RotoRank Roundtable

Having a Good Fantasy Baseball Draft

Draft Preparation
Draft Preparation is probably the most important factor to beginning your quest to becoming League Champion. As with anything else, the more time you put into your draft preparation, the more likely you are to have a successful draft. Since most of us don’t get paid to compile statistics, generate fantasy rankings, and scour the world wide web for breaking news on minor league players with potential, we rely on third party publications to do most of our research for us. Thankfully, most of the publications on the market are worth their price for the up to date player information and minor league research, but if you rely solely on a book to guide you through a draft, chances are you won’t have a good draft.

Draft guides can get out-dated relatively quickly once spring training begins. Players get injured, players get traded, players get sent to the minors, some rookies may win the starting job on their team and some players retire. Most draft rankings can’t foresee all of these events. Simply going into a draft with your trusty draft guide in hand won’t cut it, especially if your league is filled with die-hard competitors!

Once you know when your draft is set to take place, you should at the very least schedule the preceding weekend to updating your draft guide's research. A few of the sites that I have found useful in the past for reliable fantasy information can be found on my Useful Links Page. Once you’ve updated your information, the trick is to modify the draft guide rankings to reflect all of those changes, including creating your various sub-lists like "sleepers" and "rookies".

One of the biggest mistakes I see inexperienced owners make is to select a “sleeper”, "rookie", or “injury-prone” player too early in the draft. There is absolutely no reason to grab a rookie or sleeper early in the draft when his forecasted stats do not appear to be much higher than an established veteran. For instance, this year everyone is going to want to grab Hideki Matsui since he recently agreed to terms with the NY Yankees. And, even though he had a stellar year in Japan, we all know that his performance in a foreign league doesn’t directly translate into MLB Statistics. I personally project Hideki Matsui to have 500 AB’s, 30 Homeruns, a .311 Batting Average, 80 Runs scored, 80 RBI’s, and 5 Stolen Bases. Now if my projections are accurate, that is a pretty good year for a player in his first MLB season. His RotoRank value puts him at pick 72, two slots before Gary Sheffield and Randy Winn. Now, if I have the 72nd pick and both Matsui and Sheffield are still available and I need to select an Outfielder, I’d personally take Gary Sheffield. You know exactly what to expect from Gary Sheffield, where as Matsui is a much greater risk. There is no reason to take that kind of risk early on in a draft. I’d probably pass on him until the 96th pick of the draft. I think he is more suited to be in the neighborhood of Mike Cameron (Ranked 92nd), Raul Ibanez (Ranked 93rd), and Juan Encarnacion (Ranked 96th). Of course some people don’t feel comfortable making those kinds of decisions in the heat of the moment, and it took a few bad experiences for me to learn my lesson, so that’s why you need to put some effort into your draft preparation!

Experience
I believe that 50% of the battle for drafting a good team is accomplished by spending time before your league’s draft. The next 30% contributing to a good draft is experience. As a Fantasy Baseball Owner for over 13 years, I have seen some strange drafts in my time. And, even if you think you’ve seen it all, you are always likely to see a few draft day surprises in any league! Preparing your Draft sheets will give you an understanding of each player’s worth, but they can’t predict how the other owners in your league are going to rank the players available in the draft. Even if everyone is using the same popular fantasy baseball draft guide, each owner will have different preferences that surface during the selection process. Some owners prefer dominating Pitching, while other owners love to lead the league in Hitting. There will be owners who like to draft balanced teams, while other owners will only draft players that they like to watch on television. It takes experience to read a draft and know if you should stray from your draft rankings in order to prevent losing out on key statistical categories. My advice to inexperienced owners is to draft based upon the best Value available at the time of their pick. Even if you don’t like the player with the most Value, there is always someone who loves that player and they will trade you whatever you need to get him. Of course, the maximize value strategy also has its drawbacks. If you always maximize the value of your draft pick, you may get locked out of a category like Stolen Bases or Saves, but you will have plenty of excess in the rest of the statistical categories to facilitate trading. Just remember, if you want to win a league, you will need to make a trade or two throughout the year, unless you are extremely lucky…

Luck
Coincidentally, I believe luck makes up the final 20% of everyone’s draft strategy. As with all games, there is some dependence upon random events and chance occurrences that allows an owner to win a Fantasy Baseball League. You normally have to take a chance at some point during the 6 month long season to win a league. You made need to decide between two Free Agents to replace your injured or under-achieving player, or you may need to decide which of your two stud pitchers you will deal to get the power hitter you need for the stretch run. No one knows what the outcome of the future will be; however, you can do certain things during your draft to reduce the impact of luck on your season. Every time you draft a player, you are taking a risk within the game. The key to winning is minimizing your risk while maximizing your value. For instance, a lot of people drafted Kevin Brown and Ken Griffey Jr. in the Top 5 rounds of their drafts last year, and when healthy, both players are worthy of such high selections, but both had problems in 2001 that some people believed would carry over into 2002. I happened to be one of those skeptics, so when I ranked my players in February of 2002, neither one was in my Top 100. Now if either of those players had slipped into the later rounds, I would have probably grabbed one of them, but I never had the chance. Lucky for me I didn’t get them, because neither one had a productive fantasy year in 2002. By utilizing a worst-case scenario when compiling my draft order, I try to remove all of the risk I possibly can from my draft. Simply reducing the number of "one-year wonders" and “injury-prone” players on your teams from 5 to 2 can make a big impact on the success of your draft. And, if by some chance one of my favorite “mystery” guys slips well below where I had projected him to go, I will take a chance on him, because I will have reduced my risk and increased his potential value to my team.

Summary
Remember, Drafting a fantasy team is half the fun of participating in a fantasy sports league, so if you really want to enjoy your season, you should really take some time to prepare for your Draft Day festivities!