Let’s get one thing very clear: Tristan H. Cockcroft and Eric Karabell are fantasy baseball experts and I am not. There are times when they use phrases to describe some phenomenon in a league or with a player, and I feel like I need one of those pocket translators to understand. So much of what they do -- as in just about any game -- is assessing relative value, and I’m far more attuned to Ben Zobrist's versatility to his manager than I am about a fantasy scoring system.
But when ESPN’s fantasy staff posts its player rankings every preseason, it’s always interesting to see where they have players arranged, based on performance projection, and look for players you might go out of your way to reach for in a draft (or leave alone).