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April 9, 2008
Live and Learn
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This week, everyone, I learned something important about fantasy baseball: You really, really have to look at the league every damn day. Every
day! I don’t know what I have been thinking, but I really let things go to seed this week for a variety of reasons…and I am sorry to say, things are
not going well. I could totally lie, you guys, and say that I let things go on purpose just to see what would happen, but instead we can look at my
laziness this week as a learning experience.
Head-to-Head League
The autodraft went off for this league last Thursday; I used the same rankings I’d used for the autopick draft in my Roto League, mostly because I
thought that it had worked pretty well for that league. I did not end up faring as well this time, though – 4 of the players I drafted are actually on
the DL, and I didn’t have a chance until the weekend to look through and replace them with players from the FA list.
This league uses standard 5x5 categories, and the lineup is 2 C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, 5 OF, Util, 2 SP, 2 RP, 5 P, 5 BN, and 2 DL. There are 10
teams, and since it’s a head-to-head league, I will play each of the other 9 teams 2 or 3 times during the 22-week season. The standings are
determined by wins and losses, more like the MLB. Even though the scoring is on a weekly basis, I will have to move the players around every day
to make sure I have active players in each slot for each day to maximize my point-getting ability.
Once I got some time to look at my team, I made a few moves that I hope will help me a little bit. I dropped Jeremy Hermida, who’s on the DL now
and may come back soon (or maybe not, since his replacement Luis Gonzalez has been doing well in hitting) and picked up Coco Crisp. Maybe
he doesn’t play every day, but at least he is healthy for now. And if he gets traded to one of the Chicago teams like the rumors say, maybe he will
play a little more for me. I dropped Kelvim Escobar (who’s on the DL now with a shoulder injury that could be really serious) and picked up Tom
Glavine, who is playing, and I dropped Chris Ray (who is on the DL recovering from surgery last year) for Andy Pettitte (who just came off the DL).
I also dropped 2B Freddy Sanchez, because he’s injured and I already have an extra 2B (Aaron Hill). I picked up Joe Crede, who plays 3B and
therefore can be CI in this league.
I drafted J.J. Putz, who’s on the DL for a few weeks at least, and B.J. Ryan, who’s on and off the DL. I decided that none of the available FA
pitchers were better than either of these guys (especially since Ryan is pitching on at least some of the days), so I left them on the roster for now
at least.
The scoring for this league starts this coming week, so I think that it is possible that I can be on top of this one right out of the box. My first game is
against Joe, my #1 source of information, though, so I am not sure how excited he will be about helping me this week. I may have to throw myself
on the mercy of some other friends I have who are experts and (perish the thought) do some reading on my own!
Roto League
I was doing pretty well in this league when I checked last time, considering that everyone else in it has won or placed in a fantasy baseball league
before. Unfortunately, my slacking off has cost me. I slipped from 4th out of 8 owners to 6th. Yow! I feel ridiculous about this, because I should
have checked every day to move players from my bench to fill in for players who were inactive on a particular day. To rectify this problem, I went
ahead today and changed the lineups for the next week so that at least I have players in each position – that should help – and each day, I will
check in and see who’s hot and who’s not to make some minor adjustments. This way, if there is a particularly heinous day during the week and I
don’t get to check in, at least I have the chance to get some points.
Points League
This week was a catastrophe for this league. I went from being 2nd out of 10 to 8th. Ouch! I did the same thing for this league that I did for the
Roto League – going through the games for each day and making sure I have at least someone in each slot who is actually playing that day. This
league is a little rough, because the bench is so small, and I don’t have any extra pitchers, but there is not much I can do about that now. I’m
going to conference with some of my roto experts this week and see whether it is better to get more pitchers at the expense of batting or to stick
with the status quo.
This week was not the best for me in terms of progress, but I did realize that there is a lot more dropping and adding in fantasy baseball than in
fantasy football. Even in leagues with big benches, there is just no way to fill every slot every day without dropping people. I will try to do better
this week in terms of looking at my lineups more often. Just as I thought earlier this year when I started, fantasy baseball is a lot of work. I am
hoping that the standings will fluctuate frequently in the Points and Roto Leagues – I can’t be the only one who doesn’t have a player in every slot
every day. The MLB schedules are just getting started, so maybe I am just having bad luck at the outset. I also am working on learning more
about the players. What I am telling you is that I will absolutely have to put more effort into this if I am going to make a respectable showing this
year. At least I figured this out early…there are a lot of games left to play!
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March 29, 2008
So Now What? Now What?
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You guys, this week was fairly uneventful in fantasy baseball for me. The drafts in my Points League and my Roto League were last week; there
were only a few games between then and now; and my Head-To-Head League draft is not until April 1. Compared to the last few weeks, this one
was slow.
I did have a chance to do some editing for other FB101 writers, which was good on several levels. First, I am a grammar nerd, so it was fun for
me. Yeah, I know. Also, it helps the site. Most selfishly, though, editing the articles means that I read them all very closely this week and, therefore,
learned about roto. I read Russ's and Dan's articles about fantasy drafts and learned all sorts of things that I wish I had known last week. Dan's
article is actually exactly what I wanted to write for you guys about my live draft, but it ended up going down so quickly that I barely had time to
keep track of who was taken, much less take the notes that Dan needed to write that informative article. At least I will know that stuff for our FB101
H2H League, so my friends will think I know stuff (while strangers in Albuquerque know that I didn't check the DL before that draft -- oops). I also
read guest writer Jay's article about what to expect this season from everyone, and it reinforced for me that doing well in fantasy baseball is all
about educated guesses. The problem with that is that I am not as educated as I should be. I decided that for help with this, I would need to turn to
someone who knows more than I do: Joe, of course. What follows is a conversation that happened over several days on e-mail, on chat, and in
person and is the first in what I anticipate will be many installments of Lora Gets Schooled By The Experts.
Lora: Hey! A guy in my Points League wants to trade me Jacoby Ellsbury and Aaron Rowand (his) for Magglio Ordonez (mine). go or no go? i am
feeling no go because Ordonez was my third-round pick, and I've not heard of Ellsbury or Rowand. I think the guy might be trying to snow me with
a 2-for-1 deal, but I'm torn because I like to cooperate and I don't want him to stop proposing trades because I said no the first time.
Joe: My general rule for trades is that I want to get the best player in the trade. In this case, you wouldn't be. Also, you have a very deep league,
so there are lots of good players still available. If he trades away Ellsbury and Rowand, he'll pick up a free agent...and how much worse than
Ellsbury or Rowand would that free agent be? Probably not much...so on the whole, I think he'd win that trade handily. Good feeling on your part!
:)
Lora: You are totally right. I hadn't thought it through to the next step to consider what he would do to fill the hole in his OF. Of course he can go
to the FA pool. This one was a no-brainer, now that I think about it. I am declining it right now. I suspect the guy was feeling me out because I
looked like sort of a dumbass taking Schilling in the draft when he was on the DL for 2 weeks before. :) Oh well, it is better to be underestimated
than overestimated, I say, and I learned that it is important to read espn.com every day if only for the injuries. I was soooooooooooo rushed on
the way to the draft because I took extra long at the gym, which was another mistake. However, I had a good workout and real no harm done at
this point, because I did get a lot of excellent players early on and even from the FA pool immediately after -- actually, just what my trade partner
would have done after our trade. Riiiiiiiiiiight. I think trades are good in theory, but I feel like they should be equal and fair, just maybe swapping
positions (you have a good SP, I need a good SP, so here's my good OF). This is what i go with in FF and it serves me well.
Joe: You're getting trades figured out for sure, but what you need to do is try to convince someone to trade you one superstar for two of your very
good good players. Be the chump-maker!
[fast-forward to Monday, the day before the ridiculously early Sox game and the start of scoring in my Points and Roto Leagues]
Lora: Hey -- can you look at my lineup in the Points League and let me know whether you have any suggestions?
C Jorge Posada (C)
CI Chipper Jones (CI)
CI Ryan Zimmerman (CI)
MI Jose Reyes (MI)
MI Edgar Renteria (MI)
OF Magglio Ordonez (OF)
OF Manny Ramirez (OF)
OF Juan Pierre (OF)
Util Orlando Cabrera (MI)
Util Jermaine Dye (OF)
BN Johnny Damon (OF)
BN Julio Lugo (MI)
BN Ty Wigginton (CI, MI)
SP Jake Peavy (SP)
SP Roy Halladay (SP)
SP John Maine (SP)
RP JJ Putz (RP)
RP Jason Isringhausen (RP)
P Adam Wainwright (SP)
P Jeremy Guthrie (SP, RP)
P Jeremy Accardo (RP)
Joe: First thought is to drop Damon... certainly before Wigginton. Damon is no longer guaranteed to start every day, he is becoming an huge
injury risk and even with healthy his stats have taken a precipitous decline since 2004. Let me know who the top 10 (based on Yahoo rankings)
free agent hitters, starters and relievers are. Also, remind me of the categories and the number of opponents.
Lora: OK -- roster is C, 2 CI, 2 MI, 3 OF, 2 Util, 3 SP, 2 RP, 3P, 3 BN, and 2 DL. Stat categories are R, H, 1B, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, SB, CS, BB, K,
GIDP, CYC, and SLAM for hitting and IP, W, L, CG, SHO, SV, ER, BB, K, HLD, RW, RL, PG, and BSV for pitching. There are 10 owners in the
league and no waiver period.
The top available hitters are: M Kemp, F Thomas, T Glaus, J Willingham, J Upton, S Drew, F Lopez, M Cameron, R Baldelli, M Cabrera, and C
Patterson
Top SP are F Liriano (I just dropped him), M Garza, U Jimenez, Z Greinke, C Carpenter, G Meche, J Lester, B Zito, A Miller, T Glavine, and F
Morales
Top RP are B Wilson, R Betancourt, J Broxton, Z Greinke, H Okajima, CJ Wilson, H Bell, BJ Ryan, P Neshek, H Owens (on DL), and B Fuentes
Joe: I assume M Cabrera is Melky? If it is Miguel, JUMP ON THAT!
I like M Kemp better than Dye and Damon. With each day in March Kemp is more and more proving his worth... to the Dodgers. He has already
proven his worth to fantasy ballers as a guy that can hit 30 homeruns, steal 30 bases and have a batting average nearly .300. We fantasy ballers
only need to see him crowned starter and it appears that he's nailed down that role.
I would go after Brian Wilson... he should get you some saves. Truth be told, with all your categories saves are less critical than they would be in
your 5x5 leagues, but he should do well in the other categories as well. Keep an eye on BJ Ryan. He is a stud when healthy, but I don't know his
current status. The best reliever overall on your list is Heath Bell, and I would consider snapping him up.
To get Kemp, Wilson and Bell, I think I would drop Accardo, Damon and (Guthrie or Lugo). Aside from the Kemp addition, we are talking minor
gains. You certainly maximized your draft relative to what was left on the table.
Lora: Haha, no, it is Melky, of course. I think even I would have known to grab Miguel Cabrera after the draft if he'd been there!
I took all of your suggestions and starting Kemp over Dye for tomorrow.
Joe: I've looked into Accardo and Ryan some more. Ryan is looking to be healthy soon and may reclaim the closer spot from Accardo...Accardo
was lights out last year, and if he repeats his numbers he's going to be more valuable than Brian Wilson (since saves are only one of many stats).
I'm thinking keep Accardo and Bell. If you have room, then keep Ryan too and forget Wilson, but keep an eye on Wilson during the season. (I
think Yahoo has a "players to watch" function.)
Lora: Yes, it does. Good suggestions all around!
As of this writing, my team is #3 of 10 in the Points League, but I don't think that's an indicator of anything since opening day comes this week for
almost everyone but the Red Sox and the A's. Next week I will update you on the goings-on in the Points League and Roto League and talk a little
about the draft in my H2H League. Don't be surprised if next week I tell you about something else I wish I'd read sooner and someone I wish I'd
talked to last week. Even though I do feel one step behind the more experienced players, I am having fun learning, and I think I will be able to
make up for most draft mistakes during the season with some trades and drop/adds. And you never know -- one of my guys might decide to have
an absolutely ridiculous all-star season out of nowhere. That is definitely the fun of fantasy baseball...every game is important since someone in
my league has someone on one of those teams. OK, see you back here next week, same time, same channel, slightly elevated level of awareness.
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March 23, 2008
Speed Draft '08
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I raced home from work on Thursday to make it there in time for the live draft in my second public league. The draft started at 7:00, and I had
heard horror stories from friends who are really, really into fantasy baseball about drafts lasting 3 or even 4 hours, so I made a point to stop on
the way home and get some sour cream and onion chips, carrot sticks, and diet ginger ale for the draft. Don't laugh. I hear that's what Glen
Waggoner eats while he does his drafts. Just kidding, Glen. Where was I? Oh yeah, I was running upstairs to get to my computer in time for the
7:00 draft. I logged on with 10 minutes to spare and greeted everyone in the league. I had to laugh at the names, because the other managers
clearly live in Major American City Other Than My Home, let's say the city is Albuquerque, and all of the names (except mine) are variations on the
beloved Albuquerque home team, the Saguaros, and its nearby rival, the Beagles. The teams had names like "Saguaros Rule," "Lets Go
Beagles," "AlbuSaguaros," "Saggies," "Beagles Drool," "Saggies2008," and so on. Rather funny, especially since I (as always) named my team
after random items in my office. I am sure everyone sort of wondered what was up with "Paper Clip Red Pen," but I like to be shrouded in mystery,
so I rolled with it.
Let's back up a minute. How did we get here, eating carrot sticks and watching a timer click down? I chose this league from the Yahoo public
leagues by filtering for live draft leagues that use points scoring. I liked that there were already a lot of people in the league, and the live draft was
happening at a time that fit my schedule. There are tons of choices of live draft leagues (so it's still not too late to join a public league with a live
draft!). This one (let's call it my Points League) differs from my other two leagues in a few important ways. First, it uses points scoring, which is
very similar to fantasy football, if you've played that, and I have. In a points scoring system, each event in the game is given a weighted score --
and the commissioner determines the weight, so it can be almost anything. Bear in mind that the following numbers apply only to my league; there
are as many different points systems as there are league commissioners. In my league, a hit is one point, but a triple is worth 3. There are also
ways to lose points. If a batter hits a HR off your pitcher, you lose 1 point from your score. A GIDP (ground into double plays) also loses you a
point. A strikeout gains you one point if it is your pitcher throwing but loses you 0.5 if your guy is at the plate. You can imagine how it is possible to
go completely crazy with this situation, given how many numbers are tracked during a baseball game. In my league, there is a 10-point bonus if
one of your batters hits for the cycle (a single, double, triple, and home run in a single game -- this only happens a handful of times in a whole
season, so my commissioner decided to reward it heavily. Anyway, during each scoring cycle (in this league, 1 day), the computer calculates your
points for that day and adds them to your total. The winner of the league has the most points overall at the end of the season. I'm sure you see
that there could also be head-to-head points leagues, in which each team in the league "plays" only one other team in the scoring cycle. There
are dozens, if not hundreds, of different fantasy baseball formats out there.
My Points League also differs from my public Roto League (and my private H2H League, which we have not visited yet) in the positions on the
team. I alluded to this in an earlier column, but fantasy baseball is not constrained by the rules of baseball. My team in the Points League has 23
players, including a catcher, 3 starting pitchers, 2 relief pitchers, 3 pitchers of either kind, and 3 outfielders, which are certainly positions in MLB.
The rest of the positions are sort of weird. I have two "corner infielders" (CI), which may be a 1B or 3B and two "middle infielders" (MI), which may
be SS or 2B. I also get 2 "utility" (util or UT) positions, which may be filled by any player other than the pitcher. We don't have them in my league,
but you may also encounter just plain "infielders" (IF), which may be a 1B, 2B, SS, or 3B. The positions are just one more way a league may be
modified by the commissioner to make things interesting. So much for me running out of things to talk about in this column.
OK, back to the draft. Before we started, I made a grid with the owners across the top, in draft order, and the positions along the left side o the
page (I got this idea from a fantasy baseball columnist at espn.com, but I asked around and it seems to be standard practice). This way, I could
keep track of what positions were popular in the draft and which I could afford to wait to act on. Yahoo randomly assigned us an order (I got #3 --
not bad!) and kept track of the time. Each owner had 90 seconds to make a choice from the list of available players. Each round could therefore
have taken up to 15 minutes (since there are 10 teams in the Points League), and there were 23 rounds, so the draft had the potential to go for
hours and hours. Not to ruin the ending for you, but let's just say people in Albuquerque have a plan and are not messing around. The whole
thing was over in 45 minutes. I know! The first round went at lightning speed, with everyone taking the big names (I took Jose Reyes with my 3rd
overall pick...of course, A-Rod went first). I kept waiting for the whole process to slow down, but to be honest, it never happened. Almost every
pick was made in 5 or 10 seconds. I don't think everyone was just taking the top Yahoo picks in order (I know I wasn't -- I was using my cheat
sheet that I made myself for my Roto League), because different strategies definitely emerged. One owner concentrated on getting all-star SPs
first and then filled in the infield; one owner did exactly the opposite; and another filled all the slots before drafting any RP. I tried a strategy
concentrating on the outfield (well, except Reyes -- I had to grab him!) and SP first, then infield, and RP last. It will be interesting to see how the
different strategies fare throughout the season.
I followed a tip I read right here on FB101, which is not to write off the catcher (as almost all of the other owners in my league did). I managed to
get Jorge Posada (my only Yankee in the Points League, thank you very much) in the 9th round, which I think will be a good move. I am also
excited to have gotten Jake Peavy (SP) in the second round and J.J. Putz (my exception to my RP-last strategy, but I had to have him) in the fifth.
The big mistake I made was taking Curt Schilling in the last round, since he is on the DL as of a few days ago -- fortunately, it was the last round,
and I was able to replace him with someone else immediately after the draft. I know! Don't write me hate mail. I am new. I also sort of took my
sweet time in drafting CI -- it was the 6th round before I noticed, but I ended up with Chipper Jones and Ryan Zimmerman, which I think should be
good. Toward the end, I decided to fill my bench with desirable SP and OF.
Right after the draft, I made a few changes by dropping some of my players and acquiring free agents that were higher on the positional cheat
sheets I consulted than players I had (dropping SP Curt Schilling, CI/MI Jeff Keppinger, and OF Matt Kemp and picking up SP/RP Jeremy Guthrie,
MI Julio Lugo, and CI/MI Ty Wigginton). I don't think that having to switch so few players (3 out of 23) is too bad my first time out, but we will see.
Within minutes, another owner had proposed a trade to me for one of my all-star OF for one mediocre OF and one OF who is totally off the radar.
Bad trade, I say, since I already have more OF than I actually need. I mean, I like to cooperate, but there is a limit!
Having tried both an autopick draft in my Roto League and a live draft in my Points League, I must say that I vastly prefer the live draft. If you have
the time, try one out. In addition to having more control over the order in which your positions are filled, you also get an idea of the personalities
of the people in your league. Yahoo has a chat function so you can yak with everyone as the draft is going on -- this is great for public leagues in
which the owners are strangers. It keeps the whole thing from feeling so impersonal.
The Points League and the Roto League both begin scoring this coming Monday, so there are still a few days to do some last minute trading and
drop/add with the free agent pool. The Points League has no waiver period, so players are available to add to my roster as soon as they are
dropped by someone else -- I had better keep a close eye on that one. The Roto League has a 2-day waiver period, which is more standard. A
waiver period allows everyone to have a fair chance at getting a player that someone else has dropped; as with anything else, there are pros and
cons to both systems. My H2H league does not start for another few weeks, so I will update you all on my strategy for that one when the time
comes. Until then, I will keep you all updated on the first week in the Points and Roto leagues. I am definitely ready for the actual season to start.
The draft is all well and good, but let's get going, I say!
By the way, if you are trying fantasy baseball for the first time, drop me a line at fantasylora@gmail.com and let me know what is up. What sort of
league have you joined? What problems are you having getting started? Have you had any brilliant insights in the shower or wherever you do
your thinking? I would love to hear from other roto newbies, and if everyone's having similar problems, we can discuss it here, perhaps with a
guest expert that I will choose from my many roto expert friends.
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March 17, 2008
Don’t Just Stand There, Let’s Get To It
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When last we met, I had just joined a public roto league -- just to remind everyone, my league is a standard 5x5 and has a maximum of 12 owners
and a 22-man roster with a 5-man bench. I was drawn to this league because the commissioner specifically described it as being for competitive
players who will pay attention all season. I thought this would be challenging and fun, and I still think it will be, but I will tell you a secret: I am totally
intimidated by the other owners in my league. So far there are only 7 other owners in the league, but 6 of them have won fantasy baseball
leagues before. One guy has 26 trophies in his Yahoo trophy case (a little graphic that shows how many leagues you’ve won or placed in). I am
flattered to be in the league, but certainly these people are not going to roll over. This could be harder than I thought…on the other hand, I will
certainly learn a lot about fantasy baseball from these people.
My big project for this week has been preparing for the draft in my public 5x5 roto league. Most of the sports websites have “draft kits,” which are
collections of information you can use to prepare for your fantasy draft, and I turned to these first. A draft kit generally includes lots of lists and
rankings, as well as articles about projections for the season, information from spring training, and recommended dollar values for each player
when planning your bids in an auction-type draft. Many websites have free draft kits, but some sites require you to pay for their tips. I started with
the free draft kit at ESPN.com, which provides a list of players ranked by their average draft position in the ESPN public leagues. I also consulted
some additional sites. A site I found quite helpful is FantasyBaseballHub.com, which is a free compendium of information from lots of other sites.
I decided early on that a good way to start from absolute scratch is with what’s called a “cheat sheet.” A cheat sheet is a list of players ranked
from most to least desirable, and they come in lots of flavors: position-by-position, overall, all-MLB, AL-only, and so on. I concentrated on finding
cheat sheets that cover the whole MLB universe and rank the players overall, not just by position (the position-by-position ones should be more
useful for my live draft). In addition to the ESPN average draft position ranking, I found free cheat sheets at BaseballDocs.com, ThomasGeorge.
com, and ProFantasyBaseball.com that had the information I needed. The sites all agree that Alex Rodriguez is #1 overall, but after that, they
departed from each other drastically, especially in the middle and at the end. I decided to compile their information and average the rankings.
This was a good exercise for two reasons: first, I got to know the names of the players (turns out there are more than 3 or 4 teams in MLB!), and
second, I learned once again that the most famous players are not necessarily the best for fantasy baseball, because a lot of my beloved
Yankees were surprisingly low on the list.
After I made my own cheat sheet with my spreadsheet software, I went back to my public league page to start setting up my rankings. Yahoo has
also ranked the players, but I tend not to trust their ranking system. Not to bring football into it, but last year I noticed that the ranking system on
Yahoo is tailored toward the simplest league – so the individual defensive players are all ranked below 1000, which is no good if you’re in an IDP
league. Wise or not, based on this experience, I decided to disregard Yahoo’s rankings altogether and use my own. Furthermore, I didn’t want my
rankings to be like everyone else’s in the league, so I thought it was important to set my own order. It was good that I had a gameplan before I
started my draft preparation, because I was tempted more than once to bump up some Yankees on the list…I was able to resist, though, because
I know from my experience with fantasy football that drafting only players from your real-real favorite team is a bad strategy.
The Yahoo interface is pretty easy. There’s a list of around 1000 players in a list in the middle of the screen – you can sort players either by their
rank (according to Yahoo) or their last name – as well as an “exclude” box on the left and a “my players” box on the right. You can choose to
exclude players from your team by highlighting their names and clicking on the appropriate arrow to put them in the “exclude” box. For example, I
put Barry Bonds on my exclude list, even though he is #999 on the Yahoo ranking list and my league will probably only draft about 250 players.
The main transaction on this page involves adding players from the middle list to your team; the players are added to your team in the order you
click them over there, and you can shuffle them up or down once they are over there. One little tip: There are a lot of players with Hispanic names
that have accent marks, and Yahoo places an accented “a” at the end of the alphabet. This can be a little confusing if, like me, you are trying to
work off a cheat sheet and not the Yahoo rankings.
The draft for my public roto league went through Saturday, 3/15/08. Our autodraft was a snake draft, meaning that the computer assigns a
random order for the first round (I got #4 of 8 owners), then reverses the order for the second round, and so on. Here’s how our draft went down
for me (round; overall pick; player; position; and percent drafted in Yahoo leagues, i.e. how popular each guy is):
1. (4) Hanley Ramírez SS 100%
2. (13) Carl Crawford OF 100%
3. (20) Grady Sizemore OF 100%
4. (29) Magglio Ordóñez OF 100%
5. (36) Álex Ríos OF 100%
6. (45) Robinson Canó 2B 100%
7. (52) Dan Haren SP 100%
8. (61) Félix Hernández SP 100%
9. (68) Chipper Jones 3B 100%
10. (77) Roy Oswalt SP 100%
11. (84) Carlos Peña 1B 100%
12. (93) Fausto Carmona SP 100%
13. (100) Trevor Hoffman RP 100%
14. (109) Manny Corpas RP 100%
15. (116) Brad Penny SP 100%
16. (125) Bengie Molina C 81%
17. (132) Brad Hawpe OF 100%
18. (141) Jeff Francoeur OF 100%
19. (148) Mike Lowell 3B 100%
20. (157) Jason Isringhausen RP 100%
21. (164) Plácido Polanco 2B 100%
I don’t know how much trading there will be, since everyone’s team is essentially as strong as mine is. What I am telling you is that our league is
an all-star league. I can tell from the message boards that people were a little frustrated that the league is so small, but this could be good for me
since the teams are more or less even right now. We’ll see whether anyone with some kickass pitchers wants any of my kickass outfielders.
Seriously, does anyone in my league need outfielders? I am up to my ears in the good ones.
In addition to my public roto league, I joined a private league that Joe set up for friends of fantasybaseball101.com. Our private league will also
have an autopick draft, so I will be able to use the same rankings I made for my public league, if I like – and they seem to have worked pretty well
for the public league, so I probably will. The FB101 league is going to use head-to-head scoring, though, so that will require different strategy
throughout the season. In addition, this week I am going to join another public league, this one using a live draft, possibly using points scoring.
There are a ton of public leagues with live drafts, so I should have no trouble finding a good one when I have a few hours to devote to the draft.
This week was pretty busy for me outside of baseball, since I was on vacation from Thursday through Tuesday, but I feel like I still had plenty of
time to get ready for the draft. If I were less of a control queen, I could have just chosen a cheat sheet from a single source – or I could have just
used the Yahoo rankings – so I would say that it is less of a time investment than I thought. If you’re like me, and you only know players from a few
teams well, it’s a good idea to go through at least the top 100 players (better, the top 250) so you recognize names. Next week: Strategy and
results for my live draft league and trade updates in my roto autopick leagues. See you then!
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March 9, 2008
I Get Deeper and Deeper the Further I Go
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Yesterday was the first fabulous day of the year outside in the DC area, so Joe and I met up for an afternoon walk to talk about fantasy baseball. I
wanted his advice on choosing a league that is good for a first-time player. We talked about the 5x5 roto league, one of the more popular options,
but he also told me that there are (more or less) 694 different ways to score fantasy baseball. So much for my fears that I will run out of things to
write about this season. In any case, I decided in light of my reading and my discussion with roto expert Joe that a 5x5 league that’s both fun and
competitive and not too big is a good goal.
After our walk, I went back to my computer and tried to determine what sort of league I had opted to join in my autopick public league on Yahoo!.
When I knew nothing about fantasy baseball (i.e., last Thursday), I had been pleased by the ease of choices that Yahoo! had placed before me.
However, I have graduated to the stage of knowing next to nothing, so I got a little frustrated that I couldn’t specifically request to join a 5x5 league
that is fun but that people will actually play in all year. I decided to abandon the team I’d started last week (and by “started,” I mean “named after
the first thing I saw on my desk”) and choose a custom league myself. No harm done, because I hadn’t modified my autopick list, and I hadn’t
indicated to the site that the Three Hole Punches were ready for the draft…but if I had, I could have exported my rankings to my new team with no
trouble.
Instead of choosing the “assign to public” option, I picked “Browse Custom” and was presented with a wide array of public leagues that others had
already begun. I filtered for roto leagues with an autopick draft that use the Yahoo! Sports Can’t Cut List. The Can’t Cut List is a good safeguard
for people like me who sometimes click without thinking – it prevents you from dropping the elite players from your team, even if you want to.
Therefore, if you get A-Rod in the draft, he is yours forever, like it or not. My filtering narrowed the field to about 50 teams in various stages of
completion. There is also a little blurb about each one – some request that you check throughout the season, and I was interested particularly in
those. Some are limited to AL only, some are NL only, but most are whole-league. It may seem counterintuitive, but everyone I talked with agreed
that the all-MLB leagues are easier than the AL- and NL-only ones. There are a lot more players to keep track of, but there’s also a bigger pool of
all-stars, so your team will be better on average because there are more good guys to pick from.
Before I chose a league, I had more investigating to do about the different formats for fantasy baseball. I mentioned this last week, but this week it
is more relevant since I need to get off my butt and choose a league. The original roto format is called “4x4” – 4 hitting categories (BA, HR, RBI,
and SB) and 4 pitching categories (W, S, ERA, and WHIP), but the 4x4 format has largely been replaced these days by the more popular “5x5”
format, which adds an extra hitting category (runs) and an extra pitching category (strikeouts). Since baseball is a game that is jam-packed with
statistics and calculations, you can imagine that there are as many variations on the old 4x4 as there are numbers in the universe. On the page of
Yahoo! public leagues, there was an option to “view” each league and an option to “join” once you pick one. The “view” option shows you some of
the settings for the league that are important, including the “stat categories.” A 5x5 league will have 10 categories. I was shocked to see leagues
as intricate as 10x10 available to me. Ideally, I wanted to keep the league size pretty small – the more owners (i.e., teams) in the league, the fewer
good players per team. The average size of the public leagues on Yahoo! was 12, but allowed 16 or even 18 owners. I was aiming to join a league
with 10 or 12 owners in it.
Another thing to consider was the number of starters on each team and the size of the bench. In addition to players actively “starting” – i.e., the
ones who are earning points for you – you generally get some “bench” players that are on your team, but whose escapades neither help nor hurt
you. It’s important to have bench players so that you can replace a pitcher who’s on a cold streak, or fill in a gap when your all-star doesn’t play
that day, or just have in your back pocket in case another owner wants to trade. Although we are thinking about draft day this time of year, most
time during the season is spent deciding which players to start and which to bench, all the while trying to guess who’s going to be hot and who’s
not. In any case, the bench allows flexibility throughout the year, so I definitely wanted a league with a good bench size.
Finally, I thought about about the different positions required to start each day (or week, or whatever the scoring period is – since baseball is
played almost every day, many leagues will allow you to make changes every day to account for teams’ travel days, but there are some lower-
maintenance leagues that require moves only once a week). If you’re reading this, you should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of real-real
baseball and the positions. However, fantasy baseball (say it with me) is not real-real baseball. Positions that look totally made-up can supplement
the 9 positions we know and love. The “corner,” for example, is a slot that can be filled either by a 1B or a 3B, while the “middle” or “middle
infielder” can be filled by either a 2B or a SS. Furthermore, the RF, LF, and CF are generally lumped together into an “outfield” slot, and there
can be any number of these (often 5, sometimes more). Finally, there is a place for a “utility” man, which can be any player other than the pitcher.
In short, there will probably be many more than 8 players (besides the pitcher) in the field – maybe as many as 15, depending on how the league
is set up.
It’s the same deal with pitchers. In MLB, a team will generally use one starting pitcher and 2-4 relief pitchers during the game, but in fantasy
baseball, these rules are out the window. There can be any number of pitchers starting for a fantasy team; the number depends on how the
league was set up by the commissioner (i.e., the person who is in charge of determining the settings, deciding trades, and generally policing the
league). Most fantasy leagues will have 2 or so starting pitcher (SP) slots and 2 or so relief pitcher (RP) slots, as well as 3 or so generic “P” slots
that can be filled by any combination of SP and RP, so you may start 7 or more pitchers.
To sum up, while an MLB team uses around 12-15 players per game, a fantasy team will start 22-25 players per scoring period (plus 3-7 guys on
the bench and 1 or 2 on the DL, who are not earning points for you while they’re on the BN or DL). The combined performance of all of the
players you have started in the categories in your league is compared with the totals of those in your league, and the roto points are assigned
based on these comparisons. This is getting complicated, so as an example, let’s go through some of the public leagues that are currently
available to join on Yahoo!. Remember, I filtered the teams to show autopick roto leagues that use the Can’t Cut list.
League A has a maximum of 12 owners. This is an 8x4 league (R, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, SB, AVG, W, SV, K, ERA, and WHIP). The roster positions in
this league are C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 3 OF, Util, 2 SP, 2 RP, 3 P, 5 BN, and 1 DL, for a total of 24 players per team. If I were to join this league, I
would have to consider my autopick rankings down to at least position 288 (12 teams x 24 players/team). Because there are twice as many
offensive categories as pitching categories in League A, this league is clearly for fans of hitting. The bench is big, so it could be a good one, and I
like that it only has 12 teams. However, the 8x4 scoring could be too lopsided for my first time out.
League B has a maximum of 16 teams, but this one has a 23-man roster (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 3 OF, 2 Util, 3 SP, 3 RP, 3 P, 3 BN, and 1 DL) and
has a standard 5x5 roto format. If I join League B, I would have to rank players down to at least position 368. League B looks good, but it is large
(16 owners), thus increasing the possibility that my team will have few all-stars. Also, the bench is pretty small, so this one could be pretty
challenging considering the size of the league.
League C is a 5x5 roto league with a maximum of 12 owners and a 22-man roster (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 3 OF, Util, 2 SP, 2 RP, 3 P, 5 BN, and 1 DL).
I would have to rank at least 264 positions for the autodraft. League C has the smallest roster, but the bench is big, it is a standard 5x5 and it is
my preferred size (12 owners). It also caught my eye because the commissioner’s note reads, “Please join only if you can play the full season.” I
would hate to put in a lot of work for the draft and then have the league die as time went on. This league is public, but the commissioner wants
approval before people join – so I wrote a note requesting the password to see if there are other requirements to join the league. The fact that the
commissioner wanted to screen teams is a good sign in terms of owners’ devotion to the league.
As you see, each public league has its pros and cons. In addition to these leagues, though, there were at least 5 leagues with open spaces that
met my criteria – 5x5, 10-12 teams, generous bench space, serious players who aren’t going to punk out by May – so I was able to go ahead and
pick one. I deliberated for a while, picked one and joined it…let’s call it “Lora’s Yahoo! Public League” from now on.
Once again, I find myself at the end of my allotted space with no real resolution. I have a funny feeling this is going to be a recurring theme this
season. Hope that’s ok with everybody, because seriously, you guys, this is just as complicated as I thought it would be. Fortunately, it is also
super fun, so it’s a net win.
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March 1, 2008
Playing For The Very First Time
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I’ve been an avid watcher of sports of all kinds forever. I am the girl who actually goes to the sports bar to watch the game. I was expending more
than my fair share of time thinking about sports long before Joe and Evan asked me to contribute to FB101 as a person brand-new to fantasy
baseball, but there’s always room to pile on more sports. Right now, during spring training ‘08, I consider myself only a casual follower of baseball
– I love going to games, and I love watching games when they are on, but there are so many players and so many numbers, I thought it would
take a lot of work to become a successful fantasy baseball owner. I’ve thought for years that I would definitely learn more about the game and be
able to enjoy it even more if I broke into FB, but starting out knowing very little compared to one’s competitors is daunting. However, I am not one
to shrink from a challenge, so when the guys asked me to try it this year, I decided to give it a go. I’m sure there are lots of people like me out
there, so my hope is that we can all learn together and be successful this season.
Once I’d agreed to try fantasy baseball, I realized I had absolutely no idea where to start. I knew from my experience with fantasy football that it’s a
bad idea to pick only players from your personal favorite team (unless you are this one girl from my all-girls’ league this year who’s a diehard Pats
fan and put Tom Brady first and Randy Moss second overall in her autopick, but that’s another story), and I knew that starting out in fantasy
baseball would require lots of research, because there are so many players and games happen so often that there are lots of moves to make and
tons of things to consider. I knew that I would have to start thinking not just about what is up with baseball, but what is up with fantasy baseball. As
is my way, I decided to jump in with both feet and see what happened.
As a first step, I went ahead and signed up for a free Yahoo! public league, which was easy enough. Once you have an account, you just request
the site to place you in a league based on your preferences. I chose a Rotisserie league at the casual level with an autopick draft, which was the
default. The next thing I did was go to Wikipedia to learn what a Rotisserie league was. For those who don’t know (it can’t just be me), in a
Rotisserie (or “roto”) league, you compete with all of the other teams in your league every week in a designated number of hitting and pitching
categories. For example, if there are 10 teams in your league, and your team is doing the best in your league in home runs, you get 10 fantasy
points for HRs. The second-best team gets 9, the third-best team gets 8, and so on, for all of the categories. These numbers are based on
cumulative performance throughout the season, so whoever is currently doing the best in a category has the 10 points. The winner of the league
has the highest total points in all the categories at the end of the season. The standard roto setup is a “4x4” league, in which you compete in 8
categories: 4 hitting (generally, batting average, HR, RBI, and SB) and 4 pitching categories (in general, wins, saves, ERA, and a stat called
WHIP, which is the number of walks and hits allowed by a pitcher over innings pitched –lower is better). The main alternative to roto format is head-
to-head format, in which you compete with only one other team in your league each week, with the highest-ranking teams making it to the fantasy
world series. The head-to-head format is more like real baseball, but the down side is that the rankings are based on wins and losses, not just
points, so if you lose your first few games, you may get discouraged (this happened to some of the owners this year in my FF league, and it was
not fun for anyone).
I was familiar with the autopick draft format from FF, but in case you are even newer to fantasy sports than I am, it is a relatively low-maintenance
way to decide which players you get for your team. The idea is to construct a list of players you want, in order of your preference. The fantasy
website you choose will likely already have the available players in a particular ranking, so if you know nothing about the individual players, you
can just leave it at the default settings. On the other hand, you can do your homework and move the players around on the list as you like (and
choose to exclude players you absolutely don’t want to cheer for). On the day of the draft, a computer will randomly choose a draft order for the
teams in the league and automatically fill everyone’s rosters with players based on their preferences, putting the highest-ranked available player
onto each person’s roster each time it is his or her turn. Each player may be owned by only one team, so if your top pick is gone by the time it is
your turn, you will get your highest available pick. The down side is that the autopick doesn’t account for position when assigning players, so it is
theoretically possible to end up with a lot of players at one position and none at another.
As you can guess, the art of the autopick is deciding how to rank your players, so my next task was to track down some help with this project. I
started at espn.com’s fantasy baseball page. I was glad to see that many of the articles discussed starting a team from scratch in addition to
giving advice to experts in keeper leagues (a type of league that continues from year to year with the same owners owning all or many of the
same players each year). At Evan’s suggestion, I also checked out FanNation at CNN/SI and Rototimes.com, among other sites. There must be a
billion fantasy sites out there with lots of tips, but I decided to try to determine where they concur and work from there. I don’t want to have the
same rankings as everyone else in my league, but at the same time, it seems like a bad idea to do something really risky my first time out.
My original plan was to stick with autopick leagues, but I decided during my reading that it would be interesting to try a league with a live draft as
well, because the strategy is so different. I signed up on espn.com for their public leagues, most of which are also free. A live draft is conducted
very much like the draft in real life, with all of the owners meeting in one room (real or virtual) and taking turns choosing players for their lineups. I
wanted to choose a league with a draft date and time that would allow me to do some research between then and now. There are a ton of public
leagues on espn.com that you can join, many of which appear to have a theme (Yankees fans, people who hate the Yankees, people from
Alaska, and so on). Some of the leagues only have 1 or 2 people in them at this early date, so I am planning to wait until closer to opening day so
I have time to read up and pick one that is almost full. The live draft allows you to have a lot more control over the roster you end up with, but it
also requires more time researching and much more time at the actual draft – you have to be there for the whole thing, and they can go for hours.
An additional level of complexity is introduced by salary cap considerations. In salary cap roto drafts, each owner is given a particular amount of
play money (traditionally, $260) with which to buy players, and there is an auction among the owners for the players. The auction requires still
more planning and strategy, since the goal is to get good players for as cheap as possible. The major fantasy sites all offer guidance as to how
much they think each player is worth. I am quickly learning that one thing there’s no shortage of in fantasy baseball is opinions.
Just as I thought, getting into fantasy baseball is going to be a lot of work. Of course, after only a few hours poking around the Interwebs, I am
totally into fantasy baseball. It only took me an afternoon to figure out the basics of the roto format and to become familiar with some of the more
prominent websites and writers. Next week: How will I rank my players for my public autodraft league, and what information do I need to be
successful in my public live draft league?
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