During draft season I am frequently faced with a commenter asking me what I think of their freshly drafted team. I wanted to share with you one simple approach that can help you partially answer this question yourself and is also a strategy you can apply on draft day. I call it the “top half/bottom half” approach. I really don’t call it that, but I’ve got nothing better right now, so I’m going with it. Here’s how it works.
For discussions sake, let’s say you are in a twelve-team league. And for simplicity’s sake let’s ignore the middle infielder, corner infielder and utility positions for now. The goal of this strategy is to draft a player in the top half of the relevant players at each position. In a twelve-team league the relevant players are the top twelve at each position. So you want to end up with one of the top six players at each of the infield positions, excluding starting pitchers.
SP and outfielders have a larger player pool since we usually roster four or five of them. If you start four OF then you will want one in the top 12, one in the top 24, one in the top 36 and one in the top 48. If you want to get more specific, you want your top 12 OF to bin in the 1-6 range, your top 24 in the 13-18, your top 36 in the 25-30 and your last OF in 37-42 range. I realize this is a bit crazy to expect considering it’s next to impossible to accurately rank past the top ten, let alone top 50 or so. Therefore, there is plenty of wiggle room here. For example, if you have two top twelve guys, then you’d wouldn’t be penalized for not having an OF in the second tier (13-24). The point is that the logic around determining if you’ve done well drafting your OF is a flexible. All of this also applies to starting pitchers.
Let’s examine this crazy theory with an example. Here’s a sample team that was shared with me by a commenter.
C: Sean Murphy
1B: Vladimir Guerrero Jr, Eric Hosmer
2B: Max Muncy, Gavin Lux
3B: Nolan Arenado
SS: Corey Seager, Tim Anderson
OF: Juan Soto, Ronald, Acuña, Lourdes Gurriel, Wil Myers, Alex Kirilloff
SP: Yu Darvish, Jack Flaherty, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Carlos Carrasco, Kevin Gausman, Sandy Alcantara, Jordan Montgomery, Tyler Mahle, Tony Gonsolin, Dylan Cease
Here is my evaluation using the aforementioned strategy. Please note that this is a ten-team league, so we looking at the top ten at most positions (40 for OF and SP). I have plugged the league’s scoring system into my spreadsheet to generate rankings. The key here is to use whatever rankings you are most comfortable with. For points leagues I recommend my spreadsheet or some other similar resource that allows you to generate league-specific rankings based on your scoring system and league configuration.
C: Murphy is the 9th ranked catcher. That puts him in the bottom half of the relevant catchers. (C)
1B: Guerrero is the 4th ranked 1B. That’s in the top half. Plus I love him and his future potential. Hosmer’s outside the top ten, but he’s not the starting player on this team. (A)
2B: Max Muncy is the 6th ranked 2B and in the bottom half. (C)
3B: Nolan Arenado is the fifth ranked 3B and in the top half. (A)
SS: Corey Seager is the sixth ranked SS, putting him in the bottom half. But he has a lot of upside. (B)
OF: Soto and Acuña are both top five outfielders. With them you can have just about anyone else you want. Within reason. Gurriel is the 33rd ranked outfield which is solid for your 4th outfield, but he’s this team’s third OF. Wil Myers is ranked 45, which puts him outside the top 40. And lastly, Alex Kirilloff doesn’t really come into play here. Not to mention he will start the season in the minors. With that all said, the Soto/Acuña ticket is strong enough to carry this outfield. They are not only top OF, but also top ten overall players. (A)
SP: Yu Darvish is a top ten SP, but he’s in the 6-10 range. Flaherty is a top 20 coming in at number 12. Those two pitchers are an outstanding foundation to a fantasy pitching staff. I know I’m supposed to like Ryu, but I’m slightly hesitant. I like him more than I don’t like him, but I wouldn’t be comfortable with him being my number two. Fortunately he’s this team’s number 3 and he comes in at 26 which is the bottom half of the third tier. Carrasco needs to get healthy in order for me to really give him a grade, but before he got injured (when he was drafted) he was ranked 23 which is a top half of the third tier pitcher. I drafted Gausman in a bunch of my leagues and his rank is 33. This puts Gausman in the top half of the 4th tier of SP. Alcantara is doing well in Spring Training and has some pretty nice upside. I really like this pitching staff. (A)
RP: I don’t care much about RP as I think it’s easy to grab a solid RP off the wire over the course of the season. Heck, there’s already been several RP waiver opportunities in the last week.
You might have noticed some grades in parentheses at the end of each positional analysis. Here’s how that works. If you are in the top half you get an “A”, the bottom half you get a “C” and out side the range altogether, you get an “F”. So if you got an “A” at 1B and and “C” at 2B, you’d be an average of a “B” over those two positions. I actually gave this team a “B” at SS because even though Seager is in the bottom half, I think he has a good chance of being a top half SS. Given that, I give the above team an A-/B+ overall grade. Here’s the math:
C(3) + A(5) + C(3) + A(5) + B(4) + A(5) + A(5) = 30
30/7 = 4.28 (A-/B+)
If I had to go one way on this, I ‘d lean closer to the A- as I don’t hold as much stock in the catcher position as I do the rest of the positions. But that’s just me.
Now that you are fully convinced that I have no clue what I am doing, I am going to stop there. Please keep in mind that this fake math is far from an accurate assessment of a team. It is merely an unconventional grading system for ranking a team which yields a very loose result. In other words, continue on with your normal daily routines and don’t let my Tim Lincecum math ruin your opinion of your recently drafted team.
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