Daily Fantasy Sports Action: 01/13/09

When it comes to fantasy sports, you'll find many different types of players. The three types I'm most familiar with are those that play but don't really care, those that play to win, and those that obsess over their teams constantly. I would like to think that I fall close to the line between playing to win and obsessing over my teams. As a matter of fact, I took a year off from fantasy because I thought it had turned into an obsession. I found that the reason it had been so time-consuming was because I was ignoring the big picture and concentrating on the little things. I was constantly checking out how players had played over the last week, two weeks, month, etc. to find the players that were breaking out mid-season. It wasn't until I learned the full extent that chance played in baseball that I started to concentrate on the big picture things: roster construction, strategy, and valuing long-term skills over short-term statistical flukes. While missing on a breakout player makes me kick myself every once in a while, this happens less often than you would think.

So what does matter in winning a fantasy league? I'll give a quick overview that I plan on expanding as the fantasy baseball season approaches.

Pre-Draft

First, before the draft, you must find the proper strategy for your league. Once you've picked out a strategy, you need good projections. I use PECOTA, but there are other projection systems that do pretty well. If you can, try to find out the methodology behind the projections and avoid those without explanation or without proof of past performance. With your strategy and projections in hand, properly value each player and test out your strategy in mock drafts. Keep in mind that your draft will not go even remotely like your mock drafts (drafts typically fall in line with that site's player rankings), but if you're concentrating on strategy, you'll get an idea what your final roster will look like.

Draft

Make sure to pay attention to who's still available at every position because runs at certain positions can drastically drop its replacement level, which will increase the value of the remaining players at that position. Keep track of the players at the top of your list for your upcoming selection, so you're ready if one of them gets selected right before your pick. If you get caught off-guard, your selection will most likely be regrettable. Also keep track of the next best player at every position, so you can see when there may be an upcoming gap in position production. For example, it's much better to be selecting the last good catcher than having to wait on scraps at the end of the draft.

In-Season

Keep a close eye on closer situations throughout the season. The good closers often go early in drafts. I like to get at least one of them, but being able to pick up free saves off the waiver wire can help you move up quickly in the standings. Just watch out for the closers that do damage to your ERA and WHIP. If you have a bench player worthy of a starting spot, make a trade. By doing so, you can often improve other areas of your team for basically nothing. Another way to apply this strategy is to find other teams with bench players worthy of a starting spot because you can often find a quality player for less than full value. Yet another way to apply this strategy is to pay attention to positional values. For example, I had a couple leagues last year where Brian Roberts and Brian Phillips were drafted by the same team. While that team could use one of them in his utility spot, they drop to just above replacement value at the utility spot. In other words, Roberts had much more value in my 2B spot than his UT spot. All I had to do was offer something that was between Roberts' UT value and his 2B value, and I got Roberts for cheaper than full value. These types of trades are the simplest ways I've found to improve your team. As midseason approaches, there is one more type of trade that I like to use. By midseason, I am usually well ahead in saves (this works for other categories as well), so I'm able to trade a few of my closers for improvements in other areas. The saves help the trade partner, but losing them doesn't really hurt me. By trading something that I don't value to someone who does, I'm able to get something without really giving up anything.

Those are just some tips for winning your fantasy league. These will be a few of my topics as the season approaches. Also, I am going to work on a system for automatically generating cheatsheets. I've used a spreadsheet the last couple of years, but that can be very cumbersome to operate. The basics of such a system will be to feed it the projections and league settings, let it calculate the replacement level baselines and rank the players, and get the results in the form of a draft cheatsheet. I have some other ideas that I plan on adding in the future, such as updating the baselines and rankings mid-draft based on actual selections, but those will most likely not be ready for the 2009 season. Why am I creating such a system? Because I don't trust those that already exist. If things turn out well for this program, I'll make it available, so stay tuned.

-------------

I've noticed that some fantasy experts out there aren't actually that good, so I'm going to put my stats out there. I've only been following my own advice for a couple of years, so my record isn't very lengthy, but I want to let you know how I've done.

Baseball

5 first-place finishes, 1 second-place finish, 1 third-place finish, and 1 fourth-place finish

Football

3 first-place finishes, 2 second-place finishes, 1 fifth-place finish, and 2 eighth-place finishes

Salary Cap Football

83rd and 99th percentile in Yahoo

College Bowl Pick'em

86th and 97th percentile in Yahoo

College and Pro Football Pick'em

I've never been in pick'em groups that are setup by the default Yahoo rules, so my picks aren't ranked. I'll have to make sure to do that next year.