How do you get ready for your fantasy baseball draft? Maybe you just wing it; that may work out OK. I have my methods… I think they work pretty well for me. I won 1st place last year. Going back, the years before then, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, 5th, 6th, 4th, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 1st, 3rd, and 5th; that’s as far back as my Yahoo fantasy profile goes back. I always say I want to get into a bigger money fantasy league; baseball does take a lot of time throughout the year. But the draft, an auction draft to be specific, is where you can give yourself a good start… or you can put yourself behind the 8 ball. Our auction draft was on Wednesday; one more day to prepare.
I get a message that one of the guys is dropping out… 2 days before the draft. I sent out emails weeks ago… thanks for the notice. Thankfully, we had options; my brother in law and nephew decided to go for it. Being their first auction draft, I had to share some strategy with them; I didn’t want to give them all my secrets, but… what does it matter? Things are changing constantly; you need to be able to adjust your strategy… go with the flow. I told them about the fact that you will most likely have to overpay to get your guy/guys; you will hopefully make up for that later in the draft, when you get some guys you wanted for cheaper. I talked about the total dollars you have to spend, and kind of how it should be allocated; I told them plan for the dollar guys towards the late part of the draft. I was spilling my years of knowledge with them; hope it helps them.
As for me, I already had most of my research done; I got started late this year. I wasn’t really ready for the family draft, but that’s OK; this is the one I needed to be ready for. With the draft the day before the season began, I was really pushing it to the limit. I like making manual notes. I document all the positions I need to fill, 29 in this league to be exact, and start to list the targets I want by position. I also try to assign a value to my top guys; I try to identify dollar guys as well. I like to have printouts of the rankings by position, as well as, the overall rankings. I also print out the depth charts of each team. Finally, I like to know how each team’s starting lineup will look. Once I spend some time reviewing this information, my draft board starts to come together. I try to go deep… to have plenty of targets, understanding I won’t get them all. I circle guys I really want; if I get half or 2/3 of them, I’ll be happy. I can’t go too high on the guys I really love; don’t want to fall in love with too many guys.
OK, I think I’m ready; been here done that. I rely on my experience as well. Hoping this year goes as well as many of my previous years; looking forward to the best fantasy baseball day of the year.
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