Hi Folks,

Welcome to 2009! One of the ways I open a new season is by taking a look back at the previous one. Below is the link to the Historical Fantasy Values and some key indicators from 2008: http://www.insiderbaseball.com/Historical_Fantasy_Baseball_Values.pdf

As Baseball continues to cleanse itself from one of the worst scandals in it's long and lustrous history, we can see first hand how the gradual decline in PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) is impacting overall offensive numbers. As an example, the average number of homeruns hit last season by the top 300 MLB hitter declined by 13% (16.2 HRs per player to 14.4 HRs per player in 2008) in comparison to what is now being called the steroid "peak years"(1999-2001). So in 2008, not only did we see an average drop of almost 2 homeruns among the top 300 hitters, we also saw a 4% drop in Runs Scored....which wasn't much different than what we saw in 2007. From this we can draw the conclusion that the current MLB drug testing program is working in at least inhibiting new players from using non-detectable PEDs.

The noted drop in production has obviously also impacted the fantasy world. Fantistics indicator of fantasy production among hitters, FPI, dropped by almost 10% (on average) when comparing 2008 to the previous 10 years (from .67 to .61). When looking at the historical fantasy values for many of the offensive players, you'll notice a drop in fantasy values among the elite. Suddenly we're also seeing fewer superstars, as the older ballplayers are starting the once inevitable....rapid decline on the right side of 30.

The average ERA for the top 150 pitchers of 2008, saw their average era drop to 4.21 from 4.41 (1999-2007). Similarly their FPI (Fantasy production Indicator) has risen from 1.23 (1999-2007) to 1.31. All hail to pitchers who have once again become an intergral fixure in fantasy rotations.

Although pitchers are producing at a better rate than a few years ago, I believe that this makes them less of a commodity on draft day. Gone is the day when Pedro Martinez went for $50 on the draft day auction block. Simply, since there are more pitchers producing quality results, this should imply a reduction in the value of the elite and second teir pitchers.

See you back this weekend when we release the 2009 version of the fantistics fantasy basbeall projections.