In his annual Baseball Forecaster, Ron Shandler provides fantasy owners with a projected snake draft for a 15 team, mixed league. The draft is a 30 round draft, and in the 3rd round, he projects Red Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis to be drafted before the Diamondbacks third sacker Mark Reynolds.
I don't agree with that and here are their stats for 2009:
| Name | AB | 2B | HR | R | RBI | BB | SO | SB | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| Mark Reynolds | 578 | 30 | 44 | 98 | 102 | 76 | 223 | 24 | 0.260 | 0.349 | 0.553 |
| Kevin Youkilis | 491 | 36 | 27 | 99 | 94 | 77 | 125 | 7 | 0.305 | 0.413 | 0.548 |
Reynolds combination of power and speed is more valuable to fantasy owners than Youkilis ability to hit for average to go along with his solid power. Now I am not sure we see a 44-24 season out of Reynolds in 2010, but I think he can still go 35-17. Drafting a guy with 20-20, or even 30-20, possibilities is a smarter move than a 25-10 hitter.
Bill James projects Youkilis to go 23-95-98-6-.289-.394-.492 in 2010, while he has Reynolds going 40-107-103-18-.268-.356-.551. I think Reynolds has a real shot at stealing 20 bases again, as AJ Finch lets his hitters run last year, and I think it continues.