Daily Links - Getting ready for baseball season!

UPDATE - Unfortunately, Tim over at Roto Authority has had some issues with his archived posts, meaning many of these great items are missing right now. He's working to get them restored, so please be patient. Thanks.

It's hard to believe, but baseball season is just around the corner. Thankfully, there are plenty of sites that keep the baseball news & analysis coming all year round. I'd suggest checking out the following links / stories to start your prep work for the 2008 fantasy baseball season.

-Tim over at Roto Authority (an awesome baseball blog, by the way) has some great projections & discussion about Yovani Gallardo, Tim Lincecum, and Dustin McGowan, amongst others. He also discusses a good article from CNNSI talking about some potential breakout picks for 2008 & had a well thought out analysis of the Jose Reyes vs. Hanley Ramirez debate.

You should also check out his take on this season's:
-Top 23 Second Basemen
-Top 24 First Basemen
-Top 24 Catchers
-Top 18 Shortstops
-Top 22 Third Basemen
-Top 76 Outfielders
-Top 6 DH's
-Top 78 Starting Pitchers
-Top 35 Relievers

-Kelly & friends over at Fantasygameday.net just completed their 2008 fantasy baseball mock draft. This is a great starting point to get a real world idea of where your favorite player is going to get drafted in 2008. He'll also soon be releasing his extremely helpful average draft position report (ADP, for those that have used it before), which is a consolidated view of a number of preseason fantasy drafts, along with an updated position scarcity report. Keep checking out the site for regularly updated analysis.

Dustin Pedroia to the rescue!

-Last but not least is the team at Faketeams.com. Recently, they've taken a look at fantasy baseball hitter ratings (using both 2007 & a 3 year average), 2008 closer rankings, and what to expect from Dustin Pedroia this season. I haven't checked out the last one yet, but do you think Mighty Mouse could provide even more heroics this season? As long as he's still got his mojo...

Speaking of which (sorry, I know it has nothing to do with the rest of this post, but I think I've got adult ADD; I said mojo & thought of this).

Great Fantasy Basketball Sites

I just wanted to take a minute to provide a few of my favorite fantasy basketball sites. Each of these provide useful tools to help you win your league:

Fantasy Basketball Resources:
Hoops World - I especially enjoy the daily box score blitz, which provides a single page to view all of the previous day's stats, with brief analysis for each game, including their take on each team's fantasy star
RotoWorld - Provides excellent fantasy analysis for all sports, and is regularly updated with fresh info
HoopsHype - Deep site with lots of good reading
Big Board - Basketball - Brandon Funston's top 50 fantasy basketball players...he's one of Yahoo's fantasy experts, meaning there is a good chance that he gets paid to do what many of us do for free, talk about fantasy sports...

Fantasy Basketball Blogs:
Give me the Rock - Excellent fantasy basketball blog with frequent updates & great analysis
Fantasy Basketblog - Great blog with excellent advice
Empty the Bench - Great read
Hoops Addict - Fun reading with frequent updates
Dropping Dimes - Just a good site
TrueHoop - ESPN fantasy basketball blog
RotoRob - Fantasy sports analysis with an edge
NBA Roto League - Interesting site that applies roto scoring to NBA teams

Basketbawful - Not necessarily a fantasy site, but just good times...

There are literally hundreds of other sites out there, but these are a few that I enjoy regularly.

If any readers out there want to suggest a site, please post a link in the comments; I'll update this post (and give the reader credit) if I receive any good suggestions...I look forward to your contributions. I'll also be updating my links on the home page to reflect these fantasy resources.

I'll have some more analysis coming later this week, so stay tuned...and thanks again for reading!

ESPN's NBA Daily Leaders (and 24 Season 7 vent)

Just wanted to supply a link to a good place to check out daily NBA top performers. ESPN has daily stat leaders for all major sports, but you can check out the NBA daily leader page here. If someone played even one minute of a game, they'll be listed here & ranked by efficiency (although you can sort by any category you'd like).

It's updated during the night while games are in progress, so if you get bored while watching American Idol or Extreme Makeover, check it out.

On a side note, I'm getting really pissed off with this Writer's Guild of America strike. I mean, it's one thing to not get new episodes of Two and a Half Men, but I can't stand the fact that the new season of 24 has been put on hold indefinitely...The season premiere of season 7 was originally supposed to happen last night (January 13th), but with this strike still ongoing, who knows when it will start.

On the bright side, I still have a few older seasons to watch on DVD to keep me occupied until the new season starts.

You can check out the trailer for season 7 below:



Until next time...