Keeper-league draft strategies for a salary-cap draft vary greatly from the strategies you need for a snake draft in a redraft league, and can be confusing for beginners. While there is no substitute for experience, I have some tips that can help you make Draft Day a success, no matter what shape your franchise is in.
Buy your guy.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” — Mike Tyson
It happens every year, to everybody. No matter your level of draft preparation, no matter how much you plan, you are going to be faced with uncomfortable decisions in the execution of your draft strategy. These decisions often take the form of, “I allotted $45 for [insert stud here], and now he’s at $49. Do I go to $50?”
This question, and the impact of the answer–yes or no–occurs to everyone at one point or another in every draft, usually multiple times. It has happened to me in every salary-cap draft I’ve ever participated in, and I’ve been doing this for over a quarter-century now. It will happen to you, too. Your best-laid plans will be ruined by your despicable, wildly cackling league-mates, usually within the first hour of the draft. Now what?
Simple: buy your guy.
Projected values are good and necessary. You can’t draft without them. But you have to remember that word: “Projected.” What that word means is that you are predicting the future. Which in turn means that you are likely to be wrong if you aim for too much precision. In other words, there is no practical difference between a $45 player and a $50 player. The difference exists only in your mind and on the sheets of paper in front of you as you draft. It does not exist in real life. Either player can earn anywhere from $0 to $65 in value without it being a surprise.
Yes, you want value for your draft dollars. And you should get value whenever you can. But sometimes you simply can’t. If you have planned all winter on getting Mike Trout as the cornerstone of your entire draft strategy, go the extra few bucks if that’s what it takes to get him. If that $5 difference between $45 and $50 wrecks your strategy too, then you have a bad strategy and should do something different for your next draft. But you can usually save a few bucks on some other slot to make up for that $5.
Baseball is a game of adjustments, and so is fantasy baseball drafting. You have to have some flexibility. But sometimes you get in a position where you really, really have to get a certain player. If and when you find yourself in that situation, do what it takes and buy your guy. Don’t get so married to the imaginary numbers in your spreadsheet that you wreck your whole draft plan to save a couple shillings. I am not saying go spend $40 on a $20 player. You have to use common sense. But, in general, there is so much variance in baseball that a few dollars here or there probably isn’t going to make or break you. So buy your guy.
Embrace volatility.
Every single player you bid on has the potential to go to zero in any given year. Mike Trout could blow out his ACL in the first inning on Opening Day and not pick up a bat again until next season. There is an inherent risk of injury or poor performance involved in acquiring any player, no matter their history, track record, or how sure you are that they are going to have a career year.
That being the case, you should embrace volatility in your draft approach. Whether your goal is to win your league, or whether you’re building for the future, you need players who can overperform and give you more production than you paid for. The flip side of this is that everybody else is looking for the same thing. So what can you do?
What you can do is take shots on players who are out of favor for one reason or another. These can be studs coming off an injury-riddled season, prospects who appear to be headed for a little-used bench role, or guys who are just coming off a bad year and are young enough and healthy enough to bounce back. Generally speaking, players who check all the right boxes in terms of performance and health are the most likely to be overpriced. If you’re looking for value, target the guys who don’t check all the boxes. Don’t be afraid to give out mulligans. If something happened that seems fluky, there’s a good chance it is fluky. That is truer this year than ever before. A lot of people had a bad year last year, and sometimes their work performance suffered as a result. Baseball players are people too, and if anything, are more sensitive to changes in their normal routine than most of the rest of us. Cut them some slack. Don’t just look at the downside, because the downside is the same for everybody: zero. Look for upside. It resides in strange places sometimes, but if you want to win you have to take some risks–whether your plan is to win this year or to win in the future.
Don’t be predictable.
Contrary to popular belief, most of the time nobody is thinking about you and what you’re doing. Your fellow GM’s are focused on their own problems and their own franchises, and aren’t paying much attention to you and your plans. But that doesn’t mean nobody will notice if you only nominate or bid on guys you really want. If you’re too predictable, sooner or later somebody is going to start price-jacking you. There are a couple of ways to put a stop to this, but the easiest thing is to vary your nominations and bids so that you are sometimes nominating and bidding on players you don’t want. Just make sure you don’t get stuck with them. In other words…
Don’t price enforce.
During your draft, you have one job: execute your strategy. Anything that is not a part of executing your strategy is not your job. Making sure somebody else doesn’t get a bargain is not your job, and will result in you getting stuck with players you don’t want and who don’t fit into your draft strategy. Especially if this is your first salary-cap draft, don’t worry about other people getting bargains. Everybody gets bargains every year. Your job is to make sure you get more than your fair share, not to make sure that somebody else gets less than theirs.
Have fun!
I loved Christmas as a kid. I couldn’t sleep the night before Christmas. I was too excited to find out what kind of loot was waiting for me under the tree. Nowadays, like most adults, Christmas isn’t as much about the presents I get as it is about the people I am sharing the holiday with. Draft Day is where the real excitement is.
These days, Draft Day is my Christmas. I can barely sleep the night before, and I’m bubbling with excitement by the time the draft actually starts. All the ups and downs of the draft, the twists and turns and tweaks in strategy, are like my Christmas presents. And when I’m done, I’m always disappointed that I have to wait a whole year to do it again.
If you’re not having a blast on Draft Day, you’re doing it wrong. Be like a little kid. Have fun.
