Booms and Busts of the First Half

I would like to state that this article will provide readers with an opportunity to look at some of the surprise hitters and pitchers of the first half of the season. Even though hitters such as Chase Utley and Lance Berkman have had great first halves, they are to expected to produce. This article will focus on hitters that have come out of nowhere and also stars that have underperformed. 

Booms:

 

1) Josh Hamilton- Who else would deserve the top slot? Not only has Josh Hamilton seemingly turned around a career defined by drugs and wasted talent, but he is also carrying fantasy baseball teams around the country. Hamilton is hitting .309 with 19 home runs and an absurd 78 RBIs. If Hamilton continues to rake at this rate he will finish the year with 157 RBIs

2) Edinson Volquez- It kills me to have to put Edinson Volquez on this list because I drafted him in my first ever fantasy baseball league. I waited on his electric arm for two years in Texas, until it looked as if he was nothing more than a kid with a great arm that could not put it all together. Needless to say I traded him for next to nothing and now he posts the lowest ERA in the national league, go figure. Volquez has put his talent together this season and has been the Reds best pitcher. Volquez is on pace to finish the season with an ERA in the 2s and hover around 200 strikeouts.

New and Improved Future of Fantasy

The Future of Fantasy has reviewed all the various emails and has taken the advice of its fans. The Future of Fantasy has installed a new look and hopefully made it easier for all you readers to navigate around the page. Pages such as the “Star of the Night” have now been changed to “Star of the Week” with the intention of providing Fantasy Baseball participants with the knowledge of who the MVP of the week was. “Who’s Hot? Who’s Shot?” has also been improved with the design of creating a more organized web page. This will allow fans to get a better understanding of how a few players did over the course of the past fantasy week. Another feature that fans have been asking for is for writers to provide an insiders perspective of what players should be targeted as the trade deadline rapidly approaches. We hope the changes that we have made over the past month will satisfy the everyday readers as well as reach out to a new fan base that we have yet to connect with. Now that The Future of Fantasy is back up and running, we hope that everyone who decides to visits the web site can learn something new about the rapidly growing industry of fantasy baseball.

Seasoned Vets vs Young Guns

You can see a movie by yourself at 13, you get to drive at 16, vote and go to war at 18, and drink when your 21. So the question is how old do you have to be to become a fantasy dead weight?

The answer to this question is irrelevant because as long as you produce good fantasy numbers your age doesn’t matter.

Then why, all of a sudden, does it matter now that we know that Miguel Tejada is two years older than he actually is? Does it make his numbers any less valuable? The answer again is no. But with all of this hoop-la surrounding him and his age, that got me to thinking about the under appreciated players of Fantasy Baseball, the veterans who get no love because of their age. They perform like top of the heap talent, year in and year out, but they get passed over for the younger players with higher ceilings. But like a fine wine, these players get better with age.

Young “Star”ters

Attendance has been up across baseball in recent years and much of this can be attributed to the influx of young talent into the league. Many teams have decided against giving mediocre veterans big contracts and have chosen to build their teams from within. In this article, I will be looking at the top five young starters in fantasy baseball. To qualify for this list, a pitcher must have no more than two full years of experience entering the 2008 season (All players on this list went into the 2006 season with rookie eligibility still intact).