Fantasy Baseball: Successful Strategies for Your Fantasy Draft
Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
– Old Chinese Proverb
"Give a man a ranked list of shortstops and you feed him for a season. Teach a man to design his own spreadsheet and he’ll devour the competition for the rest of his fantasy baseball playing life."
– Some nonsense I just made up
Everyone who is preparing for a fantasy baseball draft loves to read rankings: quick, easy to digest, and sometimes helpful. Do you, the fantasy baseball GM, take any of these lists as gospel? Most likely not. Everyone comes up with his own rankings based on the knowledge he’s accumulated from innumerable websites, blogs, magazines, books, podcasts, tweets, etc. There is so much information, so many opinions, so much noise . . .
So grab a beer, step into my living room (I hope you’re not allergic to cats) and get comfortable as I walk you through building my shortstop spreadsheet. By the end of this multi-article lesson plan you’ll be able to construct a tailor-made spreadsheet that will help you pull off the best fantasy baseball draft possible.
Step One: Laying Your Foundation
First order of business is to open a blank document in some type of spreadsheet software like Excel or Google docs.
Next you want to find a reputable source — whether it’s a fantasy expert you trust or whatever magazine you happen to have lying about — and enter the players in order. Do not omit any players in the top 15 — or top 20 — if it’s a deeper league with MI spots. Even if you’re not interested in drafting Troy Tulowitzki you still need to keep him on the list. During your draft, you’re going to need a complete idea of which players have been taken and who’s still on the table to be able to formulate your next moves.
Feel free to omit lower-ranked players that you don’t want. Note the lack complete lack of Derek Jeter. That is not an accident.
Step Two: Selecting Your Stats
It would be nearly impossible for you to list every single relevant fantasy stat and peripheral on one legible spreadsheet, so you have to decide which ones are most important to you.
I subscribe to the Ron Shandler credo of “draft skills, not stats.” There are some stats, like home runs, that rely on so many peripherals (FB% and HR/FB% to name a few) that I prefer to do my projections for those beforehand and just list a home run total. I’ll run you through what I include, and in some instances what I omit, to give you an idea of the thought process you should be putting yourself through.
IN:
Home runs & stolen bases – The most important and reliably projectable of roto stats. When I want a snapshot of a player’s value, these two numbers sum it up nicely.
OUT:
Runs & RBI – These stats are so dependent on uncontrollable variables like supporting cast, lineup spot, and dumb luck that I refuse to let them even enter my head. If you draft a collection of hitters with solid skills you’ll be, at worst, middle of the pack in these categories halfway through the season and can trade for what you need when you need it.
OUT:
Batting average – Average fluctuates so wildly based on BABIP and hit percentage that I pay no attention to it. That said, I don’t advise punting average by filling up on the Adam Dunn’s and Chris Carter’s of the world. Instead, pay attention to . . .
IN:
Contact rate, walk rate, strikeout rate – If your team is mainly comprised of players with a contact rate over 80 percent, your batting average will not be an issue. Having solid rates across these three will get you every counting stat you need and also protect you from horrific slumps.
$ – Auction value, if you are in any auction leagues. (We will go over this in a later post.)
FP/G – If you are in a points league you should list your projections for a player’s fantasy points per game based on your league’s unique scoring system. I don’t have one listed here, but if you play in such a league this is more important than all of your other columns combined.
RUD – The Reliability/Upside/Downside Index. This is a little tool of my own devising. This is one of the last columns to be filled in, so stay tuned.
Notes: You need a spot to be able to jot down any interesting tidbits you find during your research, such as injury information, notable splits, obscure peripherals, etc.
If you are half the nerd I am you will be tempted to fill your screen with oodles and oodles of info. Fight this temptation. There is a fine line between the right amount of information and a leaky brain—the key is finding that line for yourself and laying your war room foundation right on top of it.
Step Three: Data Entry
Pull up Fangraphs or BaseballReference and get to filling in any of the stats from the previous year. Don’t bother with decimal points.
If you are using projected stats there are a number of services like ZiPS and Steamer to use as a jumping off point. Find the projections you like and then — and here’s the big one — round to multiples of five. Whether you round up or down will be based on your opinion of the player, but always always round those jagged numbers. It drives me guano crazy when I’m listening to a podcast and I hear something of this nature:
HOST A: I have Ian Desmond going 25/25 this year.
HOST B: You’re out of your mind! There’s no way Desmond steals 25 bags!
HOST A: Yeah? What do you have for him?
HOST B: I see Desmond swiping 22.
Madness. You know the difference between 25 and 22 steals? One weekend series against Detroit and Alex Avila’s wet noodle of an arm. By having nice easy numbers ending in zero and five you can be able to do quick mental math on the fly and save cranium space for important things like mid-draft scouting of the competition and (my favorite) talking trades when the draft is only half finished.
This bears repeating: during the season the value of one steal or one bomb can be huge but during the draft a single counting stat is nothing.
Later this week we’ll take a look at breaking down the list into tiers, applying RUD scores, and using pretty colors. Stay tuned and hit me up on the tweetbox if you want to praise or misunderstand my brilliance.