Since this will be the first off-season here at the Dynasty Guru, I wanted to talk a little bit about what to expect here during the lean months. First of all, I’m planning to continue to post a couple of times per week like I’ve been doing over the past couple of months – and the topics will be largely similar. There will be prospect coverage and individual player coverage (in the vein of the “What To Do With” series. I’ll also try to post on major transactions which will affect players’ dynasty league values going forward when they happen. There will also be more fun stuff which I hinted at in my mission statement back in August, but want to lay out in a little more detail now. So here goes:

I have gotten great feedback from readers about the Rebuilding a Dynasty League Roster series, of which I posted Part 6 this week – and for those of you who have enjoyed it, you will be glad to know that as of right now, there will be eight more parts to this series. This means that if I continue posting them on Monday evenings like I have so far, it will continue until after Thanksgiving. However, that’s not the only thing I’ll be doing with it. Even after that, I will be going back and revisiting it as I continue to rebuild the team that has been the center of the series. Obviously, the whole rebuilding process is much longer than the 3-4 months that the posts will take, so while I will talk about some of the final stages either in theory or in the context of other leagues I’ve done in the past, I will go back to them when appropriate for my experiment league.

On top of this series, I will also start a new one which tracks a new 20-team dynasty league which will have both its initial major league and minor league drafts this off-season. Not only will this hopefully help with those of you out there preparing for startup dynasty drafts from a strategy perspective, but will also be another avenue in which I can give you my reasoning for choosing between players that I think are similarly valued. The minor league portion of that draft actually begins today, so look for the first post on that as early as next week. And in case you were wondering, I have the 11th pick.

But most importantly, I have already started working on my off-season dynasty rankings. This project is a huge undertaking and will be laid out as such. What will set my rankings apart from others out there is that they are specifically designed for dynasty league value and will not segregate between major league and minor league players. This means that if you are trying to decide between keeping David Murphy and Nick Franklin, you can see who I would pick as they will be on the same list. It is unlike anything you will find out there today. The first wave of the ranks will be positional, followed by a Top 150 Dynasty League Prospects list and a Top 50 2012 Signees list. Finally, everything will be consolidated together into one huge overall ranking list – likely encompassing between 600 and 700 players. The timing of all this is still undetermined as I’m not sure how long it will take to put together, but my goal is for it to kick off in the first half of December.

So with that all said, I will get to what you undoubtedly came here for: my playoff predictions. And as someone who predicted that the Rays and Marlins would be playing each other in the 2012 World Series before the season started, I’m sure you’ll put a lot of faith in these..

NL Wild Card Game: Cardinals over Braves
NLDS: Nationals over Cardinals, Reds over Giants
NLCS: Reds over Nationals (MVP: Aroldis Chapman)

AL Wild Card Game: Rangers over Orioles
ALDS: Rangers over Yankees, Tigers over Athletics
ALCS: Tigers over Rangers (MVP: Prince Fielder)

World Series: Reds over Tigers, 4-3 (MVP: Brandon Phillips)

Hope everyone enjoys the wild card games today, along with the rest of the playoffs. And I hope to see you all back here early and often for a very exciting off-season at The Dynasty Guru. After all, if you haven’t started your 2013 draft preparation, you’re already one day behind someone else in your league. As always, I will answer any individual league questions you may have by either leaving comments here, finding me on Twitter at @dynastyguru or e-mailing me at dynastyguru [AT] gmail [DOT] com.