CBS SportsLine Fantasy Baseball '98

Bleacher Features - 'Real Life Imitates Fantasy'
CBS SportsLine Fantasy Baseball
'The Future Is in the Past' June 10, 1998

Keith J. Yeager plays in a standard $260 auction league -- A.L. only with 12 teams. His favorite Fantasy player: Juan Gonzalez, dominating hitter who doesn't get the respect he deserves -- undoubtedly the best offensive producer over the last three years (according to Keith)!

Over the past four years I have discovered that Fantasy numbers are very indicative of the real-life numbers and their corresponding teams. In my second year it finally came to me. This was in 1996 when I realized that if somehow my whole team was represented by the top fourteen hitters and the best nine pitchers from the Cleveland Indians, I would have easily won the league.

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Indians

The Indians (Jim Thome - left and Shawon Dunston -right) offer plenty of Fantasy production. (Allsport)

It is easy to say, but almost impossible to do. Being on a great team increases a player's Fantasy value (more for pitching than hitting). A pitcher on the 1998 New York Yankees doesn't need to pitch a spectacular game to get a win. Look at David Wells for instance. He is 8-1 and he doesn't have near the numbers that Roger Clemens has put up. Clemens unfortunately is on a low scoring Toronto team and his record is a subpar 6-7. If you were to imagine that Rick Aguilera was on the Yankees and Mariano Rivera was on the Twins, we would have an interesting situation.

Instead of Rivera going for $42 on the Yankees, he would probably go for a cheap $32 on the Twins. Aguilera, on the other hand, would probably go from from a $25 closer to a $35-$40 finishing man.

It would be possible to construct your Fantasy team with all the players from a specific team, but in all likelihood that would be a struggling team (like Oakland or Detroit). I added up the 1998 Yankees in my head for my league and it came to over $300 and probaly closer to $350, which is way over $40 more than the allotted standard $260. It would be a clever maneuver to try to get your team with all of those players or at least all that you can. There are days where I feel that I could possibly pitch for the Yankees and come out with a win, or maybe just a save.

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