Preparing for your fantasy draft

Fantasy baseball is a fun hobby that many baseball fans enjoy, and perhaps you will too! In fact, it is so enjoyable that presumably SB Nation has an affiliate deal with some fantasy baseball website, and you should all go do a bunch of research and figure out who that site is, and then give them money, and then tell them I referred you, and that they should give me some of the money that you gave them.

Now that you've joined a league, you should know that people who do fantasy baseball – and now you're one of them! – tend to look up a lot of advice beforehand in order to gain an advantage over their competitors. I'm here to help. Here are the tips that most insiders won't tell you!

Pre-Draft Rankings

You'll be tempted to do some player rankings before you draft, but your rankings will be wrong. They'll just be totally wrong. Last year, you'd have put Prince Fielder up really high in the rankings, but he wasn't all that good when he was playing, and then he missed most of the year. You'd have been way off. Therefore, since it's impossible to rank players properly, you just shouldn't do it. Go drink some beer, play video games, and when the draft arrives, just wing it. That'll be a way better use of your time, and your results won't be appreciably worse.

Sleepers

As any veteran fantasy player knows, finding sleepers in the late rounds of the draft is key to winning any fantasy league. Now, most fantasy columns will give you some possibilities for sleepers, like Mike Zunino or whatever. But none of them will examine the philosophical nuances of giving you sleepers to draft. For if the public becomes aware of a player being underrated, is he really still underrated? And if not, he obviously can't be called a sleeper. For this reason, you shouldn't try to draft sleepers.

Busts

Of course you want to avoid busts, and you're right to want that, but do you have any way to tell who the busts are going to be? No, you don't, not for sure, because if you had a way you'd be making millions of dollars in some front office somewhere instead of reading this article. Successful people don't read my articles, you know. That's just a fact. So unless you have some reserve of secret knowledge, don't assume you know who's going to be a bust this year. That's just silly.

Drafting Giants

Don't. Just don't do it. Look, people, we have no idea what to expect from Matt Cain. Is he fully back from his surgeries? Will he ever be fully back? Was age a factor in his last two seasons? There's so much uncertainty. And then you want to put him on your fantasy team and give yourself more of an emotional stake in his return? Do you really think that will go well? Of course not. Baseball exists solely to make you look and feel stupid, and if you, a Giants fan, draft Matt Cain then you will be personally responsible for his now-inevitable failure. You don't want that blood on your hands. Avoid.

Drafting Dodgers

Jesus Christ, no. Of course not. What the hell is wrong with you that you'd even consider it? Adrian Gonzalez driving in 120 runs for your team would be the literal definition of blood money, and if you take it you will be exiled to Purple Row. Don't you test me. I'm dead serious.

Other Players

They might be good and they might be bad. You really have no way to tell beforehand. If I were you, I wouldn't bother.

So for those of you who are going to play fantasy baseball, the main takeaways here are that you'll lose, it's an unfair game, and nothing you do matters. But remember, the most important thing is to have fun!