After reading the article Patrick quoted from in the post he published earlier today, I found some more questionable advice. I hate to pick on this article for a 2nd time, but I’m secretly hoping to turn this site into the FireJoeMorgan.com of fantasy baseball writing. Anyway, here’s what was written on how to create a cheatsheet for your draft:
You will need to get the auction values for every fantasy-worthy player from at least three major services (don’t worry if you play in a Roto league, auction values are still useful). I use the expert league Tout Wars values, the averages from all CBS auction leagues (they started offering the service this year), and the auction values from the most up-to-date projections of the Baseball Forecaster (which you can get for free if you buy the book). Then you average them.
Then I take the average draft positions (ADP) from CBS, ESPN, and Mock Draft Central and average those. Finally, use your spreadsheet to rank every player according to their average auction value. Take that rank and average it with each player’s average ADP and you will get your determining value. Sort all the players by that value and you will get your draft-day cheat sheet.
Wowzers, lots of averaging of lots of numbers that have nothing to do with each other. First off, the Baseball Forecaster values refer to Only leagues, not to mixed leagues. Therefore, it would be incorrect to average them out with mixed league values retrieved from CBS auction leagues and Tout Wars values. Next, is there any concern for whether the formats and roster requirements are the exact same for each resource that the values and ADPs are being taken from? If one site’s values or ADPs are based on 1-catcher leagues, but another you average them with is based on a 2-catcher league, then guess what? Values for catchers will be completely different in each set of values/ADPs and averaging them will render them totally useless. Furthermore, if your own league’s format and roster requirements don’t match up exactly with the values/ADP lists you’re using, then again the rankings will be wrong.
The last point I wanted to make about the advice is that the article recommends averaging a ton of values and ADPs based on what other owners are doing and sorting these to complete your final spreadsheet. Are the alarm bells going off in anyone else’s head? All this cheatsheet will be telling you is how everyone else is drafting and valuing players! Sure, this could certainly help so you don’t take a player too early, but how could this possibly help you to draft your own team? If you just use the cheatsheet to draft from that the author suggests, your team will include players drafted in the same rounds that everyone else takes them, not maximizing value, not drafting undervalued players, and not avoiding overvalued players. Seeing Justin Verlander’s name, for example, ranked 75th, and then drafting him at that spot when it’s your turn and he’s still available is just following the herd.
The bottom line is that what the above advice will do for you is cause you to draft a completely average team. You’d be basically following the rankings that everyone else is looking at and this is not the way to go about having a successful snake draft.
Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Patrick DiCaprio // Jul 30, 2008 at 8:44 am
As I always say, be careful to apply my “expert” criteria to other opinions; here the advice clearly does not qualify as “expert”advice and should be avoided. You hit the nail on the head here Mike.
2 Rhett Oldham // Jul 30, 2008 at 9:33 am
Mike, great point, but I do have a few questions? If you are extremely high on a player next year, example Verlander, and you think that many other people are as well, how much earlier do you draft him than 75th?
At point does he become a “value” pick and how far do you let him fall? I do not know the answer so I have no preconceived notions about what is correct or if that is even possible.
Considering that in a 12 team league only 8.3% of all owners win the league that leaves alot of people wrong on player evaluation, 91.7% to be exact. As a result many “experts” don’t win and are not right on players.
I think ADP is a guide to trends, nothing more. I value players based on a number of factors as I am sure all of us do.
3 Tim Thompson // Jul 30, 2008 at 10:03 am
But I think you have to understand your league and your categories. Take our league, we are a 12-team sometimes up to 14-15 mixed league with a 4X4, our pitching categories are K’s, Wins, ERA and Saves. There is really ZERO value in our league for middle relievers. They dont get enough wins or K’s to offset what they might get you in ERA.
We also dont have a Free pick up league, so you just cant drop someone and pick someone up for no reason. We do have a waiver wire which is dropped players when an injured player returns etc..
So one of the things I hear all the “Experts” say is: Dont pay for a Closer. But in our league, if you dont have 2 good ones, you are screwed, and in a $130 cap league, good closers in the draft usually go $14-18…weve had some owners get away sometimes taking a few guys at the end, one owner this year has done well with the Wilson’s….but for everyone of those there are two other owners who took similar strategies and ended up in the past with the Joe Borowski, Jorge Julio’s and Keith Foulke’s of the world. In a 4X league, especially ours, its tough to recover once you have guys lose jobs. Closers are tough to come by because you just cant do a free agent add/drop anytime you like.
So you really have to understand the nuances and categories of the league you are in to understand value and rankings. We dont play with Runs either, so those top of the order guys who arent maybe huge bag guys and dont put up great power numbers (Dustin Pedroia type) dont have as much value in our league as they might in other leagues that use runs. I think next season we will be adding WHIP and Runs, which will be a change for us, weve been these same 8 categories for 17 seasons.
4 Anonymous // Jul 30, 2008 at 10:33 am
Neither one of you linked to or even mentioned the name of the expert site that posted the questionable advice.
5 Patrick DiCaprio // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:09 am
Anonymous, I don’t like to call out sites or people by name.
6 Mike Podhorzer // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:12 am
Rhett- to answer your question of how I know when to draft a player, I actually calculate my own $$ values, even for straight draft leagues, and then sort them by my values. During the draft, I don’t strictly go in order of the list, as there are many factors that go into who I end up selecting. In fact, one of my first articles here specifically outlined how I prepare for and draft a snake league team. The article is a little long, but it might help answering your questions. Check it out here.
Anonymous- we purposely don’t call out other sites or “experts” as we don’t feel it’s appropriate. However, it’s not difficult to find the site doing a simple Google search, as that’s exactly how I found the article myself.
7 Jeff // Jul 30, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Again… I wrote the piece you are slamming and I feel the need to defend my point of view.
I think you make some valid arguments against my work and it forces me to consider that I did a poor job of explaining myself. That said, I think you guys are kind of missing the point.
“All this cheatsheet will be telling you is how everyone else is drafting and valuing players! Sure, this could certainly help so you don’t take a player too early, but how could this possibly help you to draft your own team? ”
The entire point of my system is to give an indication of where everyone is getting drafted! The end result is a simple list of players ranked in order of their perceived value in the fantasy community. How could that not be of service in a draft? It would be like basing your investments on which companies are in the Fortune 500 — not a great idea overall, but a reasonable return on investment could be expected in the long term. But shrewd investors dig a little deeper, which is exactly what I advocated earlier in the article.
I think that a particular passage in my article has been taken out of context. Earlier in the piece, I exhorted readers to immerse themselves in every available piece of fantasy baseball info known to man before heading into a draft. Whether you walk into a draft with the best projections in the world or with that day’s newspaper, failing to have a base of knowledge is a recipe for disaster on draft day.
Taken in full, the point of my article was to condition readers to the reality that successful fantasy baseball play is complex and has many roads to success. Ultimately, my strategy does exactly what Mike endorses in his latest comment - get your own values and filter them through your own body of knowledge.
I realize that I did a poor job of explaining myself and I will correct the deficit in the near future.
8 Dave // Aug 2, 2008 at 3:12 am
Hi Jeff,
It’s funny, I have your site bookmarked as well as this one. The reason? I feel that between the two sites, you all have it covered. I enjoyed this article and yours as well. When it comes down to it, it is as both of you have stated…do your own homework, this is just added advice.
9 Patrick DiCaprio // Aug 2, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Dave, you hit it on the head.
10 Dave // Aug 2, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I usually go with the strategy of closing my eyes and throwing a dart…working well so far!
Actually, my draft strategy this year (in an auction draft) was to pay for 10/16 positions, and pick up from the waiver wire for the final 6 positions. I knew the 10 I wanted (6 positional, 4 pitchers) and was willing to overpay by a couple dollars. I can say that it has panned out well as I got quentin, sherrill, and a few others so far off the wire. I was laughed at when I spent all my money so quickly, but now I’m the one laughing…Good luck everyone.
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