MLBeat

My drafts are still two weeks away, and barring any further spring training injuries I'm fully locked and loaded. My cup of fantasy enthusiasm officially runneth over. Take these Pointers as some of the scraps. They are intended for entertainment purposes only, and since my current readership primarily consists of friends, some of whom are in leagues with me, they may well be Fantasy Red Herrings.

• Go ahead and have a beer or two. Even if your draft is at 8am on a Sunday. ESPN's Tristan Cockroft disagrees, favoring the Puritan approach instead. That's when you know you take fantasy baseball too seriously and should really think about getting a dog instead.
• Don't be afraid to show unilateral favoritism, within reason. The "within reason" disclaimer should go without saying. Whenever you see a guy in your league who tacitly reveals his loyalties by drafting the Arizona Diamondbacks' entire lineup, you know he's content with a summer in dead last place. But when you're drafting in the sixth round and looking for an OF and you deem your available options to be Andruw Jones, Jason Bay, and Garret Anderson, and if you happen to be an Angels fan, then you should knock yourself out. The random nature of fantasy baseball means that it's anybody's guess who will have the best year out of those three, so you might as well avoid the conflict of interest.
• Improvisation! Navigating a 25-round fantasy draft is like being a quarterback calling plays at the line. You want to come in with a plan - say, to snag a top 2B like Soriano or Giles early, secure one ace pitcher a la Prior or Pedro, try to snag John Buck late as your catcher, etc. But then someone snatches Giles right out from under you, and everyone starts picking closers in the 3rd round, and you notice that after four rounds you've taken three corner infielders and Brad Lidge. At that point you'll need to be able to rip up your cheat sheets, cut off contact with Ground Control and land this thing manually. This brings up...
• Allow yourself one good solid choke. Accept it as inevitable that you panic and pick someone you are doomed to find deeply unsatisfying, like Paul Lo Duca or Steve Trachsel. Don't let it ruin your day. Try not to let it happen until the later rounds so it'll do the least damage. In my fantasy basketball draft this past year I delayed my choke until the penultimate round, ending up with Derek Anderson when I really wanted Vladimir Radmanovic. Cost me very little.
• Pick a good middle reliever. I say this for no reason, except that it always gave me a certain twinge of joy to own Francisco Rodriguez, the game's best middle reliever the past two seasons. How much he helped my teams is an open question, but the musk of superiority I gave off after drafting him is undeniable.
• Beware the perfect roster. I'm referring to the roster that has every position filled and with sufficient adequate backups for any unforeseen slump or mishap. This sounds nice, but it's better to have one Worst player you'd just as soon drop. The perfect roster is dangerous because you'll miss out on any waiver-wire activity due to a reluctance to drop anyone. In a similar vein...
• Take an injured player. Griffey, Jeff Zimmerman, Jeff D'Amico, it doesn't really matter. They can facilitate the aforementioned roster turnover you need, and in the meantime they can sit on your DL as symbols of a brighter future that may never come.
• Lastly, prepare to hate your team. No matter how well you prepared, and no matter how well you really drafted, you'll look over your roster once the draft is completed and feel a distinct pang of dissatisfaction, especially once you identify the one gaping weakness your team is sure to have. Live with it, deal with it, and sleep on it before you panic and drop half your players onto waivers in favor of Jeff Fassero, Toby Hall, Jason Simontacchi, Bobby Higginson, and Bill Hall. Thank me later.