Fantasy Baseball Generals Speculator Part Two - Rollins v. Utley

Another week another round table discussion at The Fantasy Baseball Generals. This week, a toss up between Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley. While the two are of different positions, at this point in the draft you should simply be taking the best available player.

Here is what I wrote:
"I am, like everyone else, going to have to go with Rollins. For me, it has less to do with the statistics then the position scarcity. That is, I actually anticipate Rollins to regress more so then Utley. While Rollins has a substantially lower BABIP, it is in line with his career mark despite the drastic increase in fly balls.

That said, once Reyes, Rollins and Ramirez are drafted the pool of short stops becomes so incredibly shallow, that it is tough to get value by drafting anyone at the point required to get them. That is, in a recent draft (no MI position), instead of taking Bartlett, Lugo, Greene, etc in one of the final rounds, I decided to take Schilling whom I can slot in at the DL and pick up whoever is on the waiver wire.

Conversely, with Utley, one can make the argument that a Wigginton holds similar value despite being available some 200 picks later.

And that is why my money is on Rollins."

This is with the expectation that you are in a traditional 5x5 league. Obviously if you are in a league with on base percentage the debate may be slightly different, but for arguments sake, 5x5 it is. Then I considered position scarcity.

At short stop, once the top 3 are gone, Furcal and Bartlett are the only two where one is not forced to overpay for their services and thus will provide a quality return. However the different between Furcal/Bartlett and Reyes/Rollins/Ramirez is quite substantial. Also, one must keep in mind my draft strategy which involves focusing on speed at short stop.

For second base the pool appears quite similar. While Utley is the uncontested #1 second basemen, I do not consider his 5x5 skill set as that much more superior to that of the aforementioned Wigginton and Tim Dierkes old favorite, Mark Ellis (whom I will write about in this weeks TACOM).