In fantasy baseball, it is really easy to focus on your favorite players or your favorite teams. This is probably pretty obvious, but doing this severely limits your potential to win tournaments–especially in one day leagues. If you are a big Yankees fan, it can be easy to get caught up in Jeter nostalgia right now. It’s the Captain’s last year, and as such, he is getting a lot of media attention and hype. But right now, Derek Jeter is only batting .271–third best on the team. The two more consistent hitters right now are Brett Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury. Gardner has the advantage in homeruns and Ellsbury in RBIs. Both of these players are better offensive alternatives to Jeter if you need to have a Yankees player in your lineup in all three of these categories.
The dilemma created with fantasy baseball, though, is that you need to fill all of the positions on the field. Jeter is playing at SS, but there are many other players in the league at this position with better numbers than him. Alexei Ramirez of the White Sox has better all around numbers than Jeter in this position with 7 HRs and a .300 average.
The same is true of Ellsbury and Gardner, too. Gardner has 6 HRs right now, and as an outfielder, this is actually a very weak number. True, consistency is a plus for him, but even this is not as good as it could be. Carlos Gomez of the Brewers has 12 HRs and an average of .318. In other words, you don’t even need to get the top player in the league to do better than the best player on your favorite team a lot of the time. While it’s true that the better players cost more in salary cap leagues and are not guaranteed to outperform your favorite player, they do have a better chance of doing so given enough time. This makes the slightly higher cost worth the sacrifice you will need to make to acquire them.
The good news is that if you have a favorite player like Miguel Cabrera or Yasiel Puig, you stand nothing to lose by drafting your favorite player right now.
