It is an exciting time to be a baseball fan. Spring is in the air, unless you live on the East Coast, and Opening Day is only a few short weeks away. With both The Show and MLB 2K9 being released earlier this week, baseball fever is in full effect.

If you are a hardcore franchise gamer like myself, there are still a few weeks left before the official Opening Day rosters are released. These few weeks leading up to Opening Day serve as my yearly virtual spring training, allowing me to play as many exhibition games as possible. Aside from wanting to learn a new baseball game's controls and enjoy its additions, I have an ulterior motive when engaging in these extended, no pressure gameplay sessions: scouting.

There is no better way to learn certain players' skills and tendencies in a new baseball game than to actually take control of those players. Not only is this useful in the particular exhibition game you are engaging in, but it is also critical when starting your dynasty. Let us face it, if you are anything like me, you completely overhaul your chosen team's roster before the season starts so you can suit your individual team needs.

As someone who has engineered numerous virtual World Series throughout the years -- not to mention resurrecting the Tigers franchise well before Dave Dombrowski did -- I thought it would be the perfect time to share my tips of the trade when putting together the ultimate roster in a baseball video game.

Putting together the ultimate roster will take some trial and error, but it's possible.

Know Your Style

The first and most important step to putting together a dominant baseball lineup is to understand your personal virtual hardball identity. Are you the type of gamer who relies on power hitters to score runs? Do you load up your team up with speed and play small ball? Do you rely on dominant pitching and defense to cover up a lack of offensive power? Are you willing to spend the big dollars on superstar players, or are you cheap and simply looking for the most bang for your buck?

Knowing what style of virtual baseball you are successful at is critical when building your lineup. Personally, I have always been the type of baseball gamer who is a contact hitter, loves developing minor-league talent, hates spending money and relies on solid starting pitching and no-name middle relief to get the job done.

Knowing who I am allows me to know which player skills to target before beginning my run to glory. It may sound like overkill, but if you actually give this aspect of your franchise some serious thought on paper -- before even booting your game up -- it may benefit you in the long run.

This has become a yearly ritual for me. I will spend a couple hours developing my team style in a notebook while watching TV. This allows me to avoid any potential distractions from catchy in-game music or flashy menus.

There are other factors aside from your franchise identity that play a large role when building the perfect lineup, but keep in mind that your gameplay identity is the foundation from which all successful franchise lineups are built.

Knowing who you got in your franchise is very important to long-term success as you develop a plan.

Know Your Default Team

The second step that is critical to proper lineup development is knowing your selected franchise team. By "knowing" it, what I mean is that you need to understand the team's default strengths, weaknesses and facility nuances. This is extremely important because once you know your play style and settle in with a team, you have to begin reworking that team to best suit your identity.

I play as the Tigers on a yearly basis, and based on the information provided above in terms of what kind of baseball identity I have, I always have to make some major changes to my team. What I also have to take into account year in and year out is playing at Comerica Park -- a behemoth of an outfield and a place notoriously known for being a pitcher's park. The default Tigers are built around slower power hitters and power fastball pitchers, which may be the worst possible combination for such a large park.

Knowing that my gameplay identity revolves around being a contact hitter, the park's dimensions and its ability to turn potential home runs into long singles makes me search for contact hitters with speed. Solid outfield play is another huge factor when putting my lineup together. There is a lot of ground to cover in Comerica, and Carlos Guillen just will not cut it in left field.

On the pitching side of things, some of the first moves I usually make revolve around building up a staff of junk pitchers who do not rely on the fastball for the majority of their outs (maybe I can coax Maddux out of retirement?). While a guy like Joel Zumaya and his 100-plus mph heat seems great in theory, balls being crushed down the right-field line for automatic doubles does not. If I were playing on a smaller field, I would have no problem hanging on to a guy like Zumaya, but the risk of surefire singles becoming doubles because of the field dimensions is an almost automatic reason for him to be put on the trading block day one.

Educating yourself on your prospective franchise team's default strengths and weaknesses, along with park dimensions, can make all the difference when you are trying to piece together that perfect lineup. Do not be afraid to make wholesale changes to your lineup if necessary, but also do not be afraid to choose a team -- even if it is not your hometown club -- that best suits your individual style.

Don't just blindly get the best stars, find the players that fit what you are trying to do.

Know How To Best Implement Your Players

OK, so you have established your gameplay identity, researched and chosen your virtual franchise team and made some lineup changes to suit your play style and park dimensions. Now comes the ever-important step of properly implementing players within the lineup/pitching rotation.

As any baseball junkie should already know, your batting lineup needs to be properly weighted in order to maximize your team's offensive firepower. Hitters one and two in the lineup should be speedy contact hitters, with three and four being your two best contact/power hitters. It seems pretty standard fare, but the way you set up your five through nine hitters can have an enormous effect on how a game plays out.

One of the biggest mistakes many gamers make is that they improperly weight their lineup, sticking their two weakest hitters at the eight and nine spots in the lineup (assuming this is the AL of course). The problem I have with this strategy is that you handicap yourself offensively, especially in games without a DH -- assuming you are able to get your four, five and six batters on base. My recommendation is to put your worst overall hitter in the seven spot, followed by contact hitters with speed at eight and nine.

Think about it this way. If all goes according to plan, you will be starting many innings with your five-hole hitter leading off. If you manage to get either the fifth or sixth hitter on base, your weak seven-hole hitter can always bunt to advance the runner, which would allow a stronger eight-hole hitter to score that run from second base. Try implementing this strategy in a couple games and I guarantee your run production will improve. This is the most bulletproof offensive strategy you can possibly implement in a baseball game.

When establishing a solid pitching rotation, it is important that you spread your talent out, much like you did with your batting lineup. Conventional wisdom would tell you to have your three best pitchers slotted in the one, two and three spots in your rotation. While this is not necessarily a bad idea, I have had much more success putting my two aces at one and two, and my third best pitcher at the five-spot in my rotation. Now I know this is not entirely realistic, but I find that, for the most part, I am able to get anywhere from seven to nine innings from my number one and two starters, giving my bullpen a couple nights off. Then, I find that I will get around five innings from pitchers three and four, with my bullpen getting solid work on those nights. Pitcher number five typically averages a solid seven innings, allowing me to use the pen sparingly.

The pitching rotation provided above is a great way to maximize your entire staff, and allows a great deal of leeway when it comes to acquiring talented middle relief. I would rather avoid spending money on a guy like Zumaya (hate to keep picking on him) when I could utilize the cash on another solid starter.

With a solid batting lineup and pitching rotation set in stone, you are able to move on to the next step in creating a fundamentally sound roster.

Evaluating your farm system talent is imperative to success.

Evaluate Your Minor-League Talent

Let us face it people, the economy is taking a nose dive, so be smarter with your virtual dollars. If you are a tyrannically cheap virtual GM like me, there is no better way to cut costs than to properly evaluate your minor-league talent. Not only will you save your team a bundle of cash that will no longer need to be spent on some prized free agent, you may also find a couple diamonds in the rough that can contribute a great deal to your squad.

While your first instinct may be to trade for a specific team need, make sure you know your minor leaguers before pulling the trigger on a blockbuster deal. I have found the best strategy for doing this is to play five to 10 minor league games per year, as many players are significantly better in your hands than the simulation engine would have you believe. There is no better feeling in a baseball game than to find the next Curtis Granderson (or Brad Barnes for all you MVP die-hards out there), allowing you to move older, higher-paid player like Magglio Ordonez for draft picks or prospects.

From my experience, one of the biggest financial leeches in a baseball game has always been a high-priced pitching staff. Keep a close eye on your minor-league pitchers and make sure to take user control of as many pitchers as possible during minor-league games so you can get a feel for their command and pitches. For some reason, it has always been pretty easy to make mediocre pitchers into stars while under user control, and this is a huge benefit for those players who are looking to play multiple franchise seasons. Find some solid young pitchers who are good while under user control, and you can dump pitching salary quicker than Fernando Rodney can blow a save -- OK I admit it, I have unresolved issues with the '08 Tigers bullpen.

Your farm teams are included in the game for a reason. Sure, it may be sexier to sign some big-name talent to a large contract, but since this is not real life, and you are in direct control of specific players, it is relatively easy to find some absolute monsters in your minor-league system.


Building a solid baseball team is no easy task -- just ask the Washington Nationals. It does not matter if you bought The Show or 2K9 this season, follow these easy steps, and you will build one of the most feared rosters in all of video-game baseball.

So get out there and start scouting you slackers, those virtual pennants are not going to win themselves. My rag-tag bunch of contact-hitting, junk-pitching Tigers are ready to take on all comers in 2009 and beyond. Look for my full roster breakdown/transaction list as soon as the Opening Day roster update hits Xbox Live and PSN. Then look for updates on how the first season is going via future articles/my blog space.

Feel free to leave your own personal strategies, lineups and diamonds in the rough in the comment section below.