Fantasy Baseball 101: Blood, Sweat and Tiers

Chase Utley (Phi-2B) went fourth overall in a recent expert mock draft. Joe Mauer (Min-C) then went 18th overall later in the next round. We all know the importance of these players, and how much they loom over the talent far below them at their respective positions. We also know that there were many players taken after these picks that will provide much better numbers, but at different, “deeper” positions. But at what point do you decide that the draft urgency between Joe Mauer and Victor Martinez is greater than that of the player at the top of your list (and the next guy at that player’s position that will be available when the draft comes back around), and how do you put yourself in a position to utilize this information?

The answer is simple – tier your rankings.

Having cut my fantasy teeth in fantasy football, and being in a long-running baseball points league, tiering my rankings is a necessity. However, it’s much tougher in a Rotisserie league, where the value of SB production must be directly compared to RBI production. Putting a direct numerical value to these figures would involve a great amount of effort – effort I simply don’t have.

Err…what?

That’s right – I’m not going to do it. Coming up with my own rankings is pointless, redundant, time-consuming and redundant. Why? Because people far smarter than I am have beaten me to it, and do it far better than I could possibly dream of. Go to a bookstore, go to amazon.com, run a search on “fantasy baseball rankings”, or go to the fantasy baseball website of your choice (but come back!), and get some rankings – any rankings will do, just so long as they’re relevant. If you find a set of rankings that includes auction values, even better. Now go through these rankings, and divide them by position (for multi-eligible players, assign them to the most scarce position (see Ranking Positional Depth for insight on this). Whenever there is a significant difference between players, draw a line between them.

“What’s your definition of ‘significant difference’?” This too is somewhat subjective. Everyone here in the blogosphere is working on that – do the same research you’ve been doing that found you here reading my ramblings. Check the mock drafts over at www.mockdraftcentral.com and see where the breaks are. Make notes as to how much of a gap this represents. The difference between Utley and Cano/Roberts is much larger than the difference between Mauer/Martinez/McCann and the rest of the catchers. Avoid making too many tiers – three is a good goal (4 or 5 for OF and SP).

When it comes draft day, trends emerge. Fantasy football veterans should be very familiar with the term “run on kickers” or “run on defense” or on tight ends. The same thing happens in baseball – especially with catchers and closers. But occasionally, you’ll witness runs on deeper positions. A more recent expert mock draft saw seven shortstops taken in the first two rounds (15 team league). This is absolutely insane. There are two good picks in these – Jose Reyes (the first taken) and Raphael Furcal (the last taken). “I've never seen a run in a draft that early in my nearly 12 years in fantasy,” remarked Brad Evans of Yahoo! Fantasy Sports. “Typically, I tend to avoid position runs and when shortstops flew off the draft board I tried to concentrate on who were the best available players regardless of position at the time. Usually, you can slip a golden puck pass the goalie in those situations. Travis Hafner with the 7th pick in the 2nd round was just that.”

Boiled down to its basics, your goal is to either recognize comparable talent further down your tier and wait on it, or to draft the final player on a tier. The tough part is realizing that you’ll be working with eight sets of tiers and having to juggle them within a time-limit. Evans succeeded in drafting one of the top teams in that draft because he avoided that ridiculous run on SSs (and a later run on closers).