Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy: Batting Average and Saves
Ok, 2009 has arrived for fantasy baseball and your draft is probably coming up. If you play in a 5x5 rotisserie league then you know you need a very good draft strategy in order to out draft your opponents .This year isn't that much different from last year for me. Last year I keyed on players who hit homeruns and stole bases along with closers. This year I'm keying on batting average and saves while keeping the power hitting, base thieves close by. I want you all to note that the draft is not everything. It isn't the end-all-be-all of your season. There is still lots of work to do and decisions to make during the season. However, it is important to get off on the right foot.
Batting Average
In every draft strategy, you have to decide on what angle you want to attack the draft from. As I mentioned above, last year I focused on players with certain skills like power and speed and it paid off. This year is a tad different, but rather than focus on homeruns/steals (there is just a plentiful supply in 2009), focus on batting average. I love batting average in 2009 because it covers the field when it comes to 5x5 scoring and gives you the greatest advantage during the draft. You might ask, how does targeting one category give me the greatest advantage? First off, you need to come out of the draft dominating a category if you can. There are 10 categories, normally 12 managers. Someone has to be the best team for each category, right? If you draft more focused instead of targeting across the board it will give you an advantage going into the season. The first key is getting players with high batting average potential from the start and throughout the draft whenever possible. A player with a good batting average tends to have other qualities. I mean if he's getting lots of hits, can some of them be homeruns? If he is getting lots of hits, then he is on base allot and being on base means more steals and more runs? Finally, if you are getting the hits, there has to be guys on base at some point, so RBIs come across.
There is one more advantage for going for batting average and that has to do with what I said earlier about dominating a category. Having the best overall team average coming out of the draft gives you a foundation to work from and it sets you up nicely in the other categories as mentioned. For example in the first round, if you can avoid players like Ryan Howard, Jose Reyes, or Grady Sizemore that would be great. Getting a Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols, even AROD would serve you much better. Say you get Albert Pujols. With Pujols you get average, homeruns, RBIs, and runs. The key is you get average. Later in the draft say you get Jacoby Ellsbury. We assume he will get to the .300 mark, steal 50 bases, and score 100+ runs. So when your pick comes up for offensive players and YOU HAVE to choose between a few similar players, lean towards the high average potential (HAP for acronym lovers) guys.
Saves
The save category is just as important as batting average only for the pitching side. Good closers always tends to carry a low ERA, decent WHIP, get 60-80 strikeouts, and notch a half a dozen wins or so. So in fact having a strong bullpen really gives you a strong pitching staff. We have always advocated drafting closers early as they hold as much value as some of the top hitters. Lets consider the two top closers for 2008 Francisco Rodriguez and Jonathan Papelbon. If you drafted Rodriguez early last year than you has a huge advantage in saves, which as far as I remember counts as one category or 10% of the categories. However, he also added 77 strikeouts to your totals and with the average starting pitcher getting 155 strikeouts that is allot of strikeouts to make a difference on your total. Finally his ERA was 2.24 and 2 wins. Papelbon was nearly the same only less saves. He had 41 saves, 77 Ks, 5 wins, and a microscopic .95 WHIP. Both closers pitched roughly 69 innings. Regardless of what some people think of closers, if you have enough of them they will make a tremendous impact on your pitching rotation and give you the 12 points in the saves category. They will also move you up the ladder in ERA, strikeouts, and even wins and WHIP.
So by dominating those two categories you can effectively dominate the draft and go into the season the front runner. Now, it's hard to come out of a draft on top of two categories, but those are often the two most overlooked categories during a draft as they are overshadowed by homeruns and steals. We do recommend that the secondary categories you should get are homeruns and steals, especially gem players who score well in both catyegories. If you have to give up average for a pick, do it for a 20/20 or 30/30 type guy. Clearly the best player you can get in a draft is a power hitting, base stealing, high average player. That is probably obvious, and that is why guys like Hanley Ramirez, Matt Holiday, David Wright, Alex Rodriguez, etc... make the first round. There are players later in the draft who will impact homeruns and steals as well, so never fear you will get your numbers.
Just a note, last year I won the 2008 Fantasy Baseball Search Expert League. Now, this was a 5x5 H2H format, but when the rotisserie numbers were totaled at the end, I won the league in a standard roto format as well with 96 total points. Tim Dierkes of Roto Authority finished the next closest at 91 points. Now, I'm not mentioning this merely to show off or brag. I'm telling you this because I scored the best in team average and the save categories netting me 24 points and a clear advantage across the board. Having those two categories wrapped up, I managed to also score big in Homeruns (10), RBI (12), ERA (11), WHIP (11), and wins (9). My worse pitching category was strikeouts (8). I'm not saying that dominating saves and batting average did all that for me. What I am saying is it setup a strong foundation for my team to excel across the board and limited slumps and absolute weakness in 90% of the categories. I did score poorly in SBs (4), but we all can't be perfect.
To see more on the 2008 Fantasy Baseball Search Expert League, http://www.fantasybaseballsearch.com/2008_expert_league.asp
Batting Average
In every draft strategy, you have to decide on what angle you want to attack the draft from. As I mentioned above, last year I focused on players with certain skills like power and speed and it paid off. This year is a tad different, but rather than focus on homeruns/steals (there is just a plentiful supply in 2009), focus on batting average. I love batting average in 2009 because it covers the field when it comes to 5x5 scoring and gives you the greatest advantage during the draft. You might ask, how does targeting one category give me the greatest advantage? First off, you need to come out of the draft dominating a category if you can. There are 10 categories, normally 12 managers. Someone has to be the best team for each category, right? If you draft more focused instead of targeting across the board it will give you an advantage going into the season. The first key is getting players with high batting average potential from the start and throughout the draft whenever possible. A player with a good batting average tends to have other qualities. I mean if he's getting lots of hits, can some of them be homeruns? If he is getting lots of hits, then he is on base allot and being on base means more steals and more runs? Finally, if you are getting the hits, there has to be guys on base at some point, so RBIs come across.
There is one more advantage for going for batting average and that has to do with what I said earlier about dominating a category. Having the best overall team average coming out of the draft gives you a foundation to work from and it sets you up nicely in the other categories as mentioned. For example in the first round, if you can avoid players like Ryan Howard, Jose Reyes, or Grady Sizemore that would be great. Getting a Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols, even AROD would serve you much better. Say you get Albert Pujols. With Pujols you get average, homeruns, RBIs, and runs. The key is you get average. Later in the draft say you get Jacoby Ellsbury. We assume he will get to the .300 mark, steal 50 bases, and score 100+ runs. So when your pick comes up for offensive players and YOU HAVE to choose between a few similar players, lean towards the high average potential (HAP for acronym lovers) guys.
Saves
The save category is just as important as batting average only for the pitching side. Good closers always tends to carry a low ERA, decent WHIP, get 60-80 strikeouts, and notch a half a dozen wins or so. So in fact having a strong bullpen really gives you a strong pitching staff. We have always advocated drafting closers early as they hold as much value as some of the top hitters. Lets consider the two top closers for 2008 Francisco Rodriguez and Jonathan Papelbon. If you drafted Rodriguez early last year than you has a huge advantage in saves, which as far as I remember counts as one category or 10% of the categories. However, he also added 77 strikeouts to your totals and with the average starting pitcher getting 155 strikeouts that is allot of strikeouts to make a difference on your total. Finally his ERA was 2.24 and 2 wins. Papelbon was nearly the same only less saves. He had 41 saves, 77 Ks, 5 wins, and a microscopic .95 WHIP. Both closers pitched roughly 69 innings. Regardless of what some people think of closers, if you have enough of them they will make a tremendous impact on your pitching rotation and give you the 12 points in the saves category. They will also move you up the ladder in ERA, strikeouts, and even wins and WHIP.
So by dominating those two categories you can effectively dominate the draft and go into the season the front runner. Now, it's hard to come out of a draft on top of two categories, but those are often the two most overlooked categories during a draft as they are overshadowed by homeruns and steals. We do recommend that the secondary categories you should get are homeruns and steals, especially gem players who score well in both catyegories. If you have to give up average for a pick, do it for a 20/20 or 30/30 type guy. Clearly the best player you can get in a draft is a power hitting, base stealing, high average player. That is probably obvious, and that is why guys like Hanley Ramirez, Matt Holiday, David Wright, Alex Rodriguez, etc... make the first round. There are players later in the draft who will impact homeruns and steals as well, so never fear you will get your numbers.
Just a note, last year I won the 2008 Fantasy Baseball Search Expert League. Now, this was a 5x5 H2H format, but when the rotisserie numbers were totaled at the end, I won the league in a standard roto format as well with 96 total points. Tim Dierkes of Roto Authority finished the next closest at 91 points. Now, I'm not mentioning this merely to show off or brag. I'm telling you this because I scored the best in team average and the save categories netting me 24 points and a clear advantage across the board. Having those two categories wrapped up, I managed to also score big in Homeruns (10), RBI (12), ERA (11), WHIP (11), and wins (9). My worse pitching category was strikeouts (8). I'm not saying that dominating saves and batting average did all that for me. What I am saying is it setup a strong foundation for my team to excel across the board and limited slumps and absolute weakness in 90% of the categories. I did score poorly in SBs (4), but we all can't be perfect.
To see more on the 2008 Fantasy Baseball Search Expert League, http://www.fantasybaseballsearch.com/2008_expert_league.asp
Labels: 2009 draft kit, draft strategy
posted by The True GURU at
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
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