly on starting pitchers in auction leagues.” (though I consider this to be excellent advice!) What we are concerned with here are overall underlying strategic principles. These can apply not just to “games” in the fantasy baseball sense, but to any contest dealing with two rational actors.

The bedrock analysis from this blog will be in the sense of “General” as might be understood from perhaps the greatest work on conflict ever written; The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Fantasy baseball, in many senses, is a “war.” The Fantasy General has to consider many different strategies, tactics and information. How do you use this info?? What principles should be followed??

In fact, it is our belief that the true fantasy expert must also be a baseball expert, and we will comment on all ranges of baseball topics, not just real baseball and fantasy, but books, news and notes, comments on our current leagues and anything else that is baseball related. Over time I will delve into this in greater detail; but an example will suffice for now. Lets say you are interested in the following player “X.” you look at baseball-reference.com, or perhaps Baseball Prospectus (and I note that no one can consider themselves a serious Fantasy General without a subscription to their site) and find the following comparable players:

Raul Ibanez (958)
Jeff Conine (952)
Bob Nieman (941)
Orlando Merced (922)
Glenallen Hill (917)
Rico Carty (915)
Tommy Henrich (914)
Walt Dropo (907)
George McQuinn (905)
Kevin Young (904)

What does this mean?? Well if you are unfamiliar with “real” baseball you cant possibly fully exploit or utilize the information contained here.

I will start by citing, naturally, the opening of The Art of War:

“Warfare is the greatest affair of the state, the basis of life and death, the Way to survival or extinction. It must be thoroughly pondered and analyzed.”

Those who are roto/fantasy players can understand why this is perhaps the most succinct statement of Fantasy Baseball’s greatness and allure.

I hope that this blog will be of value to those who find it and read it.