Fantasy Baseball Manager of the Year

Dominate Your 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Part 2

February 14, 2009 — Now that you’ve gotten some broad-stroke, “MOTY-style” draft notions in Part 1, allow us to offer suggestions on how to use the Fantasy Baseball MOTY site to prepare for your draft. Especially for all the folks new to MOTY in 2009.

Player rankings are the most obvious, and necessary, place to start for a successful draft — both a master list and lists by position (and/or category, like stolen base guys or 100 run/100 rbi guys). And by now, you likely realize that every fantasy baseball magazine offers rankings and draft lists. Trouble is, they’re not sortable. Of course, there’s an alternative approach — typing their lists into your favorite spreadsheet program, going goo-goo eyed staring at cells and developing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Fortunately, there’s a much better, and more fun way to research and create your draft rankings — the MOTY Scope™.

Generating focused lists, and ranking them, for your draft is exactly what the MOTY Scope does, in a fraction of the time. You define the player pools – position, team, league – and stat parameters using any combination of up to 3 stats, click the “Apply Filter” button, and ba-da-bing, MOTY delivers a short list of all the players you’re looking for.

Or were looking for and didn’t know you were looking for. As in “sleepers.”

Once you’ve got the player rankings filtered and sorted, you can print them – Voilá! Your own custom cheat sheets – with MOTY’s printer-friendly function. Or continue sorting the resulting tables by any category header, cherry pick the guys you really want to focus on, save them to a personal, My Roster watch list and print those as “specialized” cheat sheets, including those “back up picks” discussed in Part 1.

Mr. Nitty, Meet Mr. Gritty — In-Depth Draft Research

Another great draft prep technique is to draw up “forecast” lists, highlighting guys you think might be overvalued, or sleepers, or “Untouchables.” Now, you can and should define these players anyway you like. Hey, when all other methods are exhausted, sentimentality is as good a reason as any to draft a player — “I’m a Rangers fan and I’m taking Josh Hamiltion!” Frankly, if following Hamilton throughout the season is going to be more fun for you than following Carlos Quentin or Ryan Braun, pick Josh. This game is, after all, suppose to be fun.

But what if you want to go on more than “heart strings” to decide between Hamilton, Quentin, Braun, Sizemore, Beltran and Holliday — all 4-to-5-tool outfielders?

First, look at their MOTY#s, their overall fantasy value. In the 2009 projected rankings, these guys own projected MOTY#s between 73.42 and 62.41. An 11-point range, but all still strong.

Next, check out the ComboCats, where five of the six players qualify. What you’ll learn, though, is only four of the six are projected ComboCats, with one of the remaining four making the 60, 55, 50 and 45 Clubs respectivley.

Our Talent Tiers help separate the pack further — interestingly, three qualify as “elite” outfielders based on our 2009 projections. While the other three all make the “All-Star” list.

After zipping between all these draft tools, you can cross reference these players’ Talent Tier status with their ComboCat Clubs and projected MOTY#s, then rank them with the utmost confidence.

Then again, being a life-long Rangers fan might trump all the research in the world.

Position Scarcity in 2008

Finally, let’s wrap this MOTY Talk with a quick review of position scarcity for 2008.

As it should, position scarcity commands a lot of attention in pre-draft discussions. The top tier second basemen, traditionally a “thin” position in which valuable fantasy players are “scarce,” should be strongly considered before second and third tier players at “fatter”  positions — even if those guys boast higher MOTY#s. Unfortunately, few fantasy pundits quantify how scarce or “thin” positions are when ranking them.

Wouldn’t you know it, MOTY can and does in the following table:

Position scarcity is determined by the average, projected MOTY# for all players at each particular position. Then ranked 1-8, most-to-least scarce or “thin.” We’re leaving middle relievers out of the rankings since they truly are a dime a dozen and, alone, rarely contribute to a fantasy team’s production.

Now, a couple of things may immediately jump out at you. Namely that closers rate as the least scarce position and starting pitchers rank as the 2nd most thin. But there are very good reasons for both.

The pool of closers (and “closers-in-waiting”) is very small, 30-40 guys or so. We know who they are and we know they are going to produce valuable stats, saves. In short, there are very few closers and they all produce valuable numbers, so their average MOTY# is naturally high. There aren’t dozens of guys watering down the elite closers’ value.

On the flip side, there are an awful lot of pitchers who will start games in the bigs. Many producing mediocre to terrible stat lines — and thus very low MOTY#s. In fact, pitchers can produce negative MOTY#s, like Carlos Silva (SEA, sp) who finished 2008 as MOTY’s lowest ranked fantasy player with a -28.55 MOTY#. The great takeaway from sp’s being the 2nd thinnest position is the validation that the elite starters really are as valuable as some people argue.

Yes, Johan Santana and Roy Halladay really are THAT good.

After that, if you favor the “strength up the middle” draft strategy, our 2009 scarcity rankings should put a smile on your face. Catchers rank as the thinnest position, with ss coming in 3rd and 2b in 4th.

Now, if you’re in an AL-only or NL-only league, the rankings shift a bit. So, let’s take a look at those as well:

“This is all good and fine,” you might be thinking. “But what do I do with these scarcity rankings?” Nothing — if you have a MOTY subscription. Position scarcity is already incorporated into the MOTY Rankings. They help determine the Adjusted MOTY#s for draft rankings in mixed position pools, including your batter and pitcher combined list, the granddaddy of all fantasy baseball draft lists.

So, all you have to do is click the Projections tab in the Draft War Room and start preparing for your draft.

With that, good luck with your draft. Rather, “Good MOTY” instead.

Dominate Your 2009 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Part 1

Share this: del.icio.us | Digg | StumbleUpon