What do you think of the Top 50 2006 lists from Yahoo/ESPN?

[Iconoclastic]

Why is Bobby Abreu so low? He should be a consensus mid-first rounder.

[dannyolbb]

Frankly, the rankings have improved greatly in the last few years. These are much better than the ones they posted about 3 years ago.

They're not great, obviously, but they aren't too bad, either.

[GotowarMissAgnes]

yahoo has v-mart, sexon, howard, a. jones, and carp too high (i'll also avoid d. wright at the start of the second...) and they'v got rollins, sheets, and bonds (and helton ) too low.

ESPN's got carp, wright, jones, hafner, and probably beltran and ichiro too high, while i'd bump up rollins and helton a bit, and halladay in to the top 30. i also think they're too high on closers in general.

I'd like to hear more about why you think wright is too high. End of season he was the 30th best player. He is young, so likely to improve. Furthermore, close to half of his plate appearances came when he was batting 6th or 7th. If he gets a full season of PAs batting in slots 2-5 his improved couring stats alone will boost him significantly.

I can't see how he's ranked any lower than 20th at worst.

[Kingctb27]

Looks like one source has Beltran a little higher than the other...

[Yoda]

You can really never go by those two lists.

The ONLY thing good about them is that other people may use them for their rankings and you can predict where certain players will be taken.

[warrick95]

You'd better read the specifications for Yahoo's Big Board:

The Big Board takes into consideration past returns, current performance and expected future gains in determining who should be included among the top 50 fantasy baseball players. Essentially, the Big Board is a cheat sheet designed for a fantasy owner who is planning to participate in a draft today. Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball default scoring settings are used as the baseline for the Big Board, which is updated on a weekly basis.


Thus, the Big Board, IMO, is more of a "2005 culmination" than a preview for 2006, because it includes past returns. Yes, past returns does contribute to expected future gains, but notice how they explicitly separated them in the above paragraph. So, they are not making these to predict future gains for next year only...and they are not completely a 2006 ranking system.

[Red Stripe]

I don't normally take Yahoo's or ESPN's content on fantasy sports to seriously but the thing that irks me is Yahoo has Tejada ranked at number 24????? 12 spots behind Young????? Come on, Tejada had a bad second half yes but it was still a better 2nd half than most SS's and its still only half a year. He was great in the 1st half. Young should probably be moved down a few spots while Tejada up a few, probably have both of them going around the 15 and 16 spot. That's absurd to have Tejada going around number 24......although I can't expect much from them when I think it was last year that they put Beltre at like number 6 or 5 on the big board before the 05 season started.