Red Sox fantasy baseball targets

Exploring the value of Boston Red Sox players in a fantasy baseball draft to determine who to target and who to avoid in your league.

The start of the season is just over two weeks away, making now the ideal time to start holding your fantasy baseball draft.

Fantasy sports has exploded into the mainstream over the past several years, flooding the internet with a variety of sources where you will find tips on strategy, opinions and rankings. Here at BoSox Injection were are primarily focused on players that wear a Red Sox uniform. Boston has many players that warrant a spot on fantasy rosters, but loading up on Red Sox players isn’t always the best idea. Reaching for a player from your favorite team may make the season more fun to follow, but it’s not a winning strategy. If you’re looking for advice on which Red Sox players are worth targeting in your draft, you’ve come to the right place.

There are many different types of fantasy leagues with varying rules, scoring and format. There are head-to-head leagues and rotisserie. Snake drafts and auctions. Shallow 8-team leagues and deeper leagues with 16 or more teams. Some use unorthodox categories or larger rosters. Daily fantasy sites are the new craze these days, which require an entirely different strategy. While the advice in this column can be applied in some ways to just about any type of league, make sure to check the settings of the one that you are in and adjust accordingly.

For the sake of mass appeal, we’re going to focus on a strategy based on standard 10-team leagues with 5×5 scoring (runs, home runs, RBI, batting average, steals, wins, ERA, WHIP, strikeouts, saves). Judgement of value will also be based on rankings from two of the largest providers of fantasy sports, ESPN and Yahoo.

So which Red Sox players do you want to aim for, which should you avoid and who could be that late round sleeper that could be a difference maker down the line? Let’s find out.

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