Now that the regular season is upon us, we can debut one of our new fantasy features: each Monday during the regular season, I will examine the players that have been added the most and dropped the most in standard leagues over the past week. (I will be using CBS's transactions statistics, but you may see me reference ESPN's numbers as well.) The goal is to figure out which players you should follow the wisdom of the crowd on and chase/cut, and which players you are better off holding on to or steering clear of. Where Value Picks identifies under-owned players who can help your team, my goal is to figure out if you need to make a move in the first place.

You don't need me to tell you that real baseball and fantasy baseball, for all their similarities, are separate entities governed by completely different sets of rules. The things that make a real-life ballclub successful (a balance of pitching, defense, and hitting) are not the same things that help you win in fantasy (as many saves and steals as your roster can handle, and that fellow owner you always know you can swindle midseason when he's busy waiting for football to start).

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Since we're the fantasy crew here at Baseball Prospectus, we wanted to give you some more fantasy-focused predictions for the upcoming year. This is the perfect opportunity for us to claim that the things we predicted that came true make us brilliant, and also gives us adequate time to come up with excuses for the things that did not turn out the way we planned. It's a flawless plot, and we hope that you take part with your own predictions in the comments. Here we are, in alphabetical order, which means poor old Bill Baer will be the first to be christened a visionary or insane:

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Yes, yes, I know: no one cares about my fantasy team. But since this is an NL-only experts league I participate in over at CBS Sports as a representative of Baseball Prospectus, it seems fitting that you get to read about it. Scott White, Al Melchior, Derek VanRiper, Erik Siegrist, and many others are in this 12-team league (the full auction results of which can be found here). In a nutshell, I’m pleased with how my team turned out in my second year in the league, but there are a few picks I made where I wish I had listened more to my own advice.

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Andre Ethier is a fine player, one of the more productive outfielders in the game. But that's in the real world. 

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Every spring since launching the Player Forecast Manager, we at Baseball Prospectus have tried to improve it to make it more useful for our subscribers. The PFM, for those who haven't tried it, is a tool that uses our Depth Chart projections to create player values for use in fantasy baseball drafts. It's popular among our users—enough that its use has occasionally bogged the entire site down in the past—but its potential has still not been fully realized.

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These are the National League starting pitcher fantasy rankings for 2011. Check out our previous first base, second base, third base, shortstop, catcher, left fielder, center fielder, right fielder, closer, and AL starting pitcher installments.

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These are the American League starting pitcher fantasy rankings for 2011. Check out our previous first base, second base, third base, shortstop, catcher, left fielder, center fielder, right fielder, and closer installments. NL starting pitcher will be published Monday.

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These are the right fielder fantasy rankings for 2011. Check out our previous first base, second base, third base, shortstop, catcher, left fielder, center fielder, and closer installments.

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These are the center fielder fantasy rankings for 2011. Check out our previous first base, second base, third base, shortstop, catcher, left fielder, and closer installments.

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These are the left fielder fantasy rankings for 2011. Check out our previous first base, second base, third base, shortstop, catcher, and closer installments.

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These are the closer fantasy rankings for 2011. Check out our previous first base, second base, third base, shortstop, and catcher installments.

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