Why the inflation on pitching? An average start last year lasted fewer than five innings on average in the MLB. Starting pitchers made 1, starts logging 8, This creates a ripple effect in ratio statistics for both starting pitchers and relievers alike. Securing veteran pitchers with a history of pitching at least innings in the past represents a shrinking commodity, especially when seeking ratio protection ERA and WHIP.
Forming a strong foundation yields options in drafts. Teams also take 16 outfielders and 11 shortstops, meaning these three positions comprise Taking this a step further, nine of the hypothetical 15 teams reach the full-hand stratagem by getting at least two pitchers.
Teams 3, 6 and 15 represent teams with three pitchers and two hitters in the purest sense of the full-hand approach. Team 2 comes closet to mirroring my personal views on how to build a successful team. Getting Fernando Tatis Jr. Javier Baez or J. Gerrit Cole or Christian Yelich. Gerrit Cole or Trevor Story. Gerrit Cole or Jose Ramirez. Gerrit Cole or Shane Bieber.
Gerrit Cole or Freddie Freeman. Aaron Nola or Xander Bogaerts. Aaron Nola or Max Scherzer. Aaron Nola or Anthony Rendon. Aaron Nola or Corey Seager. Aaron Nola or Rafael Devers. Shane Bieber or Freddie Freeman. Shane Bieber or Bryce Harper.
Shane Bieber or Cody Bellinger. Shane Bieber or Francisco Lindor. Shane Bieber or Manny Machado. Lucas Giolito or Aaron Nola. Lucas Giolito or Xander Bogaerts. Lucas Giolito or Max Scherzer. Lucas Giolito or Anthony Rendon. Lucas Giolito or Corey Seager. Luis Robert or Tim Anderson. Luis Robert or Brandon Woodruff. Luis Robert or Whit Merrifield. Luis Robert or Starling Marte. Luis Robert or Nolan Arenado. Aaron Judge or George Springer. Aaron Judge or Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Aaron Judge or Tyler Glasnow. Aaron Judge or Randy Arozarena. Aaron Judge or Gleyber Torres. Kyle Tucker or Clayton Kershaw. Kyle Tucker or Marcell Ozuna. Kyle Tucker or Alex Bregman. Kyle Tucker or Luis Robert. Eugenio Suarez or Michael Conforto.
Eugenio Suarez or Nelson Cruz. Eugenio Suarez or J. Eugenio Suarez or Josh Hader. Eugenio Suarez or Nick Castellanos. Mookie Betts or Fernando Tatis Jr. Mookie Betts or Juan Soto. Mookie Betts or Mike Trout. Mookie Betts or Jacob deGrom. Mookie Betts or Trea Turner. Jose Abreu or Kyle Tucker. Jose Abreu or Clayton Kershaw. Jose Abreu or Marcell Ozuna. Jose Abreu or Alex Bregman. Jack Flaherty or Luis Castillo. Jack Flaherty or Jose Abreu.
Jack Flaherty or Kyle Tucker. Jack Flaherty or Clayton Kershaw. Jack Flaherty or Marcell Ozuna. Manny Machado or Yu Darvish. Manny Machado or Trevor Bauer. Manny Machado or Bo Bichette. Manny Machado or Walker Buehler.
Manny Machado or Lucas Giolito. Realmuto or Yordan Alvarez. Realmuto or Kenta Maeda. Realmuto or Javier Baez. Realmuto or Lance Lynn. Realmuto or Eugenio Suarez.
Ronald Acuna Jr. Cody Bellinger or Francisco Lindor. Cody Bellinger or Manny Machado. Cody Bellinger or Yu Darvish. Cody Bellinger or Trevor Bauer. Cody Bellinger or Bo Bichette. Starling Marte or Nolan Arenado.
Starling Marte or Blake Snell. Starling Marte or Adalberto Mondesi. Starling Marte or Pete Alonso. Starling Marte or Aaron Judge. In-Season Tools. In-Season Research. Draft Tools. On the lower end of the pool, the consideration is just the opposite. A player might even have a negative dollar value taking into account his lack of prospective playing time, but his 90thth percentile seasons are so valuable you spend several dollars to acquire him.
Translating Performance into Value without Projected Stats — Having said all this and done all the math, I generally don't rely on projections to evaluate players.
I do the research and aggregate the disparate factors into a slot on my cheat sheet. Having done enough auctions and drafts, I have a pretty good idea of what different stat lines are worth without crunching the numbers for each one, and I also know that each statline is based on a fictional rendering of the season and is usually not much more scientific than my placement of a player in a cheat-sheet slot. Moreover, I'm not wedded to my cheat sheet order when the auction or draft starts — I might take my No.
And even if you were to automate those factors — park effects for gap-hitting lefties that are , and score a 65 on the power scale, adjust it for a player's schedule, his historical comps for age-related career arc, you're making a lot of choices on the inputs that are imprecise. And even to the extent your model gained precision over time and backtested its results, there's no guarantee your conscious aggregation of the factors that comprise value will be better than the unconscious snap assessment of an experienced and open-minded evaluator — at least not without the conditions of baseball remaining static while you collect a larger sample of data over the next couple decades.
But I'm open to being proved wrong on this point. The bottom line — there's no substitute for gathering all the material facts you can find about a player, but how you translate those to a dollar value or cheat sheet is up to you.
If you prefer to have the discipline of a cheat sheet based on projected stats, it's important to compare those stats to the replacement-value baseline and then to see what those results are worth based on their prospective categorical impact. A good way to measure that is by seeing how many standard deviations they are above the baseline. Next up, we'll talk about the actual building of your team.
Assuming you've read the other sections above, you know the player pool, have a good idea of what each player's prospective numbers are worth and have a good grasp of your league parameters. What's left is to execute on that understanding in your snake draft or auction. The strategy for the first rounds of every draft depends somewhat on where you're slotted. Subjective Rankings vs. Average Draft Position ADP — You're going to have opinions on particular players, some of which are in line with market value, and some which are not.
If the goal is to get the best players for their draft slots, then your opinion is the numerator who you think the best players are while market value is the denominator what those players cost. As such, you need not only to have a good grasp of what players will do, but also what their going rate is. My philosophy in a draft as opposed to an auction is to be aggressive.
Take the players you think are best in a given round, so long as you're pretty sure they won't come back to you in a subsequent one. Don't worry about getting the player with the highest ADP for its own sake. ADP is useful only insofar as it tells you when you can wait until the next round on a player.
The only way you can "reach" for a player, i. Otherwise, always take the player you expect to be the best on the board for your team, irrespective of how the market values him. League Depth — The depth of your league, i. In shallower leagues, e. As such, the difference-makers are mostly elite players, and merely productive players are only marginally valuable.
In that case, you'll want to aggressively draft players with the maximum possible upside, like Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton , earlier than usual even if their downsides are steep. You can always find adequate replacements, so there's a smaller penalty if they don't pan out. In deeper mixed leagues, or especially "only" leagues, the equation changes dramatically.
The waiver wire is thinner, and blandly productive players like Hunter Pence and Adrian Gonzalez are actually significant upgrades from what's freely available.
In that case, you should focus more on a player's floor than his ceiling - at least until you get into the later rounds. If a player doesn't pan out, he is not easily replaced, and missing on middle-round picks is more costly. First Round — The first round sets the tone for your draft, largely determining the base of your categorical and positional strengths and weaknesses.
Each slot is different, but for the sake of simplicity, let's divide it into early, middle and late positions. This could be slots or even depending on the depth of the elite player pool. In early position, my preference is largely to ignore position scarcity and get a player who will deliver you massive stats in four — or preferably five — categories - even if that player is a pitcher.
Wherever one falls on the positional scarcity question generally, I especially don't think it's a good idea to worry about it early in the first round where the per-pick drop-off in value is greatest.
If you're going to draft a shortstop in the first three picks, it better be one like Hanley Ramirez circa where his projected stats merit the selection apart from the slot he fills on your roster. Consider the positional scarcity a bonus. This is after the initial drop-off from the consensus top group - picks in some seasons or later as the case may be - where the non-elite first rounders are roughly interchangeable. My feelings are more or less the same as in early position, but you won't get quite as much across-the-board production.
You typically want a rock solid 3. This is usually the last picks of the first round. You'll usually have the choice of an upside player with less experience Carlos Correa , a more modest five category producer Andrew McCutchen , a superstar coming off a down or injury-marred year Miguel Cabrera or another top pitcher Max Scherzer. Of course, where you'd be willing to take a pitcher will change depending upon the era and the degree to which a pitcher is an outlier — in the early 's, for example, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez were perennial top-five picks and well worth it, and Kershaw certainly earned his early draft slot the last few years.
I don't have a problem with any of these choices. Playing it safe with McCutchen , for example, isn't my style, but there's a case to be made that you shouldn't gamble on a pick where you have the most to lose. I'd rather take a player on the rise late in the first round like Correa or Mookie Betts where there could be another level than a reliable one at his late peak. And taking a pitcher can work, but you might have to forgo subsequent pitching bargains as you catch up on hitting if the entire league — as many do — devalues pitching.
Rounds — Some people like to get 70 homers and 70 steals in the first three rounds, while others like to get two hitters and one elite pitcher. Still others try to shore up scarce positions and fill in later with more plentiful outfield and pitching options.
I subscribe to none of these rules, preferring to go best available player for three rounds, no matter what that looks like. To me, Rounds are simply about maximum stat gathering, and shoring up weaknesses is something you do later in the draft and during the regular season via waiver wire and trades. Many leagues force you to draft your entire starting roster before you can take a reserve.
In cases like this, you'll want to maintain as much roster flexibility as practicable. That means if you have four outfielders by Round 8, you probably don't want to take a fifth OF in Round 9 unless he's the best player available by a decent margin because doing so cuts you off from future OF bargains. Unless you want to use your utility spot which limits your flexibility further.
Likewise, getting two first basemen early cuts you out of potential first and third base bargains later in the draft by filling up your corner slot. You don't want to take this too far — at some point, you'll necessarily be locked out of certain positions.
But all things being equal, it's better to have one 1B and one 3B with your corner open, and one second baseman and one shortstop with your MI open for the maximum ability to capitalize on bargains. Whereas your first few picks are about getting the most overall stats, the middle rounds are about balancing out your categorical strengths and weaknesses. In a no-trade format like the NFBC , this is even more important as you can't easily convert a surplus into value later in the year.
In a trading league - so long as people are reasonable - you can come out of your draft with four closers or nine starters or a team with tons of power and too little speed. By season's end, you'll want balance as you don't get extra credit for margin of victory across the categories, but it doesn't matter when you get your numbers.
If you have nine starting pitchers and accumulate huge surpluses in wins and strikeouts by July, you can trade for five closers and get all of your saves in August and September. Again, it doesn't matter when you get your numbers, only that you get them at some point.
Just keep in mind there's not always a perfect trade fit for your team, so you'll often have to pay a premium to re-align the categories later in the year. Positional Scarcity — Jeff Erickson and I discussed this topic in detail two years ago:. There are three types of players that are scarce one can make an argument for third base and even outfield where you need five of them, but both are more marginal these days :. Because you typically need one second baseman, one shortstop and one middle infielder, and second base and shortstop are comparably scarce, plan to draft 1.
For example, in a team league, expect roughly 18 second basemen and 18 shortstops to be drafted, making players the rough baseline at the positions. All stats being equal, always take the middle infielder over the OF or first baseman, but don't give up a significant amount of production just to fill a middle infield slot.
If you're going to attach a significant premium to a scarce position, the place to do it is at catcher — at least in standard leagues that require you to carry two of them. In one-catcher Yahoo! Even in a team mixed league, you're going 24 catchers deep, and that means the back end of the draft will have either catchers who produce very little or ones who hit for some power but harm your batting average.
In team mixed leagues, the back-end of the pool is even more stark. You don't necessarily need to get the top catchers on the board — often those are overpriced given the elevated injury risk and limited upside at the position — but you might want to get two competent ones who contribute without hurting you. Closers are unique in that they're the only players in the pool who get you saves. You can punt catchers and middle infielders so long as your other offensive players carry you in the five hitting categories, but no matter how good your starting pitching is, it can never help you in saves.
In leagues where you can tank categories and still win, there's a point at which you can forgo closers, but in most leagues - where the teams at the bottom quit, and teams at the top are strong across the board — you're probably going to have to acquire saves at some point.
It's worth being aware of how common each stat category is for your format. The veteran ace had a record of and ERA of 2. Within the seven wins, he produced two complete games and a shutout. The flame-throwing starting pitcher also accumulated 94 strikeouts in 73 innings pitched. Cole is projected to have 14 wins, 3. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
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