Fantasy Baseball Strategy

In-Draft Management

Andrew writes in to ask:

What kind of information do you have in front of you during a draft?  I've tried keeping spreadsheets, crossing guys off, and auto-updating the rest of the population, but it always ends up being not simplistic enough and I can't keep up with the pace of the draft, especially in the mid to late rounds.

I know what you mean, it can be a challenge to keep track of things while also getting ready for your next pick.  Here's what I do for online drafts.

• I create a simple spreadsheet containing basic projected stats that ranks players by dollar value.  Pitcher stats are not shown, just hitters.  Pitchers are included but the only info for them is the dollar value.  It is a sacrifice I am willing to make.  The sheet also contains average draft position from Yahoo or Mock Draft Central or whatever you like.  Another column translates average draft position into draft round by dividing ADP by 12 and rounding up.
• This sheet also has games played data, so that I can quickly filter to see which shortstops are available and whether I need to act soon to get a good one.  If I want to filter to see pitchers only I can go to any stat category (ABs for example) and choose Blanks.
• When a player is drafted, I do a Ctrl-F to find the player and I delete that row of the spreadsheet. Obviously Yahoo does the same, but they don't have my dollar values.  Since Yahoo leaves 1:30 between picks I am usually able to keep up.
• I create a second sheet on the spreadsheet for My Team.  It lists all the positions and I fill in the names as I draft them.  I also list the specific pick numbers I have.  For example, if I draft eighth I have pick #8, 17, 32, 41, and so on.  Before the draft I make a list of several players I am targeting at each pick who I do not think will be available at the following pick.
• If there is downtime between picks (1:30 can seem like an eternity) I drag guys I like into my queue so I don't forget about them.  By the time my pick rolls around I know exactly who I want. 
• For a live draft I would do something similar but just cross guys off instead of deleting rows.  Since you can't filter by position on a piece of paper it may make sense to print out position-by-position sheets ranked by dollar value.

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Approach To The Early Rounds

Derek Carty over at Hardball Times describes his approach to the first few rounds of his drafts.  He goes after safe, consistent players.  I couldn't agree more, and I also ended up with David Wright, Carlos Lee, and Lance Berkman in many drafts last year.

Back in September I wrote a simple post entitled How To Win.  Readers added a bunch of good stuff in the comments.  I think the big picture is that you shouldn't get too cute.  Don't pick the "next big thing" in the first round, don't work off wild projections, don't draft pitchers too early, don't ignore position scarcity.

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How To Win

I would like to get back to basics for this post.  Time to discuss my strategy for winning a fantasy baseball mixed league of normal size and conditions (H2H or roto).  All of my title-winning fantasy teams were built this way.  Feel free to add your methods in the comments.

• Use conservative projections.  Ideally,  you should average preseason projections together from five different sources.  This drastically reduces the risk of overrating or underrating a player.  It also reminds you that last year isn't everything and players like Jermaine Dye and Jason Bay can bounce back.
• Don't consider starting pitching until the eighth round of the draft.  The following starters went within the first seven rounds in March of '07: Erik Bedard, Josh Beckett, Justin Verlander, Aaron Harang, and John Smoltz.  Sure, I cherry-picked the bad ones.  But early-round picks on starters have been and will always be very dangerous, capable of ruining your season.
• Pursue power/speed threats whenever possible.  Corey Hart, Bobby Abreu, Matt Kemp, Ian Kinsler, Nate McLouth...these players give you a balanced attack.  You don't want to be drafting Willy Taveras for speed, Placido Polanco for average, and Adam Dunn for power.
• Don't pay for closers.  Most experts harp on this point, but you still see J.J. Putz drafted in the fifth round ahead of Kinsler.  It's not that this never works; closers routinely provide tons of value.  It just increases your risk unnecessarily.  Wait until after the tenth round to draft a closer.
• Heed position scarcity.  In particular, respect position scarcity for shortstops and catchers.  Note where the dropoff occurs for these positions and don't miss out on all of the top guys.  Sure, you could pluck a Geovany Soto or a Ryan Theriot.  But again, you increase your chances of busting.
• Be a waiver wire maniac.  Some will tell you to leave your team untouched until May, because early stats can be deceiving.  This is bad advice.  Leave your stars alone, but aggressively pick up decent-looking players.  Every roster has a few spots to allow for turnover.  If you're not aggressive, you miss out on Cliff Lee and Ryan Dempster.  Pick up now, ask questions later.  Waiver wire aggression is also how you accumulate closers.
• Trade pitching for hitting.  You'll find pitching easier to find on the waiver wire, so trade pitchers for star hitters whenever possible.
• That's all I can think of for now; maybe I'll add more later.  None of these strategies are radical.

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Cutting Off Your Opponent’s Supply Lines

This is a guest article by Derek Carty of The Hardball Times Fantasy Focus.

There’s been some talk over the past month or so about trading and how you should always look at the bigger picture when contemplating whether or not to make a trade.  Lenny Melnick did an entire podcast about trading, and Patrick DiCaprio at the Fantasy Baseball Generals came up with a set of guidelines to use for trading.

I absolutely agree that when making a trade, the ultimate goal of winning the league should be your #1 priority.  Some of the great strategists of all time have had no problem losing a battle if it helped them improve their prospects of winning the war.

Lenny and Patrick both said that when evaluating a trade, the traditional sense of “value” should be ignored.  For example, trading Adam Dunn for Michael Bourn shouldn’t be immediately discarded as a terrible trade if the player acquiring Bourn has a huge lead in homers and RBI and needs steals.

I’m of the opinion that you should always seek out a better trade, but if the best base stealer you can get for Dunn is Bourn (and you can’t get a better player who fills another need), then I would definitely agree that this is a good trade.  This isn’t exactly what I’d like to talk about today, but the concept is the same: making moves that, in a vacuum, might not be considered good trades but will help you move closer to your ultimate goal of winning the league.

In the context of military operations, this is known as “grand strategy.”  Grand strategy involves looking at more than just the immediate battle and focusing on the best ways to win the entire war.

A great example of this came during the Vietnam War.  A truce was called for the Vietnamese holiday of Tet, but the Vietcong launched a surprise attack on several key strategic locations.  They hit locations that were strongholds for the United States media and strong symbols for the American public, including palaces, airbases, and the United States Embassy.  While the U.S. ultimately pushed the enemy back and suffered far fewer losses than the Vietcong did, the media coverage of the carnage of the Tet Offensive caused the U.S. public to form strong anti-war sentiments.  This, combined with the upcoming presidential election, led to the removal of American forces in Vietnam despite never losing a battle.

Part of grand strategy is knowing your opponent, a topic I’ve talked about in the past at THT.  It is very important to constantly be talking to the owners in your league and gathering information.

By keeping your ear to the ground, you will often hear about trade negotiations going on between teams in your leagues.  If you hear about a trade involving one of your closest competitors, it can be beneficial to begin talking with the other team in the deal about the player involved (assuming you also think highly of this player).

Making a trade for the player your close competitor is trying to get has several benefits.  First and most importantly, it prevents him from making the trade himself and acquiring the player.  This is akin to cutting off an opposing army’s supply lines.  Really, it’s akin to redirecting the opposing army’s supply lines to fuel your own army.

Even if the trade is only a lateral move… really, even if you take a small loss, that small loss could actually benefit you more than your opponent receiving a huge gain.  Allowing his team to improve is the same as hurting your own.

As an example, let’s say that your top competitor is discussing a trade of his Gavin Floyd for another owner’s Johnny Cueto.  Even if you jumped in and offered Tim Lincecum for Cueto, there would still be many benefits to making the move.  By not stepping in, your competitor would be receiving a player with a 3.98 LIPS ERA (and upside) for a player with a 4.47 LIPS ERA, a significant upgrade.  Even though Lincecum’s 3.78 LIPS ERA is better than Cueto’s, this drop-off would still be better than allowing your opponent to receive an even larger upgrade.

Another advantage is that you are receiving a player that your competitor wants.  By acquiring him yourself, the possibility exists that you’ll be able to flip him to your competitor and actually end up receiving an upgrade while downgrading your opponent’s team.  If he’s trading for Cueto to begin with, he obviously knows that he is better than his ERA indicates and might be willing to give quite a bit more for him if necessary.

Of course, you need to consider that you often have more than one close competitor, so weigh your league’s specific situation and decide from there if the original trade is worth it.  Taking too big of a hit to your team might be the wrong move, even if you gain an advantage over one owner.

This won’t always be the appropriate move, but this is the type of thinking we need to get in the habit of using in order to be successful fantasy owners.

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Introduction To Strategy

Today's guest article is by Derek Carty of The Hardball Times Fantasy Focus.

One of the most overlooked concepts in fantasy baseball is that of strategy.  Every fantasy site out there does player analysis; some do it well, some not so well.  If you know where to look, though, you can find good player analysis.  The problem is, in a competitive fantasy league, so can your opponents.  If you are both using the same data to analyze players, there really isn’t going to be a huge variance in your opinions of players, is there?  This means that neither of you really has a large advantage over the other.

There are still some ways to gain an advantage over your opponents in the way of player analysis – the most prominent being the new Pitch f/x system – but aside from this innovation there is little advantage to be gained from looking at the same things as your opponents.

Therefore, the winner of a given competitive fantasy league will be largely determined by luck, judgment, and strategy.  Judgment is difficult to teach (some will even argue that it can’t be taught) and luck can’t be controlled, but strategy is something that most certainly can be taught and controlled.  This is why it is of such great importance that someone serious about winning in fantasy baseball thinks critically about strategy and other, outside-the-box concepts not normally brought into the fantasy arena.  By doing things that your competitors fail to do, you gain a competitive advantage over them.

While not directly related to fantasy baseball, I think the following quote does a good job of illustrating this point.  One of my favorite quotes, actually, this is taken from Keith Woolner’s article first introducing VORP (Value Over Replacement Player):

"Baseball is a zero sum game. One team always wins at the expense of another. It is not possible for one team to win without another losing. In order to win, a team must be able to produce more runs (or prevent runs from scoring) than the opposition. Its success in producing wins is directly tied to its ability to produce more runs than its opponent. Any competitive advantage a team has must, in some way, translate to better on-field performance to be valuable.

A commodity which is easily available to all teams at no or low cost confers no competitive advantage, and therefore is of minimal value. Thus, baseball value comes from scarcity."

Fantasy baseball, too, is a zero sum game, and anything that is “easily available to all teams at no or low cost confers no competitive advantage, and therefore is of minimal value.”  Good player analysis is not scarce (at least not when we’re dealing with intelligent owners), but good talk about strategy is, and is therefore of great value.

Of course, this isn’t to say that everyone studying up on advanced statistics and reading good, intricate analysis will share the same opinion of a player. If two owners, for instance, see that Gavin Floyd has a .199 BABIP and is getting ridiculously lucky, their opinions might differ a little, but the difference in their opinion of Floyd (and other pitchers with low BABIPs) likely won’t be large enough to overcome the luck involved in fantasy leagues each year.

And, of course, this isn’t to say that you should ignore these kinds of stats and this kind of player analysis.  While you might not gain much of an advantage over those who are doing the same thing, it will give you an advantage over those who don’t, and not looking at them will put you at a big disadvantage to those who do make use of them.

The (controllable) difference in leagues with savvy owners, rather, comes down to how each owner uses the information presented to him, manifested in the form of judgment and strategy.

Read up on advanced stats and player analysis to keep up with your opponents, and read up on strategy and the like to sprint ahead of them.

Even if you aren’t in a league where everyone is aware of BABIP and stats of that nature, though, the fact remains that luck is a huge factor in every fantasy league, and the more advantages you gain over your opponents, the less luck will factor in.  The ability to utilize unique, logical strategy is a big way to gain that advantage.

Some sites do attempt to discuss strategy, but leave some aspects out, oversimplify it, spit out unoriginal ideas, or ignore it completely during the season.

More sites discuss strategy before than season than during, but it often is little more than, say, a repetition of the notion that you should avoid closers early in your draft.  This is a good strategy to pursue in many instances but is a notion that is rarely supported with a logical backing.

And sure, some sites will talk about a strategy in-season like “buying low and selling high,” but this has been talked to death and has become so meaningless and trite that even novice fantasy players understand it.  I mean, you would be hard-pressed to sell Mark Reynolds and his .298/6/15/12 line to even the most unknowledgeable owner for David Ortiz and his .070/1/3/6 line two weeks into April.  And no one in a competitive league will be buying Gavin Floyd and his .199 BABIP and 76% LOB% from you for Jake Peavy this week.

There are certainly less obvious examples, and buying low and selling high definitely has its place (there was a great article yesterday on this topic by Mike Podhorzer of the Fantasy Baseball Generals), but there is so much more to strategy than a phrase that has been rehashed over and over again and rarely shows any creativity or foresight by those writing about it.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be talking about different forms of strategy that you likely won’t find discussed elsewhere but will hopefully find incredibly useful.  Today, I just wanted to introduce myself and hopefully give you a sense of why I think strategy is so important for the successful fantasy baseball owner.  If you have any thoughts on this matter, I’d love to hear them.

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Thoughts On Trade Vetoes

One refreshing aspect of the RotoAuthority League is that owners do not have a chance to vote on other owners' trades.  When did this become the accepted practice?  I find it ridiculous. 

Why should trades be voted on?  Most people will tell you it's to prevent unfair deals from being made.  Are trades really supposed to be fair?  I never give thought to fairness.  I just try to help my own team.  Obviously I am going to have to give up something decent, unless the other owner is...

Dumb.  One apparent reason for vetoes is to prevent dumb owners from being ripped off.  Usually making it a money league with decent stakes takes care of this problem, though.  Otherwise, if you don't want a novice in your league, don't let that person in.  Part of having a novice in the league is that people will try to take advantage of him.  Let's be honest - you're only vetoing that rip-off trade because you didn't think to make the offer.

The one reason I find vetoes acceptable is to prevent collusion.  If you have two brothers in a non-keeper league and the last place brother dumps off all his best players to the first place brother, that's collusion.  That's not cool, though the best solution is just to not have people in the league who would collude.

Say, for the sake of argument, trades need to be fair and veto power is necessary.  How does it make sense that the other ten teams, with an obvious vested interest, are the arbiters?  That'd be like Omar Minaya and Pat Gillick voting down the Braves' Rafael Soriano-Horacio Ramirez swap.  At the very least, appoint someone not in the league.

By the way, why are the players in the league authorities on trade equity?  Can they predict the future?  I have seen way too many trades vetoed because 10 amateurs took a quick glance and saw a "name" player swapped for a less famous guy.  Last year I caused an uproar by trading Jeremy Accardo for Joe Mauer, even though the Accardo side ended up winning the deal.

What are your thoughts on trade vetoes?  Do fantasy baseball trades need to be fair and even?

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Facing The Giants and Twins

As I suggested before the season, spot-starting pitchers against the Giants and Twins looks like a viable fantasy strategy for '08.  Indeed, these two clubs have the worst offenses in their respective leagues on the young season.  The Twins are due for some improvement, but they'll still have a lot of easy outs.

Below are the starting pitchers opposing these two clubs in upcoming games. 

Facing the Twins:

• Jamie Shields on Wednesday (obviously unavailable)
• Jason Hammel on Thursday (solid spot-start candidate)
• Cliff Lee on Friday (definitely work a pickup, for this start and beyond)
• Jake Westbrook on Saturday (also worthy)
• Paul Byrd on Sunday (questionable pickup)

Facing the Giants:

• Brandon Webb on Wednesday (obviously unavailable)
• Todd Wellemeyer on Friday (intriguing spot-start; has 20 Ks in 18 IP)
• Joel Pineiro on Saturday (questionable pickup)
• Braden Looper on Sunday (probably worthy)
• Micah Owings on Monday (probably unavailable in your league)

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Spot-Starting Against The Giants

It seems a major fantasy strategy this year in mixed leagues will be starting mediocre pitchers against the Giants.  Their offense looks to be flat-out terrible this year.  Last year's whipping boys, the Nationals, look improved.

The first opportunity may be Dave Bush on April 4th, the Brewers' home opener.  You could go with Carlos Villanueva the day after that.

In the AL, the Twins may be a good team to pick on this year.  Their lineup has many holes in it.

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The Fourth Pick

Of my five leagues this year, one is the Fantasy Baseball Search league.  The draft is March 3rd, and I believe you're going to be able to watch it live.

The draft order has been set, and I get the fourth pick.  Let's analyze the options here, since this is crucial and at least 8% of you will be faced with the same pick. 

• There is zero chance Alex Rodriguez is available at #4.
• Hanley Ramirez is likely to go second, but he could certainly fall to me.
• I expect Jose Reyes to go second or third, but he is another possibility for me.  If I see Reyes at #4, I have to take him.
• If things go according to Mock Draft Central, A-Rod, Hanley, and Reyes will be the first three off the board.  That would leave me with David Wright.  I can't see how I would opt for anyone else. Very safe and reliable.
• I can picture a scenario where both Hanley and Wright are available for me.  I wrote earlier that Wright is preferable.  Can you make a strong argument for taking Hanley over Wright?
• In a Hanley vs. Reyes situation, I've already said I want Reyes.
• It is very likely that Johan Santana is available for me at #4 (current ADP is 12.68).  Is there any possible justification for taking him over Hanley, Reyes, or Wright?  My gut says no, my dollar values say yes.
• At least some folks out there would consider going with Holliday, Rollins, Pujols, Cabrera, or Utley with my pick.  Does anyone dare argue one of those cases?

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