The Fantasy League Guru The Fantasy League Guru hopes to make this a regular Wednesday online column. E-mail him with suggestions for future topics or just fantasy questions at sports@media.ucla.edu.

Welcome to the inaugural online fantasy sports column for the UCLA Daily Bruin. It’s certainly a work in progress, with hopefully new features to be added in the upcoming weeks. What qualifies me to be a fantasy guru, you ask? I’m a geek, meaning I know sports well enough to notice trends and keep myself updated on the latest news. I know this first column is not all that timely for baseball, since it’s not like I can tell you who to draft, some sleepers and other stuff like that. Still, just because the draft is long past, I’m of the belief that it doesn’t hurt for you to always have some of those draft books handy all season long as reference tools. I still have my “The Sporting News Fantasy Baseball” magazine, shredded as it may be, with the cover almost torn off and some of the pages damaged from the beer I’ve spilled. I also manage to keep near me the “Stats Inc. Player Profiles 2001” book, something for that in-depth statistical analysis I depend on as a reassurance whenever I need to make a tough decision. But I digress, as I often will. I want to give the impression that every once in a while this guru can be of a useful nature, and since I know some of you are too advanced to use these “prehistoric” things I call books, I’ll enlighten you as to some of the Web sites I frequent – some rather obvious, others being more of the underground variety.



Mainstream These are the big three sports sites on the net, and unable to ignore the fantasy traffic existent in the online community, they offer certain resources that sometimes prove to be rather useful. ESPN: Several weekly features like “The Pivot” and “Tip Sheet” provide for insightful information on the latest events, and you can click on the “resources” link to get samplings of trends within the fantasy community. For the hardcore fans, I’m getting a little ahead of myself by bringing up the topics of updates, but ESPN does provide correspondents for every team, giving in-depth news as to the fantasy status of virtually every relevant player on each MLB team. It might be a bit overwhelming to keep track of, but here it is for your consideration: ESPN FLB 2001 Correspondents ESPN doesn’t disappoint in context, but the organization of the info is somewhat lacking.

CBS: Using a much simpler display, this site makes it easy to find info such as injuries, probable starting pitchers (after all, don’t you want to avoid those starts in Coors and Enron if at all possible?) and you can even compare players, in case you’re having trouble making a final decision on a trade. There’s a few columns to boot, but for some reason those have never enticed me. Then again, to each their own and just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean you should ignore its existence.

CNN/SI: The features are pretty basic, with an AL and NL report duo, plus something more general. Again, you can find injury reports and probable starters, but the thing that I like the most from the site is the “Daily bests” and sortable stats, not to mention the “Player Value Rankings” and its master list. CNN/SI doesn’t lead the pack in terms of content, and instead of competing they seem happy to just provide access to more unique options, therefore making them a site worth checking into every once in a while.

Updates There’s a reason some people always get those darkhorse players off the waiver wire first. They check one of these two sites, if not both, basically 24/7.

ROTO WORLD: Daily updates are important to remain competitive, and this site keeps you updated on the latest injuries, trades, transactions and even random things like slumps and hot streaks. And whenever the update borders on the ridiculous, you can always count on a smart-ass remark that doesn’t necessarily help, but is always entertaining. A search option on the top left also allows you to see a specific player’s performance over the last ten days, along with stats for the 2001 season and the last time the Roto World staff had an update on that player – great way of double checking you’re not trading for a player with an undisclosed injury.

ROTO TIMES: This site is brought to you by the same guys that used to run Roto News, which went out of business some time in March. Aside from providing those daily updates that are so important, there’s a variety of entertaining, if not useful options, like the 2001 projections, scouting reports and the aforementioned stuff the big three provide like injury reports, probable pitchers and some feature articles.

Did You Know? Here are some random sites, not all necessary, but some entertaining. They include “USA Today’s Baseball Weekly” Columnist John Hunt, who’s the guru of all the fantasy baseball gurus and secondary sites that might just grab your attention and be worthy of the all-mighty bookmark on your browser. Fantasy Insider: JOHN HUNT The Roto Roost MLB.com The Sporting News Fantasy Source