The Tier Ranking System

The tier ranking system is one that I have used for the past few years in all of my fantasy baseball leagues.  It has helped me along to countless championships, and many playoff finishes. 

 

The basic idea of the tier strategy is to rate players by position, not overall.  Instead of creating lists of the top 100 players, you create a list of the top 20 1^st baseman and so on.  You can do as many as you want I usually chose to do about 20 players at each position, except for OF and pitching where I usually do about 75 of each. 

 

With all positions in fantasy baseball there are the stars, the above average contributors, the average Joes, and the duds.  The idea behind this fantasy baseball strategy is to find where these “invisible” lines between the stars and the average players are.  Another important concept behind this is how big of a drop-off there is between tiers. 

 

Lets say you are looking at the shortstops for the fantasy baseball season 2009.  We all know who the three super stars are, however after Hanley, Jose, and Jimmy; the drop off is absurd.  There is no one even close to the talent that these three put up.  It is safe to say that the difference between the first and second tier of short stops is substantial.  However when it comes to shortstops this fantasy baseball season the 2^nd tier is full.  If you don’t get one of the big three it will be okay, as the 2^nd tier, most of which will be drafted after the 7^th round is all about the same.

 

This fantasy baseball ranking system is incredibly useful, let me show you how.  Lets say that you are in the 4^th round of your 12 man H2H league.  Suddenly someone does something out of the ordinary and chose’s Jonathon Papelbon.  The next guy then chose’s K-Rod, the following fantasy baseball manager chose’s  Joe Nathan.  It’s your selection next.  It’s getting awfully scary when you look at what is left for closers.  There seems to be no one left in your tier one list of closers so you look at tier 2.  You quickly realize that tier 2 has almost 15 names in, all of which will most likely put up about the same numbers.  So instead of going for a closer you fill in your 3^rd base slot with Kevin Youkilis.  This is important because instead of drafting a 2^nd tier closer way to early you filled in a hole on your roster that needed patching.  Now you can wait till much later in the draft to begin chasing closers. 

 

Using the Tier system is a great way to make sure you have the best possible roster for your 2009 fantasy baseball team.  

Points Scoring System

Points scoring system is the newest Fantasy baseball scoring system.  This system may be the newest however it is the easiest.  Real life statistics that players accumulate on a daily basis are given point values.  Your teams Points scored are then summed up for the day.  The team with the most points at the end of the season wins.  This goes for both pitching and hitting stats.  The fantasy baseball league commissioner sets the stats that are used at the beginning of the season. 

 

There is not much more to it.  A key strategy to this is to make sure you have guys that play every day, if they are playing they will get you points!

Important Fantasy Baseball Acronyms

You made the excellent decision to become more involved in your boring life and join a fun family base fantasy baseball league.  You get an email from the “commissioner” telling you the format and the draft time.  You then decide to do a little research.  You get to a great ranking site, but you don’t understand what all the numbers or little 3-letter words mean.  These acronyms are essential to understanding Fantasy baseball, in and out. 

 

Bellow is a list of general baseball acronyms that are commonly used in fantasy baseball.

 

RBI:  Runs Batted In

AVG:  a batters batting average.

HR:  Home Runs

SB: Stolen Bases

R: Runs a player scores

W:  Wins that a pitcher accumulates throughout the season

K:  Strikeouts

ERA:  Earned Run Average

WHIP:  Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched

S: Saves

 

This is a short list of common baseball terms that are consistently seen during a fantasy baseball season.  Sometimes however you will see a few more with are only associated with Fantasy baseball. 

 

ADP:  Average Draft Position

FPA:  Fantasy Point Average

 

These two acronyms are used quite often when talking about a player’s value to fantasy baseball team.  They are used more often during than draft than any other time, but the draft is where fantasy baseball leagues are won and lost.  

5 Fantasy Baseball Strategies

Every fantasy manager has his or her own fantasy baseball draft strategy.   Which ones work, which ones don’t?  The biggest mistake fantasy owners can make is not having a strategy.   For every draft that you do as a fantasy baseball manager you need to have a strategy, and stick with it.  So with out further ado here are five strategies that I have used to win countless championships.

 

The balanced team or “average Joes” strategy:  This is where you only draft players that contribute in all five categories.  You don’t try to outright win any specific category, but at the same time you don’t give up on any either.  Through the first 10 rounds you should draft the best stat contributors at each position.  You want batter that contributes in all 5 categories, not just home runs and RBI’s.  Once you hit the 10^th round you need to look at your current situation and see where you have major holes.  Once all holes are filled in you can continue drafting players that will contribute in as many categories possible. 

 

Highest Rated Player Strategy:  Lets face it, anyone that plays fantasy baseball knows whom the studs.  This strategy means exactly what it sounds like, you always draft the highest rated player, without paying much attention to position or categories, if they are ranked high, you draft them.  In order for this draft strategy to work your league needs to be incredibly active, and needs to allow trades because in order for you too fill positions you are weak in you will be trading.  Because you always drafted the highest rated player you will have some extra studs at each position, use this to your advantage to get the reaming positions you still need.

 

Offense sells tickets (defense wins championships):  This strategy means you completely forget about pitching till the later rounds, probably wont draft a pitcher until the 10^th round at the earliest.  Hitters play everyday and score on a daily basis.   The best starter in the league will only contribute every fifth day.  You will not be drafting a pitcher until all 9 hitting positions are filled. 

 

Position Scarcity:  This strategy entails the most research on your part.  You will need to not only look at rankings overall but also for each position as well.  In the opening rounds you will be drafting players at positions that have very few superstars.  Some examples of such positions are catcher, shortstop, and closer.  Once you have a “superstar” at each of the “scarce” positions you will draft players that fill out the rest of your roster. 

 

Punt Strategy: This is a strategy that is often frowned upon by the fantasy baseball experts.  However when used correctly it is a force to be reckoned with.  A fantasy manager using this strategy will punt or give up on a scoring category to try and dominate in the other categories.  For hitter this is usually steals, pitchers usually give up on saves.  This is not a great strategy to begin the draft with, but if you are getting towards the 7^th round and you are noticing some categories you are weak in you may want to give up on trying to find some steals and concentrate on more home run hitters and RBI machines. 

 

These are just some of the basic strategies used in fantasy baseball drafts.  In the upcoming posts I will be going over ways to use each strategy and how it applies to this years player pool.  

Draft Day Tips

So you have your cheat sheets, your game plan, and your favorite players lined up in the Que., you are all ready to go.  However when the draft is over you look over your roster and it is not at all what you expected, you went in with a plan and now you have a team, a team with no direction (kind of like the Yankees.)  But how did this happen?  How could your fail safe draft day strategy go wrong?  Ill tell you how in this simple guide to draft day do's and dont's.

Do: go in to the draft with a strategy.  Not only have a strategy, but stick with it from the first pick to the last pick of the draft.

Dont: Lose sight of your goal.  If your goal is to draft an even keeled team, then do so, dont change strategies mid way through the draft.  

Do: Know all of your leagues rules before beginning the draft.  Know which rules you can use to your advantage.

Dont: wait till the last minute to sign in and see if the draft software works on your computer.  Arrive at least 30 minutes before and test the draft software.  Also take this time to become aquatinted with the draft software being used.

Do: Stay for the whole draft.  Not only stay, but in between your picks use the time to figure out your next move, and then your back up plan if someone else makes your pick.

Dont: get caught up in position runs.  Just because someone has started to go for all the top tier closers, dont take the next best thing just because you dont want to get caught without a first tier player at the closer position.  

Its great to come to draft day with a plan, the hardest part is sticking to your strategy.  You came up with that strategy for a reason, stick to it.  

Opening Day

Its getting to that time of year again. My favorite time of year. For the past few years this time period has meant more to me than Christmas or any other commercialized holiday, this is my Christmas. This is the beginning of baseball season. Pitchers and catchers report soon, and then you have spring training games, and then the best part of the year, opening day! Of course I love baseball as a sport itself but my true reason behind loving this time of year is fantasy baseball. Now like most fantasy baseball gurus i have begun my player rankings long ago. I like to usually begin this right after fantasy football season ends. During the fantasy baseball season i like to play in several different highly competitive fantasy leagues. Because of the adversity of these leagues it takes me some time to come up with my draft order as all these leagues have different settings.

Over the next couple of weeks i will be sharing my strategy for winning countless leagues, my draft order this year for H2H leagues, roto leagues, and even will divulge into a few points league draft strategies.

Who will be fantasy baseball 2009's biggest contributors, biggest busts? Stay tuned, i have the answers!