By Jim

If your season was anything like mine, chances are you spent most of the last couple of months scouring the waiver wire looking for potential keepers to hoard at little or no cost. And now that 2009 is officially in the books, it is time to start making some tough decisions.

Since every keeper league plays with different rules in terms of contracts, length a player can be kept, number of players to be kept, etc. I am going to avoid being specific on anything of that nature. However, like I have said before, you should know a good value when you see it but as an example a $75 David Wright probably isn’t worth keeping but a $3 Ben Zobrist is probably worth taking a chance on. But again, it all depends on what else is going on in your league.That said, the biggest part of preparing for 2010 is properly evaluating players. I like to rely on my evaluations of players just like everyone else, but I also know I am crazy if I just rely on that. So while I am working on a wrap up post of my 2009 season and begin working player evaluations of my own, I want to point you to a couple of sites worth checking out. I will put these up in my blog roll as well.

• Baseball HQ – I thought I was pretty good at fantasy baseball after consistently finishing in the Top 3 (including 1 championship) in a league with a bunch of work colleagues but once I joined one of my current leagues, I realized I knew nothing. Baseball HQ really helped me refine the way I look at players and while I am still learning a lot about playing fantasy baseball, I believe I am truly getting better as a result of this site. I will try to avoid recommending pay sites, but this one is well worth looking into if you are a serious fantasy baseball player.
• Minor League Ball – John Sickels is one of the best in the business at evaluating minor league talent, and he has started his look at individual players. If you are stuck on what to do regarding Oakland closer Andrew Bailey, see what John has to say about him before you make your decision.
• Project Prospect – I found this site through a Padres blog when they had an in depth piece on Padres prospect James Darnell, and I have been hooked ever since. This site has all sorts of charts and lists rating players at all levels and is worth looking at if you league has a tendency to stockpile talent for year. It seems they are in the process of evaluating rookies, with their latest piece focusing on Rick Porcello.

These are just a few of the sites I look at regularly when trying to evaluate my talent and I am always looking for more places providing reports on players. If you have any sites you trust, leave them here in the comments section and share them with the rest of us.

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