Preparing for your Fantasy Draft

By Dave Diamond

I've been in the same roto league (called Rotissaria) since 1987. A lot has changed in the past 14 years, including the metamorphosis from keeping stats by hand, to hiring a stat service that sent reports via fax, to getting reports from the stat service via the internet, to running the entire league on our own web site. Some things stay the same, however. One of them is DRAFT DAY. Other than in years when I've had a child born, draft day has consistently been the best day of the year. It's the culmination of so much effort, time, angst, preparation, and scheming. Seeing old friends who rarely get together in the same room except for the draft is great, but the pure thrill and adrenaline rush that comes with being under the gun during the draft is just unequaled. It's like when your horse is coming around the far turn, or when the dice are rolling on the craps table, or when your basketball team has the ball trailing by 1 with ten seconds left on the clock - and it lasts for several hours!! You can't beat it.

At our annual draft, which is a straight draft, not an auction, there is one guy who, year after year, comes completely unprepared. When it's his turn to pick in the first round, he'll take the full 30-seconds allotted for each pick. By the fourth or fifth round, he'll be beyond the 30-second limit, and the commissioner will have to prompt him to make his pick, or it passes to the next owner. By the twentieth round, he's routinely "passing" his pick. This generates untold confusion, as owners down the draft order make picks, while his box on the draft board remains open. By the end of the draft, he has three or four slots still unfilled, and has to pick players who weren't picked by anyone else. Now, the fact that he finished in second place a few years back should not suggest that this is a strategy decision on his part - he's just not ready. The other owners in my league kid him good-naturedly, but if you are a new member to a league, and you hold up the draft by being unprepared, you're likely to feel the hot breath of angry co-owners on your neck as they push you along. Hey, a draft takes long enough as it is - especially an auction style draft - so anyone who drags is not going to be most popular player.

So, whether you're just starting out as a roto player, joining a new league, or coming back to an old standard, being prepared for draft day is essential. This column will not talk about specific players whom you should or should not draft, but will focus on the things you can do to prepare for draft day. Since the prep for an auction is different from the prep for a straight draft, I'll break them down separately for you. And remember, the object is to have fun. So even if you mess up and draft the guy who is out for the season after tearing his knee up in his last Spring Training game, try to smile - your fellow owners will!

General Preparation for any draft

Whether your league uses an auction format or a straight draft, some of your preparation will be essentially the same. The first step, of course, is putting together a list of players, and evaluating them by whatever means you may choose, so that you know who to pick first - who is more valuable to you. First, list all available players by position. (Remember to limit your list to players eligible in your league, which may mean only National League or only American League players.) Keep in mind that the position eligibility rules in your league may be different from the way that some magazines or web sites sort players. A player listed as an outfielder in published player ranking lists, but who may qualify as a second baseman in your league, probably has more value in your league. Next, sort the players in each position into groups, where each group includes players who you value relatively the same. Whether you use a complex statistical analysis of last year's statistics, a projection taken from published material, or just you own gut instinct about how a player is likely to do this year, there are clear "breaks" in the quality of players at each position. Among National League catchers, for example, Mike Piazza is a group unto himself. No other catcher is close to Piazza's value. Below Piazza, you may value Jason Kendal and Mike Lieberthal about the same, but determine that there is another "drop off" to the next best catcher. By grouping the players in this way, you can more easily decide which players to put on your top picks list (see below) and during the draft you will have a quick way of seeing whether there is a lot of relatively equal talent left at a particular position, or whether the last "tier 2" catcher may be worth taking earlier rather than waiting and risking being stuck with a "tier 3" choice.

Figure a way to highlight the special players that you have targeted in advance of the draft. Print their names in bold type, use a colored highlighting pen to make their name stand out. Use gold stars, stickers, arrows, whatever it takes to make sure that during the draft you don't forget about them. These may be your sleeper picks, or your home team players, or just your favorite guys. You may think that you couldn't possibly forget about them, but in the heat of the draft, you might. Make like a Boy Scout - be prepared.

Preparing for an Auction

In an auction format, speed is less important than in a straight draft. Depending on the method used in your league for selecting the next player up for bid, you will generally have plenty of time after the player is nominated to find your pre-draft analysis on that player, or at least find your sheet containing the rankings of all players at his position, before you'll be asked to make a bid. What you need is a system for ranking the player, estimating his value/cost, keeping track of your picks and the picks of your fellow owners, and making (and following) a budget. We'll discuss draft-day strategy in a later column. Today, the issue is preparation before you get to the draft.

You'll want to avoid flipping through magazines, newspapers, or books during the draft. Not only is it inefficient and difficult for you to find the information you need, it signals to your fellow owners that you are not well-prepared. Embarrassment aside, this is like spilling blood in a pool of hungry sharks. Your fellow owners will immediately peg you as an easy mark to set up to spend too much on average players, and as an prey for lop-sided mid-season trades. Instead, come into the draft with a neat binder. On each page, have all the players at a particular position, with whatever statistical information you want (it's easy to get it off the internet and download it into a spread sheet to print out), your rankings, your salary projections, and space for notes next to each player. Make that binder your only reference source during the draft. Be confident.

On each page, list the players in the order of their value - separated into groups or tiers as appropriate to visually separate the groups. This way, you will be able to see instantly when you open your page of Second Basemen, that the player currently up for auction is one of 5 players on your second tier. Next to each player, list a projection of the players auction price. Naturally, you'll be wrong, but have a clue. Next to the projection price, leave a blank to fill in the actual price of each player as they are purchased. This way, you'll be able to see whether the actual prices are running higher or lower than your projections as the auction goes along, and you'll be able to better evaluate each player as they come up.

Next to each player, also leave space to write in the name of the owner (or team name, if that's easier) who purchased the player, and space to write in next to the names of players who you purchased, the name of the owner who made the next highest bid. You'll want to keep track during the draft of how many of your fellow owners still need a second baseman, so you'll want to write that down on your second base page as the draft moves along. If it's easier for you, pre-print the name of each owner on each page, and check off or cross out the names of the other owners as they purchase a player at that position. (You'll want to keep track of who made the next highest bid on players you purchased so that during the season you can make them your first call to discuss a trade for that player.)

If your league doesn't do it for you, you'll also want to have a running tally of your budget available during the draft. My suggestion is that you break down your budget into hitting, pitching, and maintain a "slush fund" for over-budget purchases. Depending on your strategy about how much you want to spend on pitching and how much on hitting, print out each number available on a page, top to bottom, and cross out each number as you go along (or full up from the bottom) to show you how much you have left. For example, if you have 240 "dollars" to spend total, you might allocate 120 to hitting, 100 to pitching, and keep 20 in your slush fund. On a piece of paper, print the numbers from 120 down to zero (probably in two columns) and mark them "hitting." Do the same with the numbers 100 to zero for pitching, and from twenty to zero for the slush fund. As you purchase a player, you'll cross out some of the numbers, leaving you with a visual and easy-to-read display of the amount you have left in your budget.

You may also want to keep a similar chart for each of your fellow owners, so you can quickly see who has more and who has less money to spend as you go through the auction.

Last, make up a chart to show you which positions you have to fill. As you fill your roster, mark down who you picked, in order to keep track of what you still need. It's important to know, no matter how much you have already spent on pitchers, that you have 4 more starters to buy. If you want to put that chart on the same page as your budget chart, you'll have both position needs and dollars available in one place.

The object of all this is to make it easier during the draft to keep track of all the information you need, leaving you more time to think about strategy and evaluate bids.

Preparing for a straight draft

In a straight draft, speed is the key. Unless your league has particularly lax time standards (and all day to hold the draft), you will be required to make your next pick within a very limited time. The pressure will be on. You'll get flustered. The way to combat this, and avoid making bad picks because of the time pressure, is to be as prepared as possible going in.

In a straight draft, it's critical to keep track of which players at each position have been picked, and which are still left. Unlike an auction, where you have the theoretical ability to buy any player, if you're willing to spend the money, in a straight draft, if somebody else picks your guy, he's gone (time to start thinking about a trade). So, you need to keep track so that you know when you're down to the last few top tier players at a particular position, how close you are to your special sleeper pick getting snatched up, etc. You'll also spare yourself the embarrassment of calling out the name of a player who has already been drafted (sometimes ten rounds earlier).

My advise is to list all players, by position, ranked in order of preference, and grouped by draft rounds. List all the players who you think are "worth" a pick in the first five rounds in the first tier, then players worth a pick in rounds 6-10 in the second tier, and so on, grouped in 5-round increments. You may think that Javy Lopez is the 5th best catcher in the NL, but he still might not be worth a pick in the top 15 rounds, so drop him down to the 16-20 group. Then, take all your players and paste them up onto a single chart - so that on one page (perhaps an oversized piece of poster board) you have listed the names of every draftable player, grouped visually into tiers by draft round. Thus, you will be able to see, for all positions, how many tier 1 players are available, and also see how many are available at each position. You'll be able to scan quickly across all positions to see, based on what you need, how many similarly ranked players are available at each position in order to decide whether to take the pitcher or the outfielder.

Highlight the special players that you want to make sure you get. Color them with a highlighting pen, or circle them in red, or do whatever it takes to make sure that they stand out on your chart. When it's your turn, you don't want to miss them.

I also suggest that you make a separate "top picks" list, where you rank the top 40-50 players. The position of the players will have a bearing on how you rank them (Mike Piazza, although very valuable in an absolute sense, is even more valuable because of the gap between him and the next best NL catcher), but the players will be ranked in the absolute order that you would take them during the first several rounds of the draft. You do this so that you don't have to make split-second decisions between the top available second baseman, the top available outfielder, and the top available pitcher. You'll have made those judgments in advance, and you won't have to agonize over the choices during the draft. If you carefully prepare your top picks list, thinking about whether you would rather have this guy or that guy on your team at a time when it really doesn't matter which position you fill first, and if you stick to your list during the early rounds of the draft, you'll take a lot of pressure off yourself and get your draft off to a solid and confident start.

If you have the concentration for it, you may also want to keep track of who your fellow owners are picking. You can do this by position (E.g., have a list of each position and check off as your fellow owners draft a player at this position) or a list by owner. It may be particularly important to keep track of the picks made by the owners who are between you and your next pick, if you are near the end of the round. If there are only two owners who will pick between your two picks, knowing that they both already drafted a Shortstop is useful information.

Have a Plan

Or, as we used to call to umpires - have a clue. Whether a straight draft or an auction, go into the draft with an idea about what you want your team to look like. Even if your plan is to try to draft a "balanced" team, with good hitters and good pitchers, without giving an emphasis to either. Do you want to put a premium on getting guys who steal bases? Then rank the base stealers a little higher, and highlight a few of them as targets. Do you want to make sure you get a lot of strikeouts? Target the power pitchers. Are you convinced that drafting pitchers is such a crapshoot (after Pedro and Randy), that your just as well off getting them late (or cheap), then concentrate on hitters in the early part of the draft, and let the other owners fight over the pitchers. Whatever your strategy, have a plan going into the draft, and try to stick to it.

Roto Notes

John Van Der Wall - OF - PIT - after having his best year ever at age 34 last year, he's again fighting for playing time this year after the Pirates acquired Derek Bell and gave him a two-year, $9 million contract. Expect Van Der Wall to either be traded (a good thing for his roto owners) or to find playing time by bouncing around between 1B and the outfield. Either way, he'll probably not be as good as last year.

Jason Kendall - C - PIT - don't let last year fool you -he's recovered from all injuries and will be the 2nd best catcher in the NL this year.

Tony Womack - SS - AZ - He had off-season knee surgery, but only to remove a cyst, so it's not that serious. Watch his Spring numbers to see if he's running, but should be ready by opening day.

Adrian Beltre - 3B - LA - off season emergency appendectomy, and following infection, shouldn't affect his ability to be ready for opening spring training, but may inflict some rust on the youngster who isn't use to so much time off. Watch spring numbers here and be careful.

Phil Nevin - 3B - SD - Three strikes against him - first that he had a career season last year, second that he's involved in contract dispute because he's now not happy with the three year deal he signed before he became a starter, and third the best prospect in the organization (Sean Burroughs) plays his position. So, very unlikely that Nevin will stay with the Padres, or have as big a year this year. If he gets traded, but doesn't get a renegotiated contract that he's happy with, he'll still be grumpy about his contract.

Jerry Hairston, Jr. - 2B - BAL - rookie should get the chance to play, but don't expect big numbers from him.

All Oriole Players - they are moving back the fences at Camden Yards, so expect everyone's power numbers at home to be slightly down.

DD

Next Week - Evaluating Players and Statistics - The Key to Winning Roto

Previous columns:

02/12/2001 - Rotisserie® Baseball - What is it, and why should I play?