Explore the league, not a team

Being a good fan and cheering on your favorite team is great, but if you’re serious enough to travel for your fantasy draft, you should make the most of your effort. While it’s nice to see your hometown team play in the spring, for fantasy purposes you might also want to look the other way. You know that you will follow your favorite club to death during the season and you will know all the details of their squad. Depending on your location in the spring and the type of league you play in, plan to look at other teams that can help you in your draft.

Remember that in fantasy circles, players on bad teams are just as valuable as those on good teams, and sometimes more. More players on teams that don’t have a chance to earn playing time and at-bats and major league innings by having good springs. You can be there to watch them develop and land big league jobs right before your very eyes. As an added bonus, it’s much easier to talk to the players and coaches at a Pirates-Tigers game before the game on the edge of the stands than it is at, say, a Yankees-Red Sox game. And if you’re going to watch the Devil Rays, Blue Jays or Brewers, you can probably buy the best seats you’ve ever had for a major league-caliber game.

A couple of years ago, I was one of 200 people who attended a Devil Rays-Blue Jays game at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg (one of the big spring training parks, by the way). I was in that game strictly for fantasy scouting purposes, as I needed to see the players to help me formulate the PVR for the upcoming Sports Illustrated Baseball Preview. One of the players I saw that day was a right-handed hitting outfielder named Rocco Baldelli, who I had heard a few things about but had never paid much attention to or seen in person. After seeing him display his great range patrolling the outfield and landing a couple of solid base hits with a good level of swing similar to the style of Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio, he quickly made my list of prospects to watch. Just over a year later, he was the D-Rays’ starting center fielder and is one of baseball’s up-and-coming stars.