Decisions, decisions...

And so it begins.

The 10th season of UPL Baseball is upon us. This is our second year as a keeper league, and thus the first time we need to decide which players to keep.

The UPL allows 18 keepers. First, let's take a look at my roster as it currently stands:

Hitters leftover from 2009
Jason Bartlett
Michael Bourn
Billy Butler
Chris Coghlan
Carlos Gonzalez
Ryan Howard
Chipper Jones
Victor Martinez
Miguel Montero
Cliff Pennington
Aramis Ramirez
Manny Ramirez
Pablo Sandoval
Justin Upton 

Pitchers leftover from 2009
Homer Bailey
Juan Gutierrez
Dan Haren
J.P. Howell
Edwin Jackson
Chris Narveson
Chad Qualls
Wandy Rodriquez
Javier Vazquez
Brian Wilson

So how do you go about keeping 18? Do you go with a 50/50 split between hitters and pitchers? Or maybe 10 hitters and 8 pitchers? I'm actually leaning toward keeping 11 hitters and 7 pitchers, although I'm not sure about all the specifics yet.

In the UPL, we have hitting slots for eight fielding positions (all except pitcher) plus two utility slots. So that makes ten total starting slots for hitters. Let's go down my team's starting slots for hitting and see which top players I'd like to keep at each position:

C - Victor Martinez
1B - Ryan Howard
2B - ???
SS - Jason Bartlett
3B - Aramis Ramirez
OF - Manny Ramirez
OF - Justin Upton
OF - Carlos Gonzalez
Util - Pablo Sandoval
Util - Michael Bourn

So there are 9 hitters who I very likely see myself keeping. Now let's look at the pitchers who I currently plan to keep:

SP - Dan Haren
SP - Javier Vazquez
SP - Edwin Jackson
SP - Wandy Rodriguez

RP - Joe Nathan
RP - Brian Wilson

Okay, so there are 6 pitchers who I'll likely keep.

I've listed 15 players to keep, so I still have 3 openings. This means that Chipper Jones, Billy Butler, Chris Coghlan, and Miguel Montero (apparently I like alliteration) will be fighting for the last two hitter spots. And Chad Qualls and J.P. Howell will battle it out for the final pitching spot. (This likely will go to Qualls since I think he's slated to close and Howell isn't. But Juan Gutierrez could also get consideration here if it looks like he'll close instead of Qualls.)

In any case, at least I've started to think this through.