Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy: Stay Unbiased with Your Selections on Draft Day

Staying unbiased doesn't necessarily refer to keeping your personal allegiances out of the picture when you're drafting—which you obviously should. Just because you're a Red Sox fan doesn't mean you should take Dustin Pedroia over Robinson Cano or Ian Kinsler.

Staying unbiased means looking carefully at which players are on the rise and which players are plateauing or declining, and using that as your primary tool for evaluation.

Just because a player had a great season in 2011 doesn't mean he should be one of your first picks in 2012. If it's an older player with a lot of experience under his belt and this is the first time his numbers have been good, you might want to steer clear or save him for a later round, if you think you really need him.

But if it's a player who has been around for a while, has strung together a couple of stellar seasons and is still relatively young, he could be a risk worth taking and could pay off in a big way for your team.

Take a look at the case of Toronto outfielder Jose Bautista. In 2010, he came out of nowhere and, for the first time, played in 161 games, hit 54 home runs, tallied 124 RBI and slugged .617. If you had taken my above advice with regards to him approaching your 2011 draft—because Bautista was 29 years old in 2010 and had never come close to putting up big numbers like that, some people figured he wouldn't again—you would have missed out big time.

After his spectacular 2010 campaign, Bautista followed it up with very similar numbers in 2011, scoring 105 runs, hitting 43 homers and driving in 103 runs while slugging .608 and walking a career-high 132 times with a 1.056 OPS.

Bautista's numbers are, unsurprisingly, expected to decline in 2012. Despite his strong overall production in 2011, he dropped off after the All-Star break, so picking him up in the early rounds is still a risk, albeit a smaller one, considering the numbers he's had over the last two years. He is still trending upward after a largely mediocre career, so he is a solid selection in the early rounds who could pay off big-time.

On the other hand, consider someone like Angel Pagan, who earned a starting role with the Mets in 2010 after it was clear Carlos Beltran wouldn't return from an injury until midseason. Through the end of June, he hit .300 with 14 stolen bases, therefore solidifying himself as a starting outfielder for the remainder of the season. He finished with a .290 average , 80 runs scored, 31 doubles and 11 homers in 579 at-bats.

In 2011, however, his production dropped off. The 29-year-old finished the year with a .262 average, 68 runs scored, seven homers and 24 doubles in 532 plate appearances. His on-base percentage dipped from .340 to .322, and his slugging percentage decreased from .765 to .694.

Because his numbers showed a considerable drop-off from 2010 to 2011, his production in 2012 is expected to stay the same or maybe even decrease more, depending on how much he is expected to play with a new team in San Francisco.

Would he be a good choice as a late-round pick? Sure. But his big 2010 isn't likely to repeat itself. Ever.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop isn't always a strategy that works, as evidenced by Bautista, and sometimes there's just no way to tell whether someone will become a bust or continue to improve. The only thing you can do is look at the trends in players' numbers and, especially with the older players, try to make sure they've maintained those numbers for at least a couple of years before using up an early pick on them.