After playing in auction leagues for years, I’m going to play in my first straight draft league next week: 10-12 teams, drafting order drawn from a hat.
Do you have any advice you can share on draft-day strategy for a straight draft league, or do you know where else I might get advice?
This is a link to the results for a draft league that Todd Zola at mastersball.com set up. CREATiVESPORTS – 13 Experts, 1 Scrub, and a Pizza Place I joined because I’ve never played in a straight draft league and I had some ideas I wanted to try out.
The deal with draft leagues, especially leagues that don’t draft deeply (this one is a mixed 14 team league, on purpose, because there are no demo leagues for this very popular profile), is that you have to be aware of position scarcity. While you want to get the best player with each pick, you have to be aware that if you end up with the worst catchers and shortstops at the end of the auction you’re getting much less talent (even if you’ve got the best outfielders) than if you had decent middle infielders and poor outfielders.
At the same time, you can’t just fill up the infield positions and leave the outfield for last, because players like Sammy Sosa, Vlad Guerrero, Bobby Abreu and Barry Bonds put up much bigger production numbers than anyone else. That, I think, is the advantage of picking early: You can get A-Rod or Piazza, Pedro or Big Unit. Picking 14th I didn’t have a shot at any of these guys.
How to balance this? I’ve tried to weigh the price of each possible pair of players for the next two rounds, being aware that I have to fill my skill positions earlier rather than later. The result has be a little bit of skill and, I hope, a lot of production. Also, I’m chucking saves, because I want to end up with an advantage on offense.
What I don’t have a feel for, at all, is how this is going to play out when there are no more good players left. I suppose I could end up embarrassed, but I think the experience is necessary to get a feel for this game.
You can follow along if you like. Just don’t laugh too hard, please. I’m learning.
BTW, part of my theory about position scarcity is that it doesn’t matter as much as most think. My idea is that if the spead between the best outfielder you can take now and the best infielder you can take on the next round, is greater than the best infielder you can take and the best outfielder on the next round, go for the infielder. But I took Javy Lopez in the sixth round not on this principle but because he was the last real offensive player left at catcher. The only catchers with any potential left after him are Charles Johnson, Mike Lieberthal and Michael Barrett. Okay, and maybe Todd Hundley.
Lopez was, however, about the 50th best player available. I’ll know better next round whether I ddi the right thing.