Rankings/List

The key to a successful fantasy baseball draft is maximizing the return value on each of your picks. At the start of each draft, everybody will have an equal value's worth of picks; therefore, unless you target players who could potentially exceed the value of the pick they were drafted with, you will finish your draft in the middle of the pack. One of the best types of player to target when attempting to maximize value is the player who disappointed the previous year. Logically, his value will be its lowest following a poor season; hence the appeal to targeting these players.

The major league closer is a position that is hard to fill for many teams. Pitchers are often given opportunities to be the guy in the late innings, but rarely do we find closers that can truly be considered "dominant."

Trevor Hoffman has to be considered in discussions of the best closer of all time. His 601 career saves rank first all time, and his 1,035 games pitched are an attribute to his longevity.

As we honor the spectacular career one of baseball's all time greats, let's take a look at the elite list of dominating closers that Hoffman finds himself in.

You can almost smell it, can't you?

The warm breezes of spring air gently blowing across green grass.  The intoxicating aroma of dirt mixed with chalk.  You're starting to hear the distant sounds of wood cracks and leather pops.

It's sometimes difficult to think of baseball being just around the corner when you're stuck in the doldrums of a cold, snowy January.  But the college football season is over.  The NFL Playoffs are in full swing and will be a memory before long.  That means that Spring Training will be here before we know it.

The best power hitting team in the game came out of the AL East in 2010. No, it wasn't the Yankees, or the Red Sox, or the Rays. It was the Toronto Blue Jays. Lead by outfielder Jose Bautista, combined the Jays led the league in home runs by a mile.

The Blue Jays return a majority of their lineup, but with Adrian Gonzalez now in Boston, and Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira looking for rebound seasons, the Blue Jays title will be under siege. Who will be the best power hitting team in the American League in 2011? Let's find out.

With Boston's offseason spending spree and Tampa Bay's everything-must-go jumble sale, one can make a pretty good stab at how the AL East will play out in 2011.

The Yankees and Red Sox will fight it out for the top spot, the Blue Jays and Rays will compete for third and fourth and the Orioles will still languish at the bottom.

Obviously, any of the bottom three could make a run to the postseason as the Rays did in 2008, but it would be a staggering turnaround.

Not every offseason signing is going to be perfect. Even with all the scouting tools out there, it's still difficult to properly evaluate a player and predict his performance going forward. Sabermetricians like Bill James get paid good money to predict what the players are going to accomplish, but the reality is that it's pretty much a crapshoot.

With the Philadelphia Phillies picking up Cliff Lee in a deal that shocked all of baseball last month, there has been a lot of talk about the how good the Phillies current rotation is, which ranks probably within the best five rotations in baseball history. The 2011 Phillies rotation compares to the rotations of the Atlanta Braves from the mid-1990s, the 1971 Orioles with Jim Palmer, and the 1966 Dodgers with Sandy Koufax.

Bryce Harper seems like a dream player out of a video game.  His numbers are unbelievable and he doesn't look to be stopping anytime soon.  After being drafted number one by the Nationals in 2010, Harper has a lot of expectations to live up to as he begins his path to the big leagues.  Harper hopes to make the Nationals roster and make his major league debut as soon as he can, and here's ten reasons why he will in 2011. 

It is impossible to imagine a postseason game without the reliable Andy Pettitte walking up to the mound and pitching the game to victory. The starting pitcher's future with the New York Yankees continues to remain undetermined. As he leans towards retirement, the Yankees are reliant on him now more than ever. 

This is a difficult time for many of those who believe the game will forever be tainted by the Performance Enhancing Drug era.

I refuse to call it the "Steroid Era" as many of the so-called cheaters never actually took a steroid. If you're going to label something, it may as well be accurate.

I will admit that some of the things MLB players did during this time disgusts me. It's not so much the fact that they cheated, but that they were so smug and arrogant that they thought they could get away with it.