Fantasy Baseball 2019: Ranking the current Phillies players for your team

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Phillies ace Aaron Nola should be taken high in fantasy drafts

We’re now pushing further into the month of March and that means just one thing. What? March Madness? Okay, okay…two things. At least for fans of fantasy sports and baseball, this is draft month.

While in most seasons those fantasy baseball drafts take place around the third or fourth week in the month, this year could be a little different. If your league counts the two Japan Opening Series games between the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners on March 20-21, then your draft could be as soon as mid-month.

There are many more resources available these days to fantasy sports fans than when I first began playing fantasy baseball and football in the late 1980’s. What used to be largely opinion and educated guess-work presented in magazines – which you can still buy today – has grown into real-time, detailed information available on the internet.

It has become more and more difficult to separate yourself from the other competitors in your league in the area of information-gathering. At least those who are willing to put in the work.

One potential source of unique information comes from resources within each individual city or fan base. It is very possible that the people who are following a particular team on a regular basis have better information and insight than folks who are trying to follow 25-30 teams in a particular sport, sometimes dozens of teams across multiple sports.

That is where I am coming from with this piece. As someone who follows and reports on the Philadelphia Phillies on a regular basis, I’m going to help out my fellow fantasy baseball fans.

The following is a ranking of every current 2019 Phillies player who might be able to help your fantasy team in the coming season. I am also including a very brief reasoning behind each ranking. There won’t be any “which round” you should take most of the players, because there are so many different draft formats that nothing is truly “standard” these days.

Thankful For a Game?

It's Thanksgiving Day here in America, the fourth Thursday in November. It's a day where we give thanks to our God and spend time with the family and friends with whom he has blessed our lives.

The day usually includes a traditional meal of turkey, stuffing, vegetables, pies, and other foods and treats. It also includes watching pro football games on TV, and sometimes watching high school rivalry games in person.

Something that we don't usually think about or associate with on Thanksgiving Day is the sport of baseball. But I am going to take a little time to speak about the game on this day for one important reason.

This is supposed to be a day on which we recognize and express our gratitude for the people and things that we love, and in my life there have been few things outside of my family that I have loved more than the sport that I like to call "The Greatest Game That God Ever Invented."

My love of the game encompasses every way that it can be enjoyed, from playing to coaching to spectating to fantasy. My involvement in the game pretty much began with the opening of Veteran's Stadium in my South Philly neighborhood when I was just 9 years old. Until that point the only real sports events that I had been exposed to were the Big Five basketball games that I remember my dad watching on television.

In the spring of 1971, 'The Vet' opened it's gates at Broad and Pattison, and my dad took my brother Mike and I to the 'Opening Day' festivities. It was an event prior to the first game, where fans could get in and walk around the sparkling new facility.

All of the baseball specific features were on display, from the baseline picnic areas, to the booming cannon of Phil & Phyllis that would follow each Phillies' home run, to the colorful Dancing Waters fountain in center field.

I was hooked by the place, and the team and game would soon follow.

It's Just a Fantasy

If you know me, you know that I am a huge baseball fan. A lifelong Phillies fan, of course, and someone who played for and managed a local championship men's softball team for over a decade and a half.

As I got a bit older, I retired the old glove and bat, and moved into the fantasy game. Fantasy baseball has been one of my biggest hobbies over the past decade, particularly with a 'Keeper' league of which I am a part known as the 'Whitey Fantasy Baseball League'.

In this case, 'Whitey' refers to the man for whom the league is dedicated, Philly's own Rich 'Whitey' Ashburn. We have 16 players in the WFBL known to each other as GM's (general managers) of the 16 teams, which are all league-owned.

My own team, the Philadelphia Athletics, has been highly successful. My team has captured seven of the 11 pennants in our Paul Owens (East) Division, and one league championship during a history which began back in 1998.

That first summer saw the WFBL stock each of our team rosters for the first time with an original draft. Since then, players have been exchanged over the years through trading and a waiver-acquisition process. We are permitted to keep between 16-20 players every year, so you can actually build a team and keep it together if you like.

That original franchise-stocking WFBL Draft yielded me Scott Rolen and Derek Jeter as the first two picks. They became cornerstones, and I picked up later in the Draft such young studs as Billy Wagner and Andruw Jones.