Fantasy Pitch F/X

My draft is coming up this weekend and for my fellow league mates who read this, they know by know what I’m about to say is gospel.

Drafting fantasy baseball players is like choosing stocks; it’s all about psychology with basis on a few certain numbers.  People draft on emotions, feelings, prayers, and beliefs about numbers.

Your draft, whether it be auction or straight draft, will have people drafting off of numbers they believe in, even with the magazine crowd.   Like stocks, past performance doesn’t equal future gains.  If you use this to your advantage, you can achieve great value.

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Strategy psychology, Strategy

Ervin Santana is hoping to avoid Tommy John surgery this year but at the very least he’s going to miss all of April or a little less than 20% of the season.    Rehab on this has to be slow and meticulous to not aggrevate the ligament.  What he has to do is increase his strength around his elbow while hoping enough scar tissue is laid down over the ligament to strengthen it.  The ligament itself never heals itself to the point where it was before and therefore is basically a ticking time bomb.  I put his chances of making it through the season planned as about 30%, clearly not good enough to waste a good pick on him.

I still think you should avoid Ervin altogether during the drafts.  It’s not worth a draft pick when you don’t know what he’ll look like in a month or two.  You should wait until the season begins and pick him up when it appears he’s getting close.  Let someone else waste the pick and then have to pick up someone he won’t use.  In my approach, you’ll do the opposite. You’ll drop someone you won’t use for someone who could help your team.

RP, Strategy, injury analysis Ervin Santana, UCL, Ulnar Collateral Ligament

Drafts are starting to come up pretty quickly including mine and I got the draft order. I’m picking 9th out of 12 which isn’t my favorite but it’s not the worst in the world.  The place that I hate to draft is between 4-8 in a 12 team league.  I hate drafting in these positions because it handicaps your picks to some degree, you never know exactly what you’re going to have there for you picking. Because of this you have to focus on an extra number of players and entertain an extra number of options.  To help you avoid the confusion, I’ve provided a couple of rules below on how to plan while drafting in these middle positions.

1. Always have at least one pitcher and one position player in mind for that draft position- most of the time at least one of the players that you think will be there at that position will be gone by the time it’s your turn. This happenned to me time and time again in my first several years and still happens to this day, so I make sure that I always have at least one hitter and one pitcher in mind, no matter what position I’m drafting.  Once you get past round 4, you may have to increase that to 2 each as everyone’s value starts evening out.
2. Never get caught up in the middle of a run.  When I’m forced to draft in the middle, I never get caught up in the middle of the run.  I either start the run or I wait until it’s over.When you’re drafting in the middle of the round, you’re never more than 10-12 picks away and not more than half of them would be in “run” position.  Usually “runs” are with positions in which there may be scarcity, such as closers and catchers.  If you don’t get the top 2-3 then you might as well wait until the last part of the run where you don’t have to draft mediocrity.  When people are drafting mediocre closers you could be drafting low end top tier players.
3. Of course my main goal is trying to make a trade out of the middle. I use the NFL draft pick chart located here when I’ve evaluated whether or not to make trades.  In all honesty, I only look to move to higher picks in the first four rounds.  After that, the value of everyone and trying to predict who will be where is too difficult.  You can use this to your advantage.  Trade up in the 2nd and 4th rounds by sliding down in the 1st and maybe the 5th or 7th.  This would give you 2 picks in the top 14 picks instead of 2 in the top 20.  That is something that you can definitely use to your advantage.

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Strategy Draft Value, NFL draft, Strategy

A couple of weeks ago I looked at potential sleepers based off their injury history or current injury.  Now that we’re getting closer to Opening Day and probably in the middle  of some drafts the next couple of weeks.

Overrated

Vladimir Guerrero isn’t the same player that he was years ago.  Injuries have sapped his speed and he’s reaching an age where the little nagging injuries start to take hold.  He’s also reaching an age where injuries start to really hamper his production.  He’s no longer the 30/30 threat.  He may not reach 30 HR this year since he hasn’t reach it the previous two and thus shouldn’t be drafted as such.  He’s no longer the 1st rounder that he used to be and instead is really a 3rd or 4th rounder.  I might take hell for it, but there are several 25+HR OF out there who are younger and less risky.

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Sleeper, Strategy Jorge Posada, Julio Lugo, Troy Percival, Vladimir Guerrero

Normally, I’m telling everyone who to avoid but this post is probably geared more towards what everyone is looking for, sleepers.

Injuries can provide a unique opportunity to get value out of a player. Injuries ones that are basically out of control from that player depress statistics to a point where it effects many projections. Think about how a player gets hit by a pitch and has to go on the DL for a couple weeks.

Slight Sleeper

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Strategy Chase Utley, Chris Carpenter, John Maine, Justin Duchscherer, Mike Lowell, Mike Napoli, Sleeper

Everyone is talking about value these days gearing up to their drafts. What round is a good value for player X? What price should I throw out for player Y? I always factor in a player’s value when drafting. This is the only way you can build a good team year in and year out. Real value is what the player actually provides your team. There are many different ways of measuring including standing gain points method (SGP) and the percentage method (PVM) as well.

The SGP method converts a player’s contribution in every category into the number of points those stats will allow you to gain in the standings. Adding up a player’s contribution in each category gives you his full SGP value. The thought behind PVM is simple — a player is awarded a value in direct proportion to the level he contributes to each category. The individual category values are then summed to yield a total value. If a player contributes 2.1 percent of the total homers, then he earned 2.1 percent of the money assigned to homers.

In every league there are a couple of owners who either draft out of a magazine they picked up that morning or that print out a top list and go with the “best available”. A couple of years ago one of my fellow league mates did that and ended up drafting Victor Martinez around 14th overall.

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Strategy Strategy, Value

Now that we’ve finally started to get into some games, we can really start paying attention to what injury situations will really effect us in fantasy baseball this year.

Starting off with Jorge Posada’s shoulder, he’s already been hitting in games hitting a Home Run yesterday. This is a great sign in the rehab of his right shoulder surgery. As a hitter, the front shoulder is the power shoulder. Any injury to this area would likely sap the power. Since the right shoulder is the power shoulder for a left handed hitter, it’s no question that it effected Posada’s power last year before the surgery. By him hitting the home run, it points to me that his shoulder is completely healthy from a hitting point of view. It also means he’s on track to return. The next step to watch for is when he’s cleared to begin catching in games again. If everything goes well, I can easily see him returning to full power and being in the top 2 tiers of catchers this year.

Moving on to Albert Pujols’ elbow, we should still monitor how they handle him. Luckily he didn’t need the Tommy John surgery, instead requiring decompression of the ulnar nerve and moving it to a less stressful position. There are very good results coming back from this surgery so as long as there are no setbacks, I fully expect him to turn in his typical Pujols’ like season. Therefore, if for some reason he’s dropping in your draft, don’t worry and just laugh at your fellow owners.

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Strategy, injury analysis Injuries

Like I said before, my friend Troy is able to explain strategy much more clearly than I can. He has been invited to produce small videos to help explain his strategies on Videodraftkit.com. It’s based on proven poker training videos so it should really help you during your draft. I recommend it, I enjoyed the videos that I looked at.

RotoSavants, Strategy RotoSavants, Strategy