In your more traditional fantasy baseball magazines, you get a section that offers player capsules on anywhere from 500 to 1,500 major league ballplayers. Each capsule offers a short write-up of what the player did last season, something about his skill-set, potential role with the team and maybe even some projections for the upcoming season. Sounds great, right? Sort of.
We’ve already established that this is not your traditional fantasy baseball guide. It’s better. Why? Well, let’s just take Manny Machado, for example. Scan through any 2019 fantasy magazine and Machado is listed as a free agent. You get a brief synopsis of what he did last year, an assessment of the 26-year old’s skill set and his projections for 2019. The first two sound fine, but how are those projections correct? They may have been a nice attempt when the capsule was first written, but where he ultimately signs certainly alters that projection. We’re talking about a new team, a new lineup, a new division and a new ballpark for starters. Those are some serious changes. Traditional magazines can’t keep up. We can.
As of December 30, 2018, there are still well over 120 free agents yet to sign as well as a number of trades which are still in the works according to recent reports. The player movement we’re going to witness between now and Opening Day is going to be abundant.
In addition to that, we also don’t feel the need to waste your time with player capsules you’re never going to need. It’s nice to advertise that you’re writing up 1,000 MLB players for your magazine, but how many fantasy baseball owners need to know or even care about what Nestor Cortes or Luis Sardinas are going to do this season? These are not players who are going to win you a championship. They are filler, some of whom will never see a spot on anyone’s roster, no matter how deep the league may be. We’d rather focus on players with actual fantasy relevance.
But we know you like your player capsules. We know you want to be able to look up certain players and see what we expect them to do in the upcoming season and that’s where this Player Profile series comes in. We may not be writing up 1,000 major leaguers, but you can bet we’ll break down the ones you need to know. Whether it’s a rookie set to make his debut in 2019 or a player who finds himself on his fourth team in five years, we’ll be diving deep into the analysis to offer you the most insightful opinions to take you into your draft as well as to reference throughout the regular season. Yeah, that’s right. It doesn’t end on Draft Day. The Fantasy Alarm Living Draft Guide will be a fantastic in-season tool as well.
The players you see below is our initial list of Player Profiles you can expect to see over the next two months. Some are marquee names while others are more of the role-player variety. We’ll break down their history, their skill-sets, their current situations and, of course, what we believe you can expect from them in the 2019 season. The profiles will be much more in-depth than what you’ll see in a traditional magazine. Why? Well, because you deserve more, but also, because we’re not limited by print space.
And because we believe you deserve more, this is also going to be an interactive list. That’s right. If there’s a specific player you don’t see listed but would like to learn more about, we’ll happily take your suggestion and add him to our list. Just email your desired Player Profile to howard@fantasyalarm.com and we’ll try to meet as many requests as possible.