Fantasy Baseball Advice

So I participated in a 20 team, 5×5 draft (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 3 OFs, UTIL, 2 SPs, 2 RPs, 3 Ps, 4 Bench slots) recently because Grey was watching the Oscars instead (Um, Tivo?). I came away hating the time I had to wait between picks but also that my queue was being raided worse than an adventure with Short Round. I picked 9th overall and wanted to come away with three big bats in a row regardless of position without having to reach too far for star power or “man-crushes.” It’s almost impossible not to reach slightly with the time in between picks — 16 in one direction and then a whopping 22 the other way. So I set my sights on huge power potential guys and was basically punting SS and Catcher. I took chances on guys like Bay and Byrd based on the fact they will pretty much play every day and given their position in the lineup helping their fantasy potential. Starting pitching-wise, I am pretty decent (4 top 70 guys) as there were several huge runs on SP in the draft.  Also, huge runs on closers, but I refused to overpay for SAGNOF. Biggest needs for my team seem to be batting average and steals, but everyone has holes in a 20 team league. So take a gander at the results, criticism is always welcome.

There’s not much left to do.  You’ve printed out the 2011 fantasy baseball rankings.  You’ve paid attention when I went over my fantasy baseball sleeper posts.  You even drew a mustache on your mirror so every time you look at yourself you look like me.  The only thing left for you is actually taking part in a fantasy baseball draft.  No sweat, you’ve been mock drafting for the last two months.  First few rounds fly by.  You’re cool with a capital Clooney.  Rounds 5 through 8 come and go.  Nothing to it!  You pack a bowl for yourself for your glaucoma and shotgun it into your cat’s face.  Round 9 comes and Pedro Alvarez and Aramis Ramirez are drafted right before you and now the first bead of sweat forms.  Where are all of the third basemen?

Suddenly, you’re burning up like you just chugged a bottle of Emeril’s Creole Seasoning.  Worse, you have cotton mouth and have no time to go to the sink.  Outside, it’s raining.  Then “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink…” starts playing on loop in your head.  Over and over again like a Lady Gaga song chorus.  You look up at the draft timer and you have 30 seconds left.  You look at the reflection of yourself in your framed supposed-to-be-ironic poster that reads, “The glass is half empty, deal with it” and you begin to sob.  Not happy “I just won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar” sobs, but sad “Please let me out of your van; I don’t want my skin to be made into a suit” sobs.  With three seconds left, you draft Chris Johnson.

Immediately, everyone in the draft room begins to mock you.  Nice reach, I think Matt Stairs is still available for your corner!… Hey, I didn’t know Ed Wade’s toupee was drafting with us!…  You suck! And, with that, you open the window to your bedroom and jump out.  Luckily, you live on the first floor and only bruise your ankle.  You limp back through the house, ignore your Mom’s take-out-the-freakin’-garbage complaints, sit back down at your computer and zombie your way through the rest of the draft.  Only half paying attention because you know you screwed up the Johnson pick.

It was a reach.  You probably could’ve took Johnson a few rounds later.  But it’s not the ruination of your draft.  Reaching is a part of drafting.  If you’re not reaching for guys that you want then you might not know which guys you want.  You don’t want to reach every single round, but sometimes it’s not only appropriate but it’s necessary.  Wouldn’t you rather have a guy you want in the 9th round or a guy you don’t want in the 16th?  Draw an emoticon on your hand and learn to smile again.  It’ll be all right.

Head-to-Head, or H2H if you’re into abbreviations that look like R&B groups, doesn’t change a lot from our 2011 fantasy baseball rankings.  There are 300 billion suns in the Milky Way galaxy.  There are 100s of billions of galaxies in the universe.  There are at least 256,000 planets exactly like Earth.  Yet, there’s one Albert Pujols.  He’s still number one.  (Though Palbert Ujols on Planet Crimea is pretty good too.)  The strategy to play H2H changes.  You aren’t hoping Dunn hits 40 homers by October, but whether or not he’ll hit two homers on Sunday or if you should sit him to try and win steals.  It’s all about the match-ups, ya’ll!  So you want to build a team that can match up well with any other team.  (FYI, I’ve gone over this stuff before, but some might need a pine tree refresher hung from their rear view.)  Anyway, let’s look at some Head-to-Head fantasy baseball draft strategy:

1. Avoid guys that are prone to nagging injuries.

This is not to say a guy who is DL’d.  They go on the DL and that’s fine because then you can replace them.  Nagging injuries?  Whole different bailiwick.  You put Glass Chipper on an H2H team and you wanna strangle someone.  Hopefully, not the guy sitting behind you wearing biker shorts and eating an apple.  Go ahead, look behind you.  Yeah, that’s me.  What’s up?  Since H2H is played on a week-to-week basis, you can’t afford to take many goose eggs as a player nurses his hammy day-to-day.  BTW, I once nursed a hammy and everyone kept asking me why I was breastfeeding a pig.

2. Don’t punt anything, but don’t buy steal-only guys.

What’s Ellsbury or Crawford or Pierre et al going to get you?  2 steals per week?  They’re not going to win you steals.  So you’re going to get 3 steals from Ellsbury one week, your opponent is going to get 5 steals from his whole team and you’re going to lose steals anyway.  Or you’re not going to get anything from the aforementioned et al’s then you’re going to lose that week too.  You just lost two weeks and the season hasn’t even started yet.  See what those steal-only guys get you?  That doesn’t mean to punt these categories.  It means draft a balanced team.  Guys that will get you speed and power.  Then if the weekend rolls around and you’re within breathing distance of winning speed, you pick up some steals off waivers to try and win it.  If someone is going against you and you punt steals, then you’re giving them one category.  Are they giving you categories?  No offense, you seem like a good person, but I wouldn’t give you any categories.  There will be weeks when you’ll be out of the running for steals (pun point!) then you can make the decision to punt at that point (punt point!).

3. Starters, Starters, Starters…

If you can’t beat them with quality, you beat them with quantity.  Chances are you should be able to win Ks and Wins every week with this drafting strategy.  Then if you can win Saves, you’re only dealing with WHIP and ERA.  Figure at least once in a while your opponent is going to lose ERA or WHIP on their own doing.  Figure a few times you’ll win ERA and WHIP on your own doing.  So in roto I say take a late round flier on possible saves or a starter, with H2H, I say always take a starter.  Then another starter, then another.  Take them until you can’t take anymore.  This also means to wait even longer for starters.  Pretty self-explanatory, but for those who like self-explanatory things explained.  You don’t need a top starter when you’re throwing lots of junk out there anyway.

4. The Waivers are Your Oysters.

Don’t like Juan Rivera’s match-ups this week.  As Frida Kahlo used to say, hasta luego, Rivera.  I take this approach in roto too, but in H2H it’s even more pronounced.  Besides some of your top hitters and pitchers, everyone’s fluid.  To mix metaphors and sense, the waiver wire is your own personal Idaho filled with potatoes and you’re an Irishman.

The other day I went over my fantasy baseball strategy for snake drafts.  Lots of you know my auction tips already, but some of you just joining us — hey, close the door behind you! — may not.  Lots of the strategy for my snake drafts also applies here.  If you ask me — and you kinda did ask me by reading this shizz — auction drafts are where it’s at, yo!  You get in a room with your best fantasy baseball buddies.  The guys you haven’t seen since last year’s draft.  The guys you don’t want to see until next year’s draft.  A few guys you actively despise.  One guy, and there’s always one, has his phone on vibrate just in case the missus calls about Petey, their sick Schnauzer.  Then you have the guy who will go the extra dollar for (fill-in favorite player from his favorite team).  You know he’s his favorite player because he’s wearing his jersey.  You have the guy who brings only Cheetos and turns everything he touches orange, and, if he touches something that was already orange, he makes it oranger.  Finally, you have the guy who made plans at 5PM and begins to yell at everyone at 4PM that they’re taking too long.  And, it always turns out, this day is the best day of the year.  Auction draft day is better than your wedding day.  As for online auction drafts, they’re just a’ight.  Anyway, here’s some tried and true tips to help you through your auction fantasy baseball draft:

1. Early in the draft, throw out guys that you know you have no interest in that will cost others a lot.

Say Joe Mauer snuck into a 21 and under club with Joe Jonas’s ID and took your baby’s mama home.  Now you refuse to draft him.  So the first name you should nominate is Mauer and let others overspend on him.  You don’t want high-priced pitching?  Nominate Lincecum.  You think Carlos Gonzalez is overrated?  Nominate him.  You get the idea.  Moving on…

2. Go the extra dollar if you really want someone.

When you get to the end of the auction, no one has any flippin’ idea what they spent to get a guy.  If you want J.J. Putz and every auction value article you’ve read says he’s worth $6 and the bidding’s just gone to $7, go to $8 if you need a closer.  It’s your team; you need certain guys whether they’re overpriced or not.

3. You want to be “rich” with auction money.

You won’t always have the most money at the draft, but, whenever possible, you want to.  The more money you have A) The better leverage you have attaining any guy you might want. B) You can get great buys late in the draft when no one else has any money.  Invariably, someone will throw out, say, Dexter Fowler for a dollar (or some player that they think they can sneak through).  Then you get Fowler for $2 and everyone in the draft room groans, wishing they still had some money.  At your draft, you want to be like the little tuxedoed guy from Monopoly.  In fact, dress like him for your draft.

4. Decent catchers and closers are even easier to acquire in auctions.

In a snake draft, you never know when the Arencibia, Iannetta, Putz, Nathan or whoever is going to be drafted.  The beauty of the auction is you can have anyone.  In my experience, you should wait until most of the teams have filled up their closers or catcher(s) slot then you nominate some one dollar beauts.

5. Keep track of who other people want.

The beauty of the auction is you know exactly what everyone else is thinking.  If Joe Schmohawk goes to $10 on Espinosa and you get him for $11, keep JS in mind when you’re looking to trade Espinosa after his hot April.  If someone groans when you get Raburn, keep it in mind.  Unless it’s the same guy who’s been eating nothing but Cheetos for ten hours.  Then it might just be gas.

In my previous post, I wrote about the 2010 best and worst fantasy baseball draft values.  I thought it would be interesting to analyze the results of last year’s 21 Razzball Commenter Leagues to see how well these rankings lined up with fantasy baseball team success.  The format for all these leagues was:  12 team, MLB, snake draft, 5×5.

For simplicity’s sake, I used draft results for assigning each player to a specific team.  Obviously trades happen, players get added/dropped, etc.  But sifting through the data to credit team A with said player because he had 290 AB vs. 250 AB on Team B is a much larger exercise.  I focused only on players drafted in 50% or more of the leagues and went through the final stats per team to assign the following key free agent pickups:  J. Axford, J. Bautista, T. Cahill, J. Garcia, A. Huff, C. Lewis, B. Myers, A. Pagan, B. Posey, A. Torres, and CJ Wilson.

I created three stats to rank players using the 2^nd and 3^rd only for tiebreakers:

1)  % of Top 3 Finishes – How many times did a team with this player finish in the top 3 of their league?

2)  Median Finish

3)  Average Finish

The full results can be found here.  The top players for 2010 were:

1. Paul Konerko – 61.9% Top 3 Finish (Median=2nd)
2. Dan Uggla – 61.9% (Median=3rd)
3. John Axford – 57.1% (Median=3rd, Avg=3.7)
4. Buster Posey – 57.1% (Median=3rd, Avg=4.2)
5. Carlos Gonzalez – 57.1% (Median=3rd, Avg=4.4)
6. Chris Perez – 52.9% (Median=3rd, Avg=4.8)
7. Raul Ibanez – 52.4% (Median=3rd, Avg=4.4)
8. Robinson Cano – 52.4% (Median=3rd, Avg 4.7)
9. Rickie Weeks – 47.6% (Median=4th, Avg 4.9)
10. Neftali Feliz – 47.6% (Median=4th, Avg 5.0)

Seven of the above players finished in the top 50 of the Best Values with Posey’s 72nd place finish a bit misleading since he started in May.  Cano is 75th overall on the Best Value list but he is 3rd in value amongst top 50 picks (Halladay and Votto are ahead of him).  The only fluke in the bunch is Raul Ibanez.

Here are the bottom 10  players:

1. Brad Hawpe – 0% Top 3 finish (Median=10th)
2. Yadier Molina – 0% (Median=9th)
3. David Ortiz – 4.8% (Median=10th, Avg=8.9)
4. Tim Lincecum – 4.8% (Median=10th, Avg=8.9)
5. Scott Kazmir – 4.8% (Median=9th, Avg=9.0)
6. Huston Street – 4.8% (Median=9th, Avg=8.3)
7. Todd Helton – 4.8% (Median=9th, Avg=8.0)
8. Stephen Drew – 4.8% (Median=8th, Avg=8.1)
9. Adam Lind – 4.8% (Median=8th, Avg=8.0
10. J.A. Happ – 4.8% (Median=7th)

Four of these players finished in the top 50 of Worst Values (of players with ADP<212):  Hawpe, Kazmir, Helton, and Lind.  Ortiz is the only player who finished in the top half of value – I think this may be because several teams who drafted Big Papi dropped him after his awful start so they didn’t benefit from his resurgence.

There are a myriad of theories that can either be created or tested from this data set.  I looked into several that I have detailed below.  Feel free to look at the data yourself and add your thoughts under comments.  (If you own a blog, feel free to provide your post URL in the comments.  Just make sure to add a link to this post and note the data came from Razzball Commenter Leagues.)  Just one word of caution – a sample of 21 leagues is more directionally significant vs. statistically significant.  Anomalies should be expected working with a sample like this (e.g., how could teams that drafted Rollins finish in the top 3 more than teams that drafted Tulo or H-Ram?)

You Can Overcome a Bad Top 3 Pick – It’s definitely possible to overcome a bad pick in your top 3 rounds – but it’s not recommended.  I know it’s statistically anomalous but 8 of the 21 teams that drafted Jimmy Rollins finished 1st, 2nd, or 3rd.  Only teams with V-Mart, Zimmerman, Mauer, and Pujols had more top 3 finishes among the top 36 picks.  Even teams that drafted Jacoby Ellsbury or Mark Reynolds – the absolute bombs of the top 36 picks – managed 3 top 3 finishes.

You Can Overcome two Bad Top 4 Picks – Of the top 48 picks, one-third (16) were below average for their position based on Point Shares (Granderson, Rollins, Haren, Pedroia, Sizemore, Kinsler, Sandoval, Morneau, Utley, Ellsbury, Youkilis, Reynolds, Upton, Greinke, Bay, Lind).  The average finish of teams that drafted two or more of these picks was 7.2 (average would be 6.5) with 6 first place finishes, 7 second place finishes, and 2 third place finishes.  There were 15 top 3 finishes compared to 28 bottom 3 finishes.  Granderson and Rollins were drafted on 2 winning teams.  The other four combinations were Sandoval-Morneau, Haren-Pedroia, Kinsler-Sandoval, and a Granderson-Youkilis-Kinsler trifecta.  So missing on two of your first four picks isn’t a suggested path but it’s not a death sentence either.

Draft Slot Not Important – The Razzball Commenter Leagues indicate that draft position does not have a major impact on team success.  There were winners coming from all 12 draft positions and only one draft position (1st) managed even 3 winners.  My favorite position of 4th finished worst with a median finish of 9th.  This is despite Ryan Braun being the most common pick at that position which is a lot better than 5th (Utley) or 7th (Kemp).  Below is a ranking of draft picks based on median team finish (with average finish as tiebreaker):

1 – 10th draft position (Median 4th place finish, 2 winners)
2 – 1st draft position (Median 5th place finish, 3 winners)
T-3 – 3rd draft position (Median 6th place finish, 1 winner)
T-3 – 11th draft position (Median 6th place finish, 2 winners)
5 – 6th draft position (Median 6th place finish, 1 winner)
6- 9th draft position (Median 6th place finish, 2 winners)
7 – 8th draft position (Median 7th place finish, 1 winner)
8 – 5th draft position (Median 7th place finish, 2 winners)
9 – 12th draft position (Median 7th place finish, 1 winner)
10 – 2nd draft position (Median 8th place finish, 2 winners)
11 – 7th draft position (Median 8th place finish, 2 winners)
12 – 4th draft position (Median 9th place finish, 2 winners)

Drafting SPs in Top 3 Rounds – As some of you may know, I am a bigger proponent of drafting pitchers in top rounds than most bloggers.  This wasn’t a winning strategy AT ALL in 2010 RCL leagues though – at least for the first 3 rounds.  There were 5 SPs taken in the first 3 rounds of RCL leagues:  Lincecum (13), Halladay (19), F-Her (26), Greinke (28), and Sabathia (30).  Halladay drafters managed 6 top 3s which is slightly above average (21 leagues * 25% of teams finish in top 3 = 5.25 top 3 finishes).  Lincecum, F-Her, Greinke, and Sabathia drafts managed 7 TOTAL top 3 finishes (2 for all except 1 for Lincecum).  The Greinke/Lincecum finishes might make some sense but F-Her?

I dug in deeper and found that, in 8 leagues, one or more teams drafted 2 of these SPs.  These ten teams had the following finishes:  4th (twice), 7th (once), 8th (thrice), 9th (twice), 10th (once), 11th (once).  So it’s certainly clear that you should NEVER draft two SPs in the first 3-4 rounds.  But that doesn’t fully explain why teams that drafted SPs in the first 3 rounds (espec. F-Her teams) finished so poorly.

If someone wants to pore through the 21 leagues to figure out, that would be great.  My hypothesis is that it is harder to draft SPs early and catch up on 1B/OF power than the reverse.  I think it can be the more successful strategy if applied right in the typical league.  But, if you’re going to deploy this strategy, I would suggest doing a number of mock drafts and seeing how well you can draft offense in later rounds.  (For an example of how this could work, I did an expert NL-only snake draft last year and picked Lincecum and Reyes as my top 2.  Obviously, those two players did not meet my expectations yet I still finished 2nd because I found power at a cheaper price later in the draft – Werth, Uggla, LaRoche, Garrett Jones, Cody Ross, Barajas, picked up Stanton as a free agent)

Avoid The SB Specialists In Top Rounds – There were 7 players drafted in the first 6 rounds that were safe bets for less than 20 HRs and more than 20 SBs:  Crawford (16), Ellsbury (23), Reyes (39), Ichiro (43), BJ Upton (44), Roberts (55), Figgins (72).  All of these 7 players finished below average (5 or less) in top 3 finishes.  As you’d expect, Crawford and Ichiro did best (5 top 3s each) while the rest had 3 top 3s except for Figgins with one measly 3rd place finish (the worst success rate of all top 6 round picks).

Drafting 2 MIs In First 6 Rounds – I prefer to not draft more than 1 2B/SS in early rounds so I thought I’d check to see how teams fared that drafted 2+ MIs in the first 6 rounds.  There were on average 3 teams per league that used this draft strategy and the distribution of team finishes is almost completely even between 1st through 12th (so very close to a 6.5 average)

Relief Pitcher strategy – Relief Pitchers represent 7 of the top 20 and 10 of the top 36 players ranked by their drafted teams’ performance.  John Axford (I counted teams who had the most IP for him), Chris Perez, and Neftali Feliz all had 9 or more top 10 finishes.  So is there a way to predict top value closers?  Pretty much, no.  I’d say that closer value is dependent on six variables:  1) Opportunity to Save Games, 2) ERA/WHIP, 3) Strikeouts, 4) Wins, 5) Saves, and 6) Health.  The first three are easier to project than the other three.  Strikeouts and ERA/WHIP are fairly correlated with high BB pitchers being what I’d think is the most likely exception.  So I’d focus on targeting high K closers with some opportunity to save games.  I also advise to overdraft this position in terms of quantity and include any set-up guy with 70+ K potential.  Lastly, I would avoid drafting one of the first 3 closers unless you felt confident of 90+ K.  I’d rather build up in other positions in those early rounds and go for volume vs. quality on closers.

Draft Top Catchers or Punt? – There are always a handful of catchers every year that go in the first 100 picks.  I generally punt catcher until later rounds for a number of reasons, most notably that catchers have higher injury rates.  (This is in snake drafts only.  I don’t mind investing for catchers in auction drafts if I’m getting enough of a discount.).  Last year, there were four catchers picked on average in the top 100 picks within Razzball Commenter Leagues:  Mauer (18), V-Mart (48), McCann (49), and Wieters (92).  While neither Mauer and V-Mart had sensational years, they provided very good value for their draft position and finished on 9 and 10 top-3 teams, respectively (note: one 2nd place team drafted both).  McCann teams fell slightly below average with 4 top-3 teams while Wieters owners had 3 top-3s.  While that seems to average out, just note that only teams that picked up Posey fared better, on average, than teams with Mauer and V-Mart.  I’d argue drafting a top catcher was a good bet for 2010 but still wouldn’t advise it for 2011 unless you get a good discount – a good rule of thumb for one catcher leagues is to take Catcher ADP and multiply it by some multiple of 1.25-1.5 – e.g., if V-Mart is at an ADP of 50th and you think that’s his true value, don’t make a move on him until he drops to 63-75.

High Upside OFs Are Great, Right? - When a player like Carlos Gonzalez has a breakthrough year (2nd on estimated value vs. draft position, 5th place based on team performance in Razzball leagues), the natural reaction is to draft several high-upside players in next year’s drafts.  Just a word of warning, though.  Here are some of the other high-upside OFs coming into 2010 and their RCL team performance rank:  Travis Snider – 96th, Jason Heyward – 108th, Colby Rasmus – 164th, Adam Jones – 237th, Jay Bruce – 239th, and Justin Upton – 269th.  I’m not saying to avoid high-upside plays – just don’t overpay for them with the thought you’re going to get the next CarGo.

Free Agent Strategy – The 1^st/2^nd/3^rd place finishers averaged slightly more than 1 of the top 10 free agents.  But while Jose Bautista was the highest value free agent, he only appeared on 5 top-3 finish teams.  On the other hand, John Axford and Buster Posey each appeared on 12 top-3 teams (including 8 1st place finishes for Axford!).  Why?  Many ‘good’ teams didn’t have room for Bautista at 3B, OF, 1B/3B, or UTIL.  Poorer teams had more holes and were more likely to gamble on what appeared to be a fluke.  Axford and Posey – on the other hand – are in positions where many teams are open to an upgrade.  Starting pitchers seem to finish somewhere in between with Trevor Cahill and Jaime Garcia finishing on 8 and 7 top-3s while CJ Wilson, Colby Lewis, and Brett Myers finished on 4-5 top 3s.  This seems to fit in with typically recommended free agency behavior to:  1) Pick up any closer and 2) Don’t be afraid to drop late draft picks – especially at catcher – if a higher upside play presents itself.