With the season starting early this year, it seems like everything is a bit crunched. This includes preparing for the Razzball Commenter Leagues drafts. March is already upon us and it’s time to get drafting! Hopefully, you’re not caught unprepared. This week I just wanted to drop some additional strategy notes I couldn’t cram into last weeks posts. This time next week we’ll have an assortment of draft data to wade through, which will be much more exciting and make it seem like real fantasy baseball season! As of now one league has drafted, the Writers League jumped in first with a draft this past Saturday evening. There were a few autodrafters (raises hand in shame), but an overall good looking draft (just don’t look at my lack of pitching staff, wow, that’s ugly). There will be a Q&A style recap of that in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for that if you’re interested but in the meantime, let’s cover the last few tips you need before tackling your own drafts in the weeks to come.
My last bit of draft day advice is mostly geared towards drafts in the final week or those that have drafted but want a leg up the first week. It all goes back to maximizing ABs and I’m not sure it’s something many people look out for. When you’re drafting far out from Opening Day stashing guys that might stumble into saves thanks to an injury or a prospect that might surprise and break camp with a club is great. However, when there’s 1-2 days until real baseball, there’s no value to be gained in stashing those guys. Instead, you should be looking to maximize those ABs early and often. A couple days before Opening Day, take a look at who might be on the wire or have an ADP of 250+ that may have earned a starting gig during the spring. Now, go take a peak at where they might be slotting into the lineup. You might uncover a speedster that will be leading off unexpectedly and you could find yourself stumbling into some early SAGNOF. This is ideal if you’re rotating your UTIL spot anyway, which is something I spoke of in my prior strategy post. Admittedly, this strategy worked much better during the soft Opening Days of years past. With 6 teams playing you could get a nice early jump on some stats, but this year every team plays Day 1. Still, there could be a small advantage gained and we’re all about eeking out every advantage we can.
Finally, one last draft note and more of a PSA: Please rank your players before the draft. I’m not sure if you taken a peak at the FanTrax pre-draft rankings, but unless you want your draft to go Kluber, Bumgarner, Verlander, Posey, you should make some adjustments. FanTrax does offer a pretty nifty tool for uploading your rankings from a CSV file. Even if you show up 15 minutes late to your draft, if could spell disaster, so don’t leave anything to chance. You have been advised.
That does it for draft notes from me. We went over how to handle pitchers, to draft power when it doubt on a hitter, and use draft day to either stash some potential value or set yourself up to maximize counting stats ASAP.
Now, let’s put all that knowledge to use and draft some leagues! If you have an itchy drafting finger, there are drafts going off all this week and weekend, so hop in. Join a free league to get some early drafting practice or join a money league to take on your favorite writer or commenter. There are low stakes ($10) and high stakes ($100) leagues available, so there’s something for everyone. Join one, join two, join ten, we won’t judge.
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