Fantasy Baseball Draft Goals For 5×5 Stat Categories

This is a post for the fantasy baseball drafters who use Excel, Google Docs, or some other war room software that automatically totals a drafted team’s stats while in the middle of a draft.  Or perhaps for those of you who do mock drafts or simulated drafts.

The below grid represents my projected 75% mark in each stat category across 10/12/14/15/16 team ESPN and Yahoo default roster format leagues.

These numbers should only be used directionally.  Please note that each projection source projects to a different league average so your team may look great if using a ‘bullish’ source and look poor if using a ‘bearish’ source.

Personally, I ignore team totals throughout a draft and go by feel in terms of my team’s balance.  While I have had regrettable drafts over the years, I do not recall one that failed because my team was not balanced enough.  If I do happen to have the time and curiosity to do an in-draft litmus test, I just add up the Point Shares per category to see which categories are lowest.

If you are looking for more detailed projections, please see Grey’s post from earlier this week that provided 1st place, 3rd place and average team totals from last year’s Razzball Commenter Leagues (12-team ESPN roster format).  It also included the average difference per standings point for each category.

Final note:  The differences between ESPN and Yahoo roster formats are much greater for hitters (13 ESPN starting spots vs. 10 in Yahoo) than pitchers (9 pitchers in ESPN vs. 8 pitchers in Yahoo).  In daily leagues, I have found that Yahoo leagues end up with similar innings totals as ESPN leagues, indicating that owners are that much more aggressive in cycling in relievers during SP off days and/or streaming.  In any case, I ended up using the same pitchers for 14/16 team ESPN/Yahoo rosters while I had slight differences in 10/12/15.  Don’t sweat the little differences.