How important is draft prep?
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If you’re like most serious fantasy leaguers this month, you are probably scouring websites, filtering news, downloading data, crunching numbers, ranking players, making charts, requesting advice, doing mocks and generally obsessing over all of it.
Is it worth the effort?
For some, the draft is everything. Those in leagues with limited in-season player movement rest their entire season on the draft. For those in AL-only or NL-only leagues, the thin free agent pool makes draft day success more important as well.
But some people don’t think the draft, and all the preparation that goes along with it, is as important as other variables. After all, in many leagues, your draft roster will contribute less than 50 percent of the stats your team will accumulate over the course of the season.
In the poll I ran here recently, I asked you your opinion on what aspects of playing this game are important in contributing to consistent success. What is the recipe for winning? I gave you a choice of seven variables and asked you to choose the one that you believed was the most important.
These were the variables, and how I interpreted them:
More accurate player projections
This is where many fantasy leaguers and analysts place the greatest emphasis. It would seem intuitive that the owner with the best projections would be the one with the best shot at winning, but it’s not that clear cut. I once wrote that you could have 100% accurate projections and still lose at this game – for which I was duly chastised – but I think this is still an open question.
Better grasp of contextual elements that affect players
We can define this as things like team environment and potential usage based on conditional variables. but that’s really just scratching the surface. If we knew ahead of time whether getting out of Boston is all Clay Buchholz needed, or if Jason Heyward has made any adjustments to reclaim his lost power, or how hurt David Price really is, it seems that would provide us with a measurable edge.
Better sense of market value
This is all about knowing your marketplace. How do your fellow owners value each player? If you see underpriced commodities that can offer you profit, that seems like important knowledge on draft day. Conversely, if you see players going much higher in drafts than their projections and your risk assessment would suggest, that would be critical intelligence as well.
Better in-draft strategy and tactics
This is the ability to budget dollars or plan picks at your draft, and the flexibility to react to changing conditions on the fly. Perhaps all that pre-draft knowledge is not as important as the actual task of leaving your draft with the best roster. It is true that you can’t win your league on Draft Day, but you have to set yourself up to contend. Perhaps it comes down to the question, “Which is more important, knowledge or application of that knowledge?”
Better in-season roster management
This is the ability to maximize your managerial tools, including activations versus reserves, FAAB bidding, and trades. The rising tide of DL stays forces us to micro-manage more than we used to. Given that teams can overcome huge deficits to win leagues, even late in the season, we can’t discount the importance of what we do from April to September.
Being able to spend more time on the process
Research has shown that paying more attention – alone – is a significant contributor to enhanced success, in all disciplines. So you would think that spending more time perfecting items 1 through 5 and getting them right could be an overriding variable.
Better luck
There is no denying the impact of luck. In redraft leagues and for single, isolated championships, luck has a huge role. But for a fantasy player who manages to win consistently, one would think that some other skill has to transcend the impact of luck. That doesn’t mean luck is ever irrelevant. In fact, a case could be made that luck has just as much impact in multiple championships as with single titles. The question is, how much?
About 750 people responded to the poll. Here were their results:
Better in-season roster management 33.3% Better sense of market value 20.7 Better in-draft strategy and tactics 14.2 Better luck 10.2 Being able to spend more time 9.8 More accurate player projections 6.1 Better grasp of contextual elements 5.7
These were not the results I was expecting.
Personally, I place a good amount of emphasis on the roster construction process, and the foundation for that is built on draft day. Yes, we spend the most time overall on the six-month task of in-season management, but no matter how good you are at that process, it’s tough to overcome a bad draft.
But I am also somewhat old school, where the standard league has deep rosters, diving more than 75 percent into the player population. Draft day is crucial because the free agent pool is shallow.
With the growing prevalence of leagues that dip less than 50 percent into the population, in-season management would have a greater role. Perhaps that is what we are seeing with this poll.
Seven years ago, I took this same question to a group of perennial winners in national high stakes competitions and experts leagues. These were not just one-time champs; these were 12 people whose track records boasted title after title against the industry’s toughest opponents. I asked them to rank the variables. (Note that the “time” variable was not on the list back then.)
I scored their responses, giving 6 points for a top ranked variable down to 1 point for the variable ranked last. Here was their aggregate score for these variables:
Better in-draft strategy and tactics 5.00 Better sense of market value 4.15 Better luck 3.85 Better grasp of contextual elements 3.62 Better in-season roster management 3.54 More accurate player projections 2.62
The “experts” placed far more emphasis on the draft. For them, projections and context were far less important than knowing where the value was, and actually applying that knowledge to the draft process. For them, in-draft management was less important.
It is interesting that both groups ranked market value as the second most important variable, but the poll respondents might have applied that knowledge more to in-season decision-making.
The variance in results might be a product of the different types of leagues each group participate in. It might be a timing issue too; the industry has changed a bit in seven years.
If there is any takeaway from this, it would be the variables that both groups agree on. For one, accurate player projections are not that important. And when it comes to luck, it’s right in the middle of the mix.
Sorry in advance for a question unrelated to the article. Noticing the asset group assignments differ between BABS database vs the Broad Assessment Balance Sheet. I.e. Kevin Keirmaier going from SB a to p SB a. Dozier going from PW to P+. Which report is correct?
Noted here: https://babsbaseball.com/babs-database/
The spreadsheets are correct.
Sorry, but that answer is a bit ambiguous. The spreadsheet (i.e., the Excel from 3/17)? Or the spreadsheet(S) created by the BABS database?
The 3/17 Excel spreadsheets are more accurate. We will be looking at the discrepancies this weekend. Oddly, they only arose after we imported the 3/17 data set.
Follow up question. Which ID is being used in the DB? It’s different than the MLB_id, which is the one that ties to Scoresheet.
Apparently. I’ll see if we can change that.
Not sure where to post this, makes sense here. I did my first BABS Draft tonight. Came out pretty darn good! So much quicker and easier to track Assets & Liabilities than to try and target statistics.
I did this tonight specifically as prep and practice for my bigger upcoming Drafts.
One question. In Chapter 6: Draft Planning of your BABS pdf, it says for a standard 15 Team, 23 Player League, the Minimum Asset Targets should be:
14 Power
7 Speed
14 Batting
Well that means that ALL 14 offensive players need a Power/Batting combo of some sort, and that a full half, 7 of those batters, need to be 3 category producers (Power/Speed/Batting).
My question…how in the world is that possible?! Am I misreading/misunderstanding your report? There’s very few “triple threats” to begin with. How could I be hauling that much good stuff, especially deep in the Draft?
Thanks Ron
Hey Ron,
Why does Robinson Cano have the Rg liability? It would make more sense to me if he had Ag, but Rg has stumped me.
Chapter 6, pp. 58-59 shows you how rostering extreme “+” skilled players buys you flexibility.
His assets (p,AV) last year were identical to 2015 and more in line with 20-30 HR, sub-.300 BA output than the 39 HR, .300ish BA he hit last year. That is enough to trigger the Regression liability. The Age liability kicks in at 36. Look him up in the new BABS database to see how his ratings follow his output.
Hi Ron,
I posted on another thread about my NL team, this is my AL 4×4 team (no R, WHIP), I really feel as though I can compete for a championship with this team. A lot of money to spend. I worry about Robertson being traded out of the AL and both Britton and Chapman as of right now are in the player pool to be aquired on draft day, but more closers could come if cut before draft day. Trout, Betts, Springer, Machado, JD Mart, Segura, Abreu, Odor some of the bats available. I kind of think with the pitching I have I should really go after offense with most of the cash, and fill in pitching with upside roughly 5ish dollar players. Does this seem like a good plan heading into the draft? Should I keep Robertson, and go after one of those two big closers as well? Thanks!
Jose Altuve 2B | HOU $44.00 B
Trevor Plouffe 3B | OAK $5.00 A
Carlos Correa SS | HOU $10.00 A
Matt Duffy 3B | TB $10.00 B
Khris Davis OF | OAK $12.00 B
Max Kepler OF | MIN $11.00 B
Leonys Martin OF | SEA $12.00 B
Cam Bedrosian P | LAA $1.00 B
Carlos Carrasco P | CLE $1.00 B
Yu Darvish P | TEX $4.00 A
Lance McCullers P | HOU $10.00 A
David Robertson P | CHW $19.00 B
Drew Smyly P | SEA $10.00 A
Total Salary $149.00
One other guy I’m iffy on keeping is Paulo Orlando. I have him for $1. Different sites have him as anywhere from a 131AB/3HR/4SB guy to 398AB/5HR/12SB projected player. Obviously it’s all about his PT, is $1 worth that gamble?
You have a bunch of nice, serviceable players but few impact commodities. Altuve and Correa form a small offensive core; Darvish and Corrasco would do likewise on the pitching side, but with some risk. You are overpaying for Plouffe, Robertson and Smyly. You might be able to recquire a few other of these names (Duffy, Martin?) back in the draft at prices close to these. I would not protect them either. And forget about Orlando. (For that matter, if you think you could get Altuve back for $44 or under, you should throw him back as well.) You need more impact players. If this is a 12-team league, then maybe this is the best you can get, depending upon who else is being protected. If a 10-teamer, you can definitely do better.
should have mentioned 12 teamer, we don’t draft until April 8 and cuts aren’t due until the 1st so I’ll see what inflation may look like when it comes to Altuve. Thanks for the feedback!
Ron,
The ranking of in-season roster management as the most important factor may also have to do with the prevalence of weekly or daily roster moves. With many leagues having reserve lists that allow teams to post active rosters on a daily or weekly basis, it would seem that managing that aspect of the game would be seen as the most important factor in winning the league.
Probably more a factor of daily rather than weekly, but yes, that could be it. Except the experts were faced with that too.
Given that the experts poll was taken 7 years ago, were daily or weekly active rosters a standard in the leagues or was it a more traditional (read old-fashioned) league structure that accumulated the stats of all the players on your roster and only allowed for changes due to injury etc.
Leagues were pretty similar to today. Tout Wars, NFBC, etc. etc.
Ron, great work as always. On the topic of draft prep, I’m noticing that your sheet lists 46 SPs as likely full-timers (give or take). It seems like even in a 12 team mixed league trying to obtain 5 for one team might take some doing or neglect elsewhere on the roster. I’m curious if you’ve consciously hedged toward listing more mid-time SPs this season rather than labeling them full-timers and if this might be a reflection of a possible trend toward fewer IP by SPs in general.
The cut-off between Full-timers and Mid-timers is 180 IP. So there are still a good number of pitchers who could be considered regulars among those with the “M” designation.