We are trying something different with the audio file to see if smaller size may help some of you that have struggled with playing it. This week's episode is once again 2:39 in length but the file size is just 38.3MB. Please give us feedback on the listening experience.

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The Baseball Prospectus fantasy team has been rolling out its positional rankings over the past couple of weeks, and this edition concludes the process. Each team member assigned to cover a position will create an initial top 15 (more for outfielders and starting pitchers) on his own. He will then send that list to the rest of the team for discussion, at which point we will debate the rankings, both in terms of each player’s specific placement and the merits on which he was included in the top 15. This back-and-forth debate will yield the final list, which will be presented by the original author with notes on the pertinent players. We encourage you to bring your opinions into the fray using the comment section below.

Here are the previous rankings lists:

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While we have spent a bit of time these past few weeks discussing drafts, we are now moving into the auction season. Within the past few days, both CBS and LABR (League of Alternative Baseball Reality) conducted their AL- and NL-only auctions, each of which brings something unique to the table for those preparing for auctions.

The CBS auction is the first expert auction of the spring, so those players do not have any other dollar values to lean on for their preparation other than what their own projections or the projections from the website they work with show. LABR had that honor for many years, but it is still the longest-standing expert league, having celebrated its 20^th anniversary over the weekend. Many of the LABR players also participate in Tout Wars later this month, which allows us to see how those experts react to a variety of possible events. If injuries strike key players between the two dates, we see where the market shifts on them and their expected replacements. It also allows us to see if those owners adjust their projections on players after seeing how the market viewed the early bids. Lastly, as someone who has tracked both auctions the past few seasons, I have found that the final dollar values in Tout Wars closely align with those from the other two auctions.

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Jason is back off the disabled list and he and Paul review the latest news, their Mixed LABR draft domination, and break down the outfielders. if the embedded podtrac player does not show on this page, refresh the page and it will appear.

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There have now been 71 different drafts completed by NFBC participants. The worksheet is now too large to turn into a scrollable embedded window, so the link to the complete online worksheet can be accessed here. 

Here are the 5 largest gains and drops from the last report on 2/14:

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Last week, we reviewed how the experts split their money in the LABR and ToutWars auctions in 2012. While the winners each spent at least 30 percent of their budget on pitching, other teams that spent even more did much worse while some who spent less nearly won the league.

In today's modern age, we are spoiled as baseball fans when it comes to listening to radio broadcasts. As I compose this story, I am listening to the a radio broadcast of the Tigers and Braves playing a game about 30 miles from my house. Ten years ago, it would have been very tough to find any radio broadcast for spring training. Satellite or streaming radio does spoil us as fans today, but the terrestrial radio market is still alive. In fact, some odd outposts of North America are broadcasting radio games all throughout the baseball season. 

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Paul Sporer and I have a special email address, fantasyhour@baseballprospectus.com, through which listeners send us emails that they would like us to either respond to privately or address on the weekly Towers of Power Fantasy Hour (or 2) podcast. That inbox was very busy when we first opened it in mid-2012, but business tapered off to a trickle as the baseball season ended and was nearly extinct through the winter holidays. Once the calendar flipped to 2013, people re-discovered the mailbox, and the two of us were flooded with trade and keeper advice requests. Recently, we’ve received several inquiries from people that are starting up auction leagues and wondering how to best allocate their fantasy dollars at the bidding table.

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The online worksheet has been updated with the latest ADP report from NFBC. The sheet shows the 1st report from 2/7, the latest one from 2/14, the delta between the two numbers, where the player went in the LABR mixed draft this past Tuesday night, and the difference between the player's ADP and his LABR draft position.

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One of the first pieces I wrote for Baseball Prospectus outlined my strategy for identifying closers, and the article was so well received that I repeated it with a couple of tweaks last season. After I read the comments from one user who utilized the strategy and won his league’s saves category, it was a given that the piece would come back again in 2013. Some of the pitcher notes I made in the 2012 closer matrix included:

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Jason and Paul review the news of the week in baseball and then take a deep dive into the second base position. Find out who they've nicknamed "Ranch", who has the worst face at the position, and who they think could go double-double in late rounds. 

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This data is courtesy of our friends at STATS LLC who run the National Fantasy Baseball Championships. They tell us that since Ryan Braun was named in the Biogenesis report, he's going no higher than 4th in any of the mock drafts that have been run after going first overall in four of the previous six drafts. The data below is from the 37 most recent mock drafts that the NFBC members have run in February. If the embedded google worksheet does not work for you, click here for a direct link to the worksheet.

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