Draft Day Strategies
By Steve Goldman, staff writer
Getting psyched about your fantasy season? You must care about the quality of your team, otherwise you wouldn’t be visiting this website. Don’t wait until draft day to do all your work; in general, the foundations for the best fantasy teams are laid BEFORE the draft. Below are some tips that can help you. The specifics refer to fantasy leagues that use systems that award points to each individual player, rather than to rotisserie leagues. However, you can use the general principles of these tips to apply to a rotisserie league as well:
Know the rules as far in advance as possible.
Ask your commissioner to give you a copy of the rules. If that’s impossible, try to get him/her to give them to you verbally. If you know up front how the league operates, you can better prepare yourself for the draft. And a commissioner who waits until draft day to explain the rules is doing everyone a disservice, except him/herself.
There are leagues in which some major scoring changes are voted upon on draft day. In general it is better to discourage this, if at all possible. Such changes, depending on their magnitude, could mean that many of the hours that you put in to prepare for the draft will go for naught.
Evaluate the eligible players using your
league’s scoring system.
One of the most common mistakes made by fantasy owners is to draft players based only on the ratings from a "cheat sheet." But those are only meant as a guide; no cheat sheet (including ours) will be valid for all leagues. There are thousands of different scoring systems out there, and each one necessitates a different type of ranking. I’m not saying to ignore the cheat sheets. By all means, use them- but only as guides.
For example, if your league credits for strikeouts but it penalizes for walks that will negate some of a pitcher’s value. As another example, I was once in a league where a player received points for putouts and assists credited for the position at which the owner played him. Naturally this system increased the value of some players and decreased others. And it negated much of the worth of players who normally spend significant time at multiple positions.
The next step is to rank all of the eligible players at each position using your league's scoring system and the prior year’s statistics. There is ordinarily a great deal of correlation from year to year in a player’s fantasy performance using a particular scoring system. It will generally take at least several hours to do the rankings, but the time spent is generally well worth it.
After you have done that, examine the list to see which players you think will improve this year, and who you think will decline. Consider factors such as the player’s age, his long-term history, a change in teams/ballparks, the effect that off-season player movement will have on the player, injuries, or anything else that might affect his performance and his playing time. Compile your own rankings at each position, based on how valuable you think each player will be this year.
Generally you need not rank every eligible player. Determine how many players you should rank at each position by the size of your league and the makeup of your rosters. (Example: If you are in a 10-team league and each team carries exactly two shortstops, there is no need to rank more than the top 20 men at that position.)
Draft day is not the time to do most of your preparation. That should be done in advance. That way you will be ready when the day comes, and you shouldn’t have to fret a lot over each draft choice as they come up. Most of your work will have already been completed, and the only thing beyond your control will be what the other owners do.
Develop a plan.
Study the available players at each position. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the player with the most projected points is necessarily the one who should be drafted first.
Here is an example that should illustrate this point: Suppose you are in a 10-team league. After doing your research, you have assigned projected point values of between 950 and 1,000 to the 20 outfielders that you rate the highest. Suppose ‘hitter x’ is #1 on this list, and he has the highest projected point total of any player you have rated at any position.
It might seem that ‘hitter x’ is the player you should draft if you have the first pick. That might indeed be true, but not necessarily. To illustrate, suppose further that Randy Johnson (in his prime) is your top-rated starting pitcher, with a projected point total of 500, and the hurler you rate second projects out to just 400. Then Johnson would be a better pick than ‘hitter x’. This is true because you could select Johnson and still be able to get an outfielder who projects to within 50 points of ‘hitter x’ value with a later pick. However if you choose ‘hitter x’, Johnson will likely be gone by the time you make your next selection, and someone else will have a pitcher who projects to be far better than any of his peers. Taking Johnson would give you that edge.
Be ready on draft day.
As I said, most of your work should be done by now. If you have prepared properly, you should be able to make your selections without an overwhelming amount of thought, while some of the other owners will likely struggle over most every pick.
However there are still decisions to consider. Mostly you will need to utilize the strategy referred to in the prior section. In other words, whenever it approaches your turn to select, take a look at the top players available at each position, and look for the positions for which the best remaining player will soon experience a significant decrease in value. (For example, in the prior example, as soon as Randy Johnson is drafted, the best remaining player at the starting pitcher position will incur a significant decrease in value.)
In doing your analysis, note where you are in the drafting order and how long it will be until you select again. Consider the likelihood that certain players will "slide" to your next pick, given what you know about the players, the other owners and their needs. (Just for an example, an owner who selects a third baseman in the first round is very unlikely to pick another third baseman in the second round.)
In general, nothing of any value comes without some work. To maximize your chances for a successful fantasy season, a good deal of work will be necessary. But if you love baseball as I do, the hours will go by quickly, because the work is also fun. And when you reap the rewards of success later, you will be very glad that you put in the extra time.
