2008 Topps 610 Carlos Beltran

Growing up, there was not one thing finer for a kid than waking up each morning and turning to the back pages of the sports division to scan the box scores for the former night’s games. Numbers streamed down those four columns–ab, r, h, rbi–after each hitter’s name much like the neon symbols rained down in the opening sequence of “The Matrix.”

Like The Matrix, those box score numbers occupied an alternate reality for us baseball fans who took great pleasure in absorbing stats and the unceasingly arousing and attention holding configuration of numbers.

Nowadays, with the Internet and SportsCenter, box scores don’t carry the weight they once did. But scanning lists of baseball stats is not a dead skill. For fantasy baseball, it’s essential.

The firstborn step in winning your fantasy baseball league is to manufacture a solid draft list. To do that, you ought to give rise to a bias-free player rankings sheet.

A bias-free player rankings sheet

Here’s how: Take a stat sheet that lists the last three year’s statistics, like the one that Yahoo distributes to it is Fantasy Plus subscribers, or the ones that appear in respective baseball magazines and books.

What I like to do is to take the sheets of Yahoo stats and fold the papers vertically so that I may only see the stats and not the names.

What you want to do is undertake and spot a player’s trends. Are they moving up? Was last year’s numbers a significant increase over his three-year average?

You’re likewise looking at the overall quality of last year’s stats. Even if his home run and stolen base total don’t add up to much, is there something that stands out throughout the board that might make him a great fantasy value?

Lastly, when scanning these statistics, you want to make the routine as goal to be attained as possible, separating the names from the statistics, if possible.

What to do with these stat sheets

For the hitters, what I do is scan the sheets and put a checkmark next to the stats of approximately the top 72 players. Then I’ll divide them up into two groups. I’ll give an “A” to the top 36, and a “B” to the next 36, and I’ll keep dividing groups into halves until I come up with an ordered Top 72 list.

There is no precise science to this. This is an exercise in rating players without being biased by the superstar names. The idea is to rank your players without looking at their names to see if there are any surprises, either at who made your list, or at how highly you rated a lesser-known player. Doing this exercise might also yield a good deal of draft steals.

For instance, in 2006, this exercise showed big potential for a player who hit 19 HR, 87 RBI, 14 SB, and .307 in 479 AB the year before. If given a full season, one could reason, this player could have a big year. And yet he was not ranked in the Top 100 in most fantasy lists. That meant a big draft day bargain for whoever drafted Matt Holliday.

In 2007, this exercise confirmed the excellency of players ofttimes overlooked by media. Which shortstop’s stats are these from 2006?

100 R, 19 HR, 85 RBI, 20 SB, .320 AVG, 543 AB

Miguel Tejada? Michael Young? Rafael Furcal? Troy Glaus? Bill Hall? Nope. Those stats belong to Carlos Guillen, who was normally drafted after all the shortstops just mentioned, but arguably had the most beautiful stat sheet. And how did Guillen fare in 2007 equated to those guys? Statistically speaking, better than all of them.

Finally, let’s do one more example using 2007′s stats to show you how this works. Which outfielder would you most like to pick for next year?

Hits/AB, R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG

Player 1

185/612, 122, 23, 74, 26, .302

Player 2

191/637, 97, 23, 112, 18, .300

Player 3

153/554, 93, 33, 112, 23, .276

Player 1? Player 2? Player 3? A case could be made for any of them, even though one of them is more famous than the others and will in all likelihood go much higher in the draft. This is not to say that these three players are equal, exceptionally given Player 3′s prolific past. But it does point out that you may fill your roster with a lot of emergent superstars that have the potential to carry your team, but won’t inevitably go in the initial three rounds. As for who is who, Player 1 is Curtis Granderson, Player 2 is Nick Markakis, and Player 3 is Carlos Beltran.

2008 Topps 610 Carlos Beltran Photo

2008 Topps 610 Carlos Beltran Picture

2008 Topps 610 Carlos Beltran Pic

2008 Topps 610 Carlos Beltran Picture