Fantasy Baseball How To

Know who, when, and how to pick up a prospect.

Everybody wants to be that guy. You know, the one who takes the risk on the soon-to-be-called-up guy, then have him turn to gold and he leads you to a championship. But in reality, the chance of this success happening more often than not leads to the destruction of a good team rather than the step up of good to great for a team.

So how exactly can you know when to pick up a player either still in the minors or who has just been called up? Well, there is no easy way really, if you truly want to find a unique sleeper who can help you out (think Blake DeWitt last season) you have to do some research.

First, you have to know which players are about to be called up or players who are dominating in the minors. Sites like http://www.scoutingbook.com/prospects/, http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/top-100-fantasy-baseball-prospects-5-1-09/ , and to see prospects stats, go to http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/. Checking these sites and many others will greatly increase your knowledge of who will be coming up when and how they should do (roughly) once they arrive.

After you learn when someone will be coming up and you have a fair barometer of how you think they'll perform, its time to get them on your team-maybe. If you have a player or two on currently on your team that you think won't produce much at all (less than the player you want to pick up) then obviously pull the trigger, but if you feel the player you want and the one you have will do roughly the same, keep the player you have because he is a much surer thing than a player with no big league experience.

Trading for prospects though is an entirely different monster though, so i will tackle that in a new post.

Also, check out my NFL blog at nflep.blogspot.com.