My Fantasy Baseball draft Strategy

Polar Vortex is over and white walkers are rescinding back from the Wall, which means one thing – Fantasy Baseball season is upon us.

Hey – fantasy baseball is a complicated sport. I’m not pretending I have the answers, but what I will share with you today is how I draft. The most standard fantasy league is 12 teams – H2H with ten categories – 5 offensive (runs, homeruns, rbis, stolen bases, batting average) 5 pitching (wins, saves, strikeouts, ERA, WHIP). I’m also assuming there is unlimited add/drops which most leagues are through default.

Over the many years, I’ve tried all sorts of ways to gain edges in different categories to ultimately find the path to win at least 6-4 each week.

Let’s establish my fantasy baseball theories first:

• Pitching is very deep BUT you want to target high K guys and I don’t want to wait til the end of the draft for my staff. At the end are pitchers who don’t get Ks and will blow up your ERA/WHIP every third start.
• I want offense in the first part of my draft since power/speed are the hardest numbers to find overall. I want two stolen base guys with my first five rounds in a perfect world.
• I don’t draft Relief Pitchers. Multiple reasons – I don’t want to waste the higher draft picks to grab the elite ones, the turnover at RP is the highest position in baseball and I want my opponent that has three or four RPs to have those assets wasted other than getting the one category from me.
• Don’t reach for offensive positions. In the positions Catcher, Second Base, Shortstop to be sure but can be applied almost anywhere. The baseball season is a long year. Players go through hot streaks and slumps. I noticed that there are always players on the waiver wire who could perform at the same rate or better than my middle-tier player I drafted.
• No more than one bench offensive player. I personally prefer none but sometimes I’ll leave a speed guy or multi-position guy on my bench for off days with my regular lineup. I want every bench spot to go towards starting pitching.

So using these theories as a template, I want to grab offense in the early rounds. I almost never take a SP early. I will have plenty of opportunity after round 4 to grab great pitchers. I won’t have that same opportunity with proven guys who can contribute in multiple offensive categories. So I target elite position players first, if I don’t like the draft spot for them I will move to outfielders.

I will continue to do this until I feel there are no elite position players/outfielders left in which case then I will take starting pitchers. A lot of them. I want to build a staff of top 15-30 ranked SP. There will always be one or two that break out and this also protects me against the ones that are busts.

While everyone else is grabbing 7th-11th ranked SS/2b/C or RPs, I’m loading up on starters in the middle/latter rounds.

*quick side note – the argument against the all SP staff is that you are punting one category and by having more SP than your opponent every week, you are likely to lose ERA and WHIP since you’ll have more Innings Pitched. I haven’t found this to be true. In fact, if you have a quality pitching staff, I win those categories more than I lose them and I’m virtually assured of Ws and Ks each week.

After my staff is solid I target high upside OF or position players that I know will have an everyday starting job. Sometimes it’s as easy as finding projected lineups. I see all the time a hyped guy that is batting 8th but no one wants to draft the boring veteran batting 2nd. Take these guys and wait for better options to emerge in free agency. The goal isn’t to always be adding/dropping, it’s to work towards a permanent option but you aren’t attached enough to not want to take the chance.

Remember – beating your opponent 10-0 every week would be ideal but isn’t realistic as a drafting strategy. Using this I hope to win Ws, Ks, ERA or WHIP, and three offensive categories from using all my early picks on batters. By being active on the wire and monitoring playing time, you can plug those “holes” you left on draft day pretty quick.

Any questions or want to agree/disagree with me – i’m always on twitter.