The time is finally for regular season baseball, which also means fantasy baseball is here. I will start off by saying I wish everyone luck in their leagues this here. I hope you learn new skills and strategies as I did when I first started out. This will be my 11th year playing fantasy baseball, and this season I am trying something a little bit different. We all know the regular 5x5 leagues with AVG, RBI, R, and etc, but this year I started a new league using the basic points system given to you by ESPN. The problem I had with the regular 5x5 leagues was they didn't give a true readout of a players value, so I started to do some research to figure out what each stat is basically worth. What I came up with was this:

Batters

K-(-0.2), BB-0.2

1B-0.3, 2B-0.5

3B-0.7, HR-1.5

SB- 0.1, CS-(-0.2)

Pitchers

IP- 0.6, PKO- 0.2

K- 0.2, 1B-(-0.3)

2B-(-0,5), 3B-(-0.7)

HR-(-1.5), WP-(-0.1)

The values are quiet simple, each number by each stat is how many runs are produced on average by each event. So for example when a batter is walked it usually results in 0.2 runs being scored, or in other words for about every 5 walks a run is scored. This is the same thing with singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. A stolen base is only worth 0.1, because in reality it only gives you a 10% more likelihood that you'll score (Moneyball makes a little bit more sense now doesn't it). The caught stealing and strikeouts for batters and the strikeouts, pick offs and innings pitched number for pitchers all come from the same place. That being that in the major leagues, on average every PA usually produces around 0.2 runs. With that being said if a batter is to record an out, that means that he basically didn't help his team out at all and wasted a PA. By wasting that PA you have actually hurt your team and therefore are charged with the negative number of how many points are usually produced by PA, which in this case is 0.2. It's really not too complicated when you think about it, and it now gives things like OBP a whole new meaning in fantasy baseball. Feel free to try it out this year and see how you like it. I've posted below my top 50 predictions for position players in 2017 to let you see how it would look.