The folks from Baseball Prospectus this week revealed their “Ultimate Fantasy Draft” via SI.com. If you’re familiar with this feature, which appeared for the second time this season, you know it’s not actually directly related to fantasy baseball.

The purpose, actually, is for BP to select the 50 best choices to build a baseball team around right now. Logically, such a list does not merely represent a ranking of Major League Baseball’s top 50 players but factors in age and position to determine long-term value.

Fantasy owners could benefit from reading through, however, as BP’s PECOTA projection system sits at the center of this pursuit. Even though many of the statistical categories will differ from your rotisserie league, it’s helpful to find out which young guys are projected to soar over the next few years and which seemingly promising players aren’t good bets to latch onto. It also just so happens that the No. 1 ranked player is probably the best fantasy baseball player alive right now (and it isn’t Alex Rodriguez).

Baseball Prospectus is arguably the best group of statisticians out there, unless you’re the kind of old baseball codger who still thinks the best measure of a pitcher is his win-loss record. Of course, if you are, you probably aren’t surfing fantasy sports sites too often.

Here are the links to the list: 50-26, 25-1, honorable mentions

Our response to the poor “research” by Challenger, Gray & Christmas that has fantasy football costing employers billions each season ran earlier this week, but we’re not yet ready to drop the subject.

Dr. Kim Beason, who knows a thing or two about fantasy sports research, has this response to the $9 billion folks:

Challenger leans heavily on internet use as the waster of most time. Clearly, much time at work is not “work.” If someone does primarily work on the computer, they can multitask easily, limiting the impact of online fantasy sport consumption. Furthermore, Much fantasy sport talk around the computer “wastes” the same amount of time as any other frivolous chat, gossip, etc.

Therefore, much of Challenger’s “waste” occurs regardless of fantasy sport. In reality, fantasy sport in the workplace does take time away from production, but the tradeoff is significant. Undeniably, fantasy sport is a significant workplace dynamic.

Work time is wasted by consumers playing fantasy football, but, once again, the focus must also include the positive, which include building social networks (a key to the Japanese-style of management, and we see what that has done for them!).

Less than 30 percent of workers say the time they “waste” interferes with their work productivity. A very significant number (53 percent) state that fantasy sport increases camaraderie, and 48 percent have made friends playing fantasy sport in the workplace. My comments to media sources in the past have gone something like this …

“Fantasy sport is a dynamic that has developed within the workplace over the past 10 years. Friendships, workplace camaraderie, business contacts and fun offset the amount of productivity lost. Most productivity lost would happen regardless of fantasy sport participation through gossip, computer games, daydreaming and similar outlets. However, fantasy sport appears to not have as high a degree of negative impact as the other ‘time wasters.’ Conversely, it has increased the cohesiveness of workers and thus must improve work productivity, decrease absenteeism and sick leave and, most importantly, develop social networks that support organizational and interorganizational relations and growth.”