Fantasy Baseball Drafting Strategies

It's the season: Allergies are kicking in, people are getting hand cramps from filling out brackets...oh, and we're supposed to be drafting our fantasy baseball leagues, of course.

There's many ways to draft your team. Duh. In fact, most experts hit the most effective strategies pretty well (one example? Matthew Berry's Draft Manifesto on ESPN. I think it's very well-thought out.)

However, the experts have to cover all types of drafts: Autopick, offline, auction, etc. and all types of leagues. What I'm going to do is present my argument for the best strategy, and then mention a few others.

Your job? Read, and comment! Remember, comments are what drive the community, and since I'll have no idea how popular this article is by view count, I won't know I did a decent job unless you say so!

Onto the brainstorming! (Note: I'm assuming the league has a fairly standard roster. As in, pretty close to the real thing.)

My strategy is fairly simple: Go infield first. Why is that? Let me show you the first 6 rounds of my live draft today.

Hanley Ramirez, SS
Brandon Phillips, 2B
Ryan Braun, 3B
BJ Upton, 2B/OF (We have a MI position, so he fit)
Derrick Lee, 1B
Jorge Posada, C

Sure, this is only an 8-team mixed league. But I still have no weaknesses. Allow me to explain.

My first round pick (2nd overall) was SS, and I always go for something referred to as position scarcity. Look at the SS position overall. Besides HanRam, Jose Reyes, and Jimmy Rollins, is there another truly elite, 5-category producer there? Jeter is close, but not quite.

Basic economics: Supply and demand. You, the team owner, want the best player at each position, and want a better team than your competitors. The less supply, the higher the demand. In other words, the good ones will be gone quickly, especially when there are less to be had.

So, picking an elite SS is a very smart move. Now, I'm not saying with the 1st pick you should just ditch A-Rod. But I'll address that momentarily.

I went for the 2B position next. Traditionally, the middle infield slots have the least amount of high-producing players. Quick! Name some 5-category producers! Chase Utley, Brandon Phillips, BJ Upton....uh....yeah....

Thus my point. Although Brian Roberts did well, he didn't hit for too much power like these other guys can. The 3 I consider elite hit for 20+ HR. From second base? That's good stuff. And they give you great stuff in runs scored, batting average, RBIs, and SB.

In other words, snagging one of those three early should also be a priority if you want to set your team apart from the rest. Fortunately, I was able to.

Round 3 saw me target another infielder, this time 3B. Again, I use the position scarcity thought process: Aside from A-Rod, no player produced as much fantasy goodness per game than Braun. That's hard to come by. 3B is a little more loaded than the second or short. David Wright, Miguel Cabrera, and Chipper Jones are the only other 3B players to manage 90+ runs, 20+ HR, 100+ RBI (except Braun, who got 97 in a month's less playing time), and bat over .300

Impressive stat lines, yes? Well, there's only 5 of them. You want one.

We then come to an interesting dilemna. If we keep with the position scarcity theory, catcher should come next, right? I disagree here. You have to keep in mind overall value, which for me is the production a player can give in relation to those still available.

At this point in my draft, Russell Martin, Victor Martinez, and Jorge Posada (the "Big Three" in my opinion, Posada not on the same level) were all still available. But players such as BJ Upton, Derrick Lee, Alfonso Soriano, and Prince Fielder were still available. They'll produce much better offensive numbers than these catchers!

Ignoring the MI pick I made (Some leagues have it, most don't I think), we see I took a 1B next. I had 2 reasons for rounding out my infield before taking a pitcher or OF:

1.) There are many good OF that go later in drafts (trust me on this if you don't know)

2.) Pitching is deeper than 1B

I might've made a mistake on this pick. Actually, I probably did on my player choice, but not the position. After getting a 1B, now I can concentrate completely on OF and P, and maybe get a few players I shouldn't because others are concentrating on the now not-so-stellar players still available.

Round six brought me Posada, and I had no complaints. Martin and Martin were gone. Guess who was the only catcher to score over 90 times last season, while still being 1 of 2 catchers to hit 20+ HRs and bat over .300? Yep. Jorge Posada. His production in BA and R was unrivaled last season, and he's up there in the HR and RBI department. After the "Big Three" at catcher, nobody managed over 62 runs scored, a BA over .300, and only 1 managed 80 RBIs (Bengie Molina, anyone?).

So here, both position scarcity AND overall value came into play. Posada is an elite catcher, and was the best one available by far at this point.

Would you like some more reasoning? Remember when I mentioned others would be concentrating on the positions I was secure in? Consider this:

-I drafted Curtis Granderson (a top-10 OF) in round 7, and Erik Bedard (a top-10 pitcher) in round 8.

-In between, two catchers and three SS were taken.

-John Smoltz (round 10), Chad Billingsley (round 13) and Fausto Carmona (round 14) were all available late for pitching. So were Howie Kendrick (2B), Michael Young (SS), and Adrian Beltre (3B), the best available player at their respective positions.

Before I conclude, I would like to say my drafting strategy works better in leagues with at least 8 people, and the more there are, the better this works. You don't want to be deciding between Ryan Theroit and Kaz Matsui for your starting 2B.

I'm not claiming this is the end-all, be-all strategy available, to be sure. You could just go for the best available player in the beginning (of course, that's a subjective statement), and then see what's left later. Or, you could stock up on pitching, then trawl through the depths on hitters to see what's left. Heck, taking as many Tiger hitters as possible wouldn't be a terrible idea...

All I'm claiming is that this way of drafting is a very good plan if you want to make the playoffs. It worked for me last year, and it looks to have been successful so far in 2008.

There are two things I'd like to mention that should apply to ALL managers:

a.) NEVER take a relief pitcher early! Ask my friends: I always point this out when I see Jonathan Papelbon going in round 9 (as it did today). John Lackey, Torii Hunter, Ryan Zimmerman, Dan Haren, John Smoltz, and Hunter Pence were just a few of the names still available.

There's other logic to this: How many quality RPs are there? Plenty. Last season, 18 closers notched 30+ saves. 12 of those had an ERA < 3, meaning there were plenty of capable RPs to go around. And when the playoffs come there are many new closers in place, a la Manny Corpas (from Brian Fuentes) and Jeremy Accardo (from BJ Ryan).

b.) Stick to YOUR plan! Knowing what you're doing going in makes it a heckuva lot easier! I recommend participating in a couple of mock drafts to help with this, as it puts the plan to action and you can see the results.

Whatever plan you decide to employ, there are a lot of factors that can influence a player's productivity. It can be all a headache.

But in the end, we all are playing for FUN. Don't let a bad draft ruin your day...but if you follow my advice, a bad draft might not come about