Whether you’ve already drafted your team or you’re about to head into the war room for the big day, the scouting never ends. Or, at least it shouldn’t. You should always be looking to improve your squad. If you haven’t drafted yet, you should continue to watch spring games, see who’s doing what and determine their potential value for the upcoming season. You should be scouring the depth charts for hidden gems and, in some cases -- like the Braves losing Mike Foltynewicz to elbow issues – you should know who the next man up is, Kyle Wright in this case, and maybe steal a pick or two late in the game. If you have drafted already, then it’s about watching for late, unheralded additions to rosters and the possibility of someone of value slipping through the cracks in your draft. Rarely is it recommended that you make heavy waiver moves before a single game is even played, but there are always exceptions to the rule.

But the key point to be made here, actually, is to hone in on exactly how you are scouting players. This Draft Guide has thrown a ton of metrics your way and we’ve tried to teach you how to dig deeper into the numbers, but we cannot stress enough that zeroing in on just surface stats is a dangerous game to play. A player can have an amazing week or an amazing month and pad his numbers, but are they truly representative of his abilities?

We see this so often with rookies during call-ups where fantasy owners mistakenly elevate a player’s talent level because they’re looking solely at the raw numbers you track in fantasy. Do you remember when Carlos Correa hit 22 home runs over 432 plate appearances in 2015 and the following season, he was over-drafted by those expecting him to be a 30-35 homer guy? Or how about Trea Turner stealing 33 bases in 73 games in 2016 and being touted the following year as a 70-steal guy because people were just doubling the stolen base total while doubling the number of games he was expected to play? It just doesn’t work like that. Double the games does not mean double the stats. This isn’t to say Correa will never hit 30 home runs or Turner won’t steal 70 bases in a full season, it’s about looking at the player’s overall skill set and not just the final numbers.

A great example to look at here is Yankees catcher Gary Sánchez . The guy is a beast. In 2016 he smacked 20 homers in just 229 plate appearances and people went berserk. Tabbed as a potential 40-homer backstop, few people understood exactly what was going on with the numbers beyond the raw totals. No one mentioned Sanchez hit just 34 percent of his batted balls in the air in 2016, which was a league average mark. He also posted a 40 percent HR/FB ratio, a number that has never been touched by any player over a full season. Aaron Judge came close last year with a 35.6% HR/FB, but it wasn’t 40 and we’re still looking ahead at regression for him as well.

We expected the 40-percent to regress for Sanchez and with that, his homer pace of 2016 had little to no chance of being repeated. Not unless he dramatically increased his fly ball rate, another unlikely scenario unless he opted to change his swing and launch angle. Understanding all of this allows us to appreciate the raw power of Sanchez and expect strong offensive production in the future without getting caught up in the excitement that leads to unrealistic expectations.

Now, of course, we then saw Sanchez throw up a brick of a season last year and everyone continues to point towards his .186/.291/.406 slash line, but let’s remember that it had nothing to do with a lack of skills or even a decline. Injuries are always a part of the game and when a player goes down for an extended period of time, you have to cut him some slack with regard to recovery. Sanchez struggled upon his return and pressed at the plate which only compounds the problem. But again, that’s a mental mistake more than a skill-set issue.

We also see the overrating of performance with young pitchers as well, so make sure you have a strong understanding of what you’re seeing in their peripherals. Look at how their strikeout rate and K/9 match-up against the league-average numbers we discussed back in Know Your Metric Benchmarks. What about their own HR/FB rate or their BABIP? How are these numbers lining up with their previous season or, if it’s a rookie, their minor league totals? Before you go anointing him the next Nolan Ryan, take a good look at the sample size of your numbers, match them up with the benchmarks and understand that, while you may have a budding superstar on your hands, expecting numbers like we’ve never seen before in the 150-plus years of recorded data for this game is a major mistake.

The more you understand the notion of skills over performance, the less likely you are to put the cart before the horse. Your expectations of players’ performances will be based in a much more realistic look and you’ll find yourself with a whole lot more value. You’re not reaching for players in your draft and, in-season, you’re less likely to be fooled by some flash-in-the-pan, flavor-of-the-week who is incapable of repeating even the one good week he just showed while sitting on your waiver wire. Let everyone else fall for the trap. You know better.