Fantasy Baseball Manager of the Year

Dominate Your 2006 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Part 2

March 10, 2006 — 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). And every fantasy baseball magazine offers rankings and draft lists. But have you ever tried to sort those things by stat categories? What a pain. First you have to meticulously slice each player stat line out with a surgical-grade razor, reorder them (hundreds of slivers of newsprint!), then scotch-tape them back together in your order. Praying all the while that a strong gust of wind doesn’t whip through the house before you’re done, because, “Oh, @#$%! There goes your draft — out the window!” Literally.

Of course, there’s an alternative approach — typing the list into your favorite spreadsheet program, going goo-goo eyed staring at cells and developing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Mind you, C.T.S. has ruined many a fantasy career, especially since it takes a full season to recover from Tammy John surgery, made famous by the executive assistant who resurrected her secretarial career at a big ad agency.

Actually, there’s a much better, and more fun way to 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 all the player pools – position, team, league – and stat parameters, 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 your rankings together, 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 and print those as a “specialized” lists, including those “backup picks” discussed in Part 1.

Even better, you can save those players to a My Rosters page, a personal watch list to save for a rainy draft day. Of course, you can also print any My Roster watchlist anytime in the future, a “ccsiw” if you will — “custom cheat sheet in waiting.”

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 Phillies fan and I’m taking Bobby Abreu!” Frankly, if following Abreu throughout the season is going to be more fun for you than following Sizemore or Bay, pick Abreu. This game is, after all, suppose to be fun.

But what if you want to go on more than “heart strings” to decide between Abreu, Beltran, Bay, Sizemore and Crawford — all 5-tool outfielders?

First, look at their MOTY#s, their overall fantasy value. In the 2006 rankings these guys own projected MOTY#s between 72.81 and 52.71. A 20-point range, but all still strong.

Next, check out the ComboCats , where all five players qualify. What’ll you learn, though, is only one made the 65 Club, this year’s highest ComboCat group. Another made the 50 Club, two the 45 Club and the last got into the 40 Club. All of which helps to start refining how these players rank.

The Talent Tiers help separate the pack further — interestingly, none qualify as “elite” outfielders in 2006, but two make the “All-Star” list. Both, very interesting facts.

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

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

Position Scarcity in 2006

Finally, let’s wrap these first two, and admittedly long MOTY Talks – hey, Spring Training’s here! Edwin Encarncion hit his 5th homer yesterday! I’m excited! – with a quick review of position scarcity for 2006.

As it should, position scarcity commands a lot of attention in pre-draft discussions. The top tier shortstops, traditionally a “thin” position in which valuable fantasy players are “scarce,” should be drafted 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 this 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 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 3rd 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 Jose Lima who finished 2005 as MOTY’s lowest ranked fantasy player with a –33.11 MOTY#. The great takeaway from sp’s being the 3rd thinnest position is the validation that the elite starters really are as valuable as some people argue.

After that, if you favor the “strength up the middle” draft strategy, our 2006 scarcity rankings should put a smile on your face. Catchers rank as the thinnest position, followed by 2b, with ss coming in at 4th.

Interestingly, you’ll also notice that 3b is projected to be thinner than both the 1b and outfield slots in 2006. You might want to adjust accordingly.

“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. Just remember two things: 1) 3b is thinner than 1b and outfield. 2) Edwin Encarnacion — 5 hrs in 7 games.

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

Dominate Your 2006 Fantasy Baseball Draft, Part 1