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Essential Fantasy Baseball Draft Items
Posted by
rotorank
on
Saturday, September 02, 2006 (EST)
Having some simple tools available during your fantasy baseball draft can make building a good fantasy baseball team easy.
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Introduction
As we enter the first weekend of March, the baseball fantasy season officially begins. I have had a few people tell me that they will be attending their first draft of the 2003 season this weekend, so I thought I’d share my drafting practices. There are three essentials that I always like to bring to a draft: 1) A set of blank roster sheets; 2) My draft ranking list broken down by position; and 3) an update injury listing. Some people have a much larger list of essentials, but I like to keep it as simple as possible. The more you bring to a draft, the more likely you are to be distracted from your main goal of drafting the best team in your league!
Blank Roster Sheets
I like creating a set of blank roster sheets that I can complete during the draft as each owner makes their selection. Unlike most people, I don’t use these sheets to analyze each team during the draft. The main purpose these roster sheets serve for me during the draft is to identify when I can take a chance and let a player that I like slip past my current pick and hope he makes it to me in the next round. I usually use Microsoft Excel to create a form that puts either four teams per sheet or two teams per sheet (download my sample Roster Sheets and feel free to modify them to fit your league's configuration).
I believe that when you are having a hard time choosing between two equally valued players, you need to somehow break the tie. You won’t always guess right, but if you base your decision on the information you had at that time in the draft, it does alleviate the agony of second-guessing once the season starts! For example, if you are at a point late in the draft where you need to pick between a First Baseman and an Outfielder, You want to quickly glance over the team rosters in your league and see what has been drafted more heavily to that point. If every team but you has two First Baseman (and each team only needs two First Baseman on their starting team), then there is no reason why you should take the first baseman at that point in the draft. Most teams will be looking to fill out their other openings, so they are more likely to draft Outfielders in the picks following you. If you like both the First Baseman and Outfielder equally at that point in the draft, then you should select the Outfielder. The First Baseman is most likely going to slip to your next pick, since no one else but you needs a First Baseman on his or her starting squad. There is no guarantee that you will eventually get that First Baseman, especially if you league has reserve squads (which most of the owners like to trade, but I’ll bet you the First Baseman will have a much better chance making it to your next pick than the Outfielder you want to select.
Now, I see a lot of owners use Roster Sheets to analyze each team throughout the draft. To me, that is the wrong approach to drafting. If you want to have a great draft, you need to focus on your team’s needs and the draft strategy you prepared before the day started. I personally don’t care if one team is drafting all speed demons or another team is drafting all pitching. The team with the most stolen bases can only earn so many points in a rotisserie league, and it won’t matter if he leads the second highest base stealing team by 1 or 50, he is still will only get 12 points (assuming you are in a 12 team league). If you start comparing your team to others during the draft, you’ll start chasing categories instead of the best value for your team’s draft strategy. Believe me, there is no one way to draft a winning team. As long as you concentrate on building your team (according to the strategy you planned out before the draft, like: totally balance, heavy on hitting, heavy on pitching, or choosing best available player no matter what), you’ll have a much more successful draft. There is plenty of time after the draft to compare your team to others in the league and determining what categories you can trade or what categories you’ll need to improve to make it to the top.
I have actually gone into drafts (usually on-line drafts) without even using the blank roster sheets because of space limitations or time limitations. I am not the quickest note taker, so sometimes filling out each owner’s roster can distract me if I don’t have enough time between picks to accurately record the draft information. Since most of the leagues I draft are rotisserie leagues using snake drafts (teams 1-12, then teams 12-1), I can usually tell what teams will draft just by using my rankings sheets that are grouped by position. If your First Baseman ranking page is almost completely highlighted, it’s a safe bet most teams have their starting First Baseman.
If you are in an Auction Style Draft, I strongly recommend you have a set of owner rosters to update throughout the draft, because there is an additional dynamic involving draft salary caps that can’t be easily visualized by just crossing names off of a list.
Draft Ranking List
I’ve seen people use two types of draft rankings lists during a draft: a straight overall ranking list, or a ranking list broken down into position groups where players are ranked within their position. If I had to choose only one or the other, I’d prefer the position ranking list. It’s a lot easier to find players based on their position, and when using the player grouped ranking sheets, you can quickly analyze where most of the picks have been made at any point in the draft. Ideally, if you have enough time before your draft to prepare, you should try to combine the two draft list styles.
RotoRank reports that group players by position list the players in order of their overall rank that is displayed in the first column of the report; therefore, you have access to a simple means of identifying a player’s overall value, as well as their value within a specific position. If you want to take things one step further, try using the Position Scarcity Breakdown Report (Available to Registered RotoRank Users Only). If you use the position scarcity report, you have three levels of information to base a decision upon: Overall Rank, Position Rank, and Position Scarcity Groupings (see my article "Draft Like a Fantasy Baseball Expert" for a description of position scarcity groupings).
Finally, if you aren’t using a set of roster sheets to record each teams selections, you can also use the margins on one of these RotoRank reports to make notes on what team and round an owner selected a player from your draft list. You can then use this information after the draft to build the league rosters, if you just can’t wait for your commissioner to insert them into their league tracking system.
Updated Injury Information
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a draft where someone drafts a player who was recently injured and is expected to miss considerable time during the upcoming season. If you are in a friendly league, most of the time other owners point out this information to the ill-prepared owner in the spirit of friendship and goodwill, but in most leagues that have a more intense competitive spirit, the drafting of an injured player becomes a comic relief for the other owners in your league as soon as you finalize your pick! Trust me, it’s not a mistake you want to make very often during the course of your fantasy career! Take Trevor Hoffman for instance in 2003. He is electing to have surgery this week, so you might as well cross him off your list or plan on him being one of your reserve picks.
To be completely up-to-date on injuries, the best thing to do is to visit ESPN.COM and ROTOTIMES.COM the morning of the draft. You can easily print out the RotoTimes Injury List and bring it with you, then right before you make each pick, just check under the team information and see if your player is listed. It’ll save you from being the joke of your draft…
Conclusion
The key to an effective draft is having an organized approach to the drafting process and dependable information about players you are drafting. The more time you put into research before the draft, the better your team will be. If you have a well-planned approach to your draft and you can manage to stay focused on your team throughout all of the friendly banter exchanged throughout the day, I’m sure you will be happy with your results.
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