Fantasy Debate: 5/19/2010

Fantasy Debate: 5/19/2010

Question: Do your personal feelings regarding a player or team affect the way you draft and manage your fantasy baseball teams?

I'm interested in people's personal philosophies and how that bleeds into the realm of fantasy baseball. An example would be a Red Sox fan never drafting any Yankees players for any reason, ever! Or if you ban any player that's been involved in the whole steroids mess? Avoid Ranger pitchers because of the ballpark factor?

I'll start...I follow the stats and the stats tell me who to draft and who to avoid. That's why this game is called "fantasy baseball" and not "reality baseball". I drafted Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds back in the day along with Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez. I try to build winning teams, not politically-correct or socially-accepted ones. Do I want to go out and get a beer with Brett Myers (domestic violence incident, sports reporter tirade )? NO! But if Myers is in the midst of a nice run of games pitched and he is available on waivers, I will be the guy picking him up and streaming him.

Another example is that I tend to systematically avoid Pittsburgh Pirates' starting pitchers. How can I draft pitchers that are in the midst of a 17-season losing streak? They always seem to have pitchers with lots of potential (Duke, Maholm, Ohlendorf) but falter. Until the stats prove otherwise, I'll avoid the whole lot.

So, that's just the sort of commenting I'm hoping to gain from this debate. Chime in and be heard in this initial installment of COSFBA's "Fantasy Debate". I handed out a bunch of personal invites on Twitter and hoping many of those "experts" will give an opinion on this matter.

UPDATE: Be sure to expand the comments to see some more opinions on this topic.