Welcome to the first installment of Double Play Depth, my column focusing of the daily/weekly travails of the middle infield position and all its inherent glory. My plan for the next six weeks or so was going to be to focus on some of the biggest differences between my personal rankings and the ones that Jason has put together here at Fake Teams. As the 2B list was the first one up, I figured I'd start there. Unfortunately for me, Jason's just too damn good at his job and there was only one player in either of our top-15 second basemen that we were more than 2 spots apart on. Which brings us to the subject of today's post -- the subtle and unassuming appeal of Neil Walker.

The concept which applies to Neil Walker in fantasy drafts this year is the same one that can be seen any night of the year in your non-fantasy baseball lives. It's Friday night and you're out with some friends. The evening has been fun so far and you're trying to decide what comes next. There are two options on the table: 1) go back to your friend's apartment and finish out the evening there knowing it'll be a good time or 2) go to some trendy, crowded bar which has the potential to be a great time (but more realistically, the potential to absolutely suck). The decision you make is likely proportional to what time it is. If it's 10:30, maybe option 2 sounds great. If it's 1:00, option 1 is a no-doubter. The time at which your answer switches from option 2 to option 1 is called the Neil Walker Solstice™.

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Can you feel the season getting closer? I sure can. This week has been filled with invitations to recurring Yahoo! leagues, talks of draft dates and keeper deadlines -- all sights for sore off-season eyes. Even ESPN has put up their 2012 draft kit (if you're into that sort of thing), and they're usually the last holdout. Two weeks from today, Oakland and Seattle will play the first actual spring training game. Life will once again make sense.

Last week in this space, I went negative on Ian Kennedy, so in order to maintain my karmic balance, this week I'm going to explain my affection for Jaime Garcia. The #3 starter on the World Champion Cardinals is an undervalued commodity heading into drafts and I think a lot of it is due to the fact that he's not a sexy name. The rankings here at Fake Teams (which, don't get me wrong, are extremely well done) have Garcia as the #48 SP for the upcoming season. This is quite a bit different than my personal list, where he occupies the #33 spot. Fortunately, I'm here to explain his sexiness in full -- and along the way, we'll get into my personal beliefs about pitching and it's holy trinity.

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Hey, good to see you again -- welcome to the first of my Friday posts focused on starting pitching. Once the season actually gets going, this will be where I'll post my "Ahead of the Curve" column. If you want to know more about what that will look like, I posted a sneak preview of it a few weeks back at Roto Hardball. In the meantime, I'm going to dig into the SP rankings here at Fake Teams and respectfully disagree with some particular placements. Some weeks will be glowing articles about pitchers I love to sing the praises of. This is not one of those weeks.

Let's get this out of the way first: I don't hate Ian Kennedy. He's never said a bad word to my family and he's never cut me off on the highway. He's never stolen my lunch money and he's never made out with one of my exes (probably). By all accounts, he's a really good guy. And he's got a ginger beard -- which is definitely a top-5 form of facial hair. That's a lot of talk about what Ian Kennedy is, but unfortunately for the rest of the post here, I'm going to focus on what he's not. He's not a top-25 pitcher in fantasy.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, he's #28 in my starting pitching ranks which makes him a pretty good #3 option in shallower leagues. But at Fake Teams, he's #14 -- and it's anything but an outlier. Mock Draft Central currently has Kennedy going 18th among starters. Tristan Cockcroft at ESPN has him at 16th in his early pre-season rankings. So I guess I'm the weird one here.

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Like a few fantasy players this season, I'll primarily target bats in the early rounds of my drafts while waiting on the preponderance of starting pitching we've been seeing in recent years. While every draft has its own identity and as a general rule of thumb I always take the best value available relative to position in the first twelve rounds of a snake draft, fantasy teams don't even begin to have specific needs to fill until that point or later. Additionally, I can tinker through trade or wire pickups to fill any holes later, and I'll still feel like I'm in good position even if I'm on the outside looking in at, for example, steals or saves.

On a couple of occasions during early mocks, I've found myself having to choose between third-tier starters such as C.J. Wilson, Daniel Hudson, and Ricky Romero to anchor my staff. I'm not entirely thrilled with going this route - like everybody else I'd rather have the chance to build around Doc, Kershaw, or King Felix - and although there is a certain amount of risk inherent in building a rotation around the C.J. Wilson's of the world, the strategy does allow me to focus on a smaller group of premium hitters while quickly building pitching depth in the middle rounds where I may find myself choosing from a gaggle of good arms when other players might be reaching for saves, steals, or a modicum of park-inflated upside in the outfield.

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