Chocolate milk and fantasy baseball: delicious

(Don’t worry. We’ll take you back to fantasy football soon.)

Yoo-Hoo has never tasted better.

I’m not much of a chocolate milk chugger, but when the words “fantasy baseball championship” are tied to it, the dark dairy drink gives the palate – maybe your hair? – a much sweeter taste.

(Thanks to MLB.com Fantasy 411’s Cory Schwartz for the link).

After a weekend in which my eyeballs almost fell out staring at various Stattracker applications, I pulled off close – and I mean close – victories in the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Experts’ Challenge and the KFFL K-BAD Fantasy Analysis Draft league.

Now, of course, there’s a significant amount of luck involved in winning a fantasy baseball league. Anyone who denies that has never played.

But at the risk of sounding like an NFL wide receiver, I’d like to think I played last weekend very well.

Using the loopholes of various platforms that count all pitching stats on the same day you hit your innings limits, I loaded up on Saturday starters in the K-BAD, the daily league, with 4 1/3 innings left to burn.

Jair Jurrjens (my pitching MVP for the season), Johnny Cueto, Ryan Rowland-Smith and Anibal Sanchez later, I was sitting pretty, pulling ahead of several teams that had no innings left.

Prince Fielder’s two-dinger Sunday sealed the deal.

In the weekly FSTA, I had been loading up on starts for some time; my biggest mobility chances were in the runs and wins categories.

Enough of my self-promotion. I’ve celebrated enough. Now, my job is to help YOU with some secrets as to HOW I won the more common K-BAD setup.

I filled out my infield first.

The outfield class was deep this year as dictated by ADP, so I waited to fill my fourth and fifth outfielder spots. I missed on Garrett Atkins as a value third baseman in several leagues but was lucky enough to recover.

I was less loyal to players. Remember: Trade for stats, not players.

I tended to hang onto players in my first season in the expert industry, and I was burned numerous times. This year, I ditched projects if they weren’t helping. I jumped on needs that had to be met.

I have been one of Adam Dunn’s biggest fans in the fantasy world, but before I got the chance to see if he could hit 40 homers AGAIN, I concluded that I needed to gain points in steals and batting average while maintaining my upper-level runs production.

Thus, buh bye Dunn, hello Jacoby Ellsbury.

I also eventually swapped closer Jose Valverde for runs-steals-batting average dynamo Shin-Soo Choo, which brings me to another valuable lesson.

Revisit player values as the season goes along, and remain open-minded.

I warmed to Choo’s multicategory prowess. He did all the little things, while throwing in 20 dingers. We were down on him coming into the season, but, as that guy Darwin said, survival requires adaptation.

We also called Chris Davis a bust heading into the year, and we were right. He wasn’t long for the bigs. However, after he started producing again in the minors, he was a valuable pickup for a brief period after his callup. I didn’t have to worry about draft value with him, and he helped me sustain productivity at a CI spot in numerous leagues.

This lesson: Always use forward thinking for the scrap heap.

In no-trade leagues, like the 14-team, 28-man roster, weekly-lineup FSTA, this is doubly – no, triply – important.

I didn’t draft catchers before the late rounds in my expert leagues.

In our local fantasy baseball setup, which I also won, I took Pablo Sandoval in the middle rounds because the value was right, but in these two expert setups, which both require two starting catchers, I had no such urgency.

Just want to thank everyone whom I competed against in expert leagues this year for the great competition. You can never stop learning things when playing against your peers.

If you think we’re resting on our laurels, think again. We’ll be checking in during the offseason with thoughts on our projections, and if you feel like winning in 2010, you’d best to stay tuned to our Offseason Guide coverage, which includes our Fantasy Baseball Hot Stove and reports on offseason developmental leagues.

If you want to pick the brains of KFFL’s baseball minds along with a slew of other experts, come meet up with Nicholas Minnix and me at Baseball HQ’s First Pitch Forums, the annual VIP party for the fantasy baseball world! You can see some of the best prospects in the Arizona Fall League, including Stephen Strasburg, and get a head start on your 2010 competition!

First, though, I want to hear how you did in fantasy baseball this year – where you went right, where you went wrong, what your plans will be to change your strategy next year.

OK, fine, go back to enjoying pigskin….