Introduction

I’ve said this before, but just having a great draft list isn’t enough to win your league on draft day, especially if you competing in a very competitive league.  All owners have some sort of draft list, and I’d take my RotoRank list versus any “Expert Draft List” in a straight draft where each owner HAD to take the highest available player on their list.  Unfortunately, very few owners follow their draft lists verbatim, so if you simply use your RotoRank list to take the best available player left in the draft pool, you won’t maximize your opportunity to put together the perfect draft!

If you are able to determine how the other owners in your league are using their draft lists, you will be in a better position to identify players who may slip to lower rounds in the draft.  Sammy Sosa is the prime example of this maximizing value theory.  In my two drafts, Sammy Sosa slipped to the third round of each 10 team mixed league draft.  RotoRank has Sosa list in the top 6, so if you can take him in the 3^rd round while you are able to grab another 1^st round player in his place like a Mark Prior or Scott Rolen or other scarce position player, you’ve just improved your team that much more. 

If you read my free article about my first live draft of 2004, you know I slightly regret letting Sammy Sosa pass me by in the Third Round, although I did get Scott Rolen in the third round, and he was a 1^st round RotoRank player at a much scarcer position at the time I made my selection.  The difference between the two could end up costing me 20 homeruns in my final stats.  If I would have correctly read that Rolen and Chavez would have likely made it back to me in the 4^th round, I would have been better off taking Sosa and Rolen/Chavez instead of Rolen and Chavez.  I’m not going to suffer too much with my picks, but I’m just trying to show the importance that reading your draft can make in 2004.

The Goal

Your main objective in the draft is to get as many top players you can with your allotted number of picks.  It sounds easy enough, but taking chances on rookies or players with short track records can easy sabotage your plan!

It takes a lot of practice to get really comfortable guessing at which players will slide into later rounds, and no one will ever be 100% correct, so don’t be concerned about being perfect.  If you simply gain one or two extra bargains over the course of your entire draft that everyone else missed, that is likely enough to get you into being a pre-season favorite.

Reading Draft Strategies

There are numerous strategies and approaches each owner can bring to the draft, but they all can be boiled down into one of three main approaches: 1) Hitter Premium; 2) Pitcher Premium; and 3) Best Available Player.

RotoRank is based on utilizing the “Position Scarcity Theory” which is just one of the many implementations of drafting the best available player.  The major difference between a standard best available player list and a position scarcity based player list is that players who are at positions with shallow player pools get an edge in the rankings.

In my opinion, just having a list based on Position Scarcity already gives you a major advantage during the draft, but when it comes to fantasy baseball, I like to be greedy, so I want as many stud players I can get in the early rounds of a fantasy baseball draft.

Major Indicators

Based upon my simplistic approach to identifying a drafting strategy, it really isn’t difficult determining what your competitors feel is the prevailing strategy to winning is in your league.  After the first 3 or 4 rounds of drafting, you should be able to determine how well you are going to do in the draft.

To determine if your league is favoring hitters, you simply need to review your draft list and see how many of your top 3 rounds worthy pitchers are remaining after the final pick in the third round.  Chances are, if there are 4 or 5 of these pitchers still available, then owners are favoring hitters and likely are dipping into lower ranked players early to lock up certain hitters they want for 2004.

To determine if your league is favoring pitchers, you simply need to review your draft list and see how many of your top 3 rounds worthy hitters are remaining after the final pick in the third round.  Chances are, if there are 5 to 7 stud hitters still available, then owners are favoring pitchers and likely are dipping into lower ranked pitchers early in the draft to lock up certain players they want for 2004.

If almost all of your top 3 rounds worth of picks are off the board after the third round has been completed, then most of your league is following the best available player strategy of drafting, so it will come down to how accurate everybody’s projections are for 2004.  RotoRank projections are on the conservative side in that they favor players with longer track records for health and consistency, so you’ll always be in a position to compete for a league prize since you are not taking unnecessary risks during the early portion of the draft.

In most cases, your league will either favor hitters or favor pitchers, in which case, your RotoRank list will give you a huge advantage, and you can increase your advantage by reading the draft correctly. 

Example

Well, to give you an example of how I read my first draft of 2004, let’s take a look at the first 3 rounds and analyze each pick.

Eric Gagne in the first round of a 10-team rotisserie draft was a good sign that I’d get at least one extra stud player on my squad in the first 12 rounds.  You can’t always predict when or where that extra player will surface, but you know you’ll be able to spot him if you are using the “Expert Draft Guide”.  In my case, I was somehow able to get Lance Berkman in round 6 of this draft.

Compared to the RotoRank, Halladay and Vazquez went too early.  These picks along with Gagne in round 1 indicated to me that the owners in this league were favoring pitching early, so when they are grabbing weaker hitter later in the draft, I’ll be looking for my bargain pitchers.  I got Andy Pettitte and Russ Ortiz in rounds 12 and 13 respectively.  Both players are rated in the Top 100 of the RotoRank draft list, so I got two great bargains!

When I took Rolen at the time, no 3B was selected, and I had both Rolen and Chavez slotted at top 20 picks at a relatively scarce position.  RJ and Sosa could have both been great value picks for me, but I decided to focus on the infield in this draft, especially with health concerns for RJ and my anticipation of getting most of my bargains in the outfield later in the draft!

Conclusion