How I Get Ready for My Drafts

• By: Chris Liss
• On: 2/11/2010 5:28:00 PM

Related: Chris Liss 


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You might think because it's my job to follow sports and assemble fantasy teams that I'm ready for my drafts all winter long. Not true. While I know what's going on in baseball through the end of August - and I know what's going on with the players on my teams (and maybe a few others who impact their values) in September, I'm not up on baseball generally once the NFL season kicks in.

As a result, once the Super Bowl ends, (and after I take a week or two off), I've got to get myself up to speed for all my upcoming drafts, beginning with AL LABR (March 6), the RotoWire Staff League, Yahoo! Friends and Family, my home league, NL Tout (March 28) and finally a new high stakes league I'm starting with some professional poker players (more on that in subsequent blogs).

So how does one who's more or less tuned out baseball (except for the Cubs and Yankees) over the offseason get ready for a six deep drafts?

I go to the RotoWire Depth Charts and painstakingly, go team by team, filing every player into a by-position spread sheet. When I don't know or remember everything there is to know about a player (and that's the case for most of them), I click through to his player page for the latest update, season outlook and stats. For example, for the Angels, I'd start with Jered Weaver, click though because I didn't own him last year, and don't remember exactly what he did. I'd see he had a 174:66 K:BB in 211 IP, but allowed a lot of fly balls and gave up 26 HR. I'd note these numbers were mostly in line with his career ones, that he was 27 and there was no significant news about him except that he signed a one-year $4.2 million deal. I'd type him in at about No. 30-35 among starting pitchers with the idea that I'd refine the list once I had gotten through all 30 teams.

Next I'll click on Ervin Santana, whom I did own, check to see that he's not still battling an injury - he's not - and remember that he showed flashes of his 2008 form last year. I'd put him at about 35-40, but again aim to adjust later.

I will go through every starter like this whose situation I don't know cold, then every reliever, every position player and then every minor leaguer on the list - click through, read outlooks, latest updates, stats, and put them in a spot according to position and estimated rank on the spread sheet. The only exceptions are known veteran scrubs (Henry Blanco, Koyie Hill) or players like Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter. (And I might even click though for Pujols/Jeter just to double check their stolen base numbers over the last four years). Eventually, I've got everyone who could conceivably be drafted on the sheet, and I'll edit it until I feel it's in roughly the right order.

By the end of that process - it's about eight hours per league - I have a pretty good grasp of what's going on. I know what everyone did in the past, what their status is for this season (health and role-wise), who they're competing with currently for at-bats, and what prospects might eventually push them. I'll know which prospects have a shot to get playing time this year, even if they're not the most highly touted ones. (For example, I landed Nolan Reimold last year as a reserve in LABR because I discovered he was close to the majors, and he had decent minor league numbers even though at 25 and having played merely at Double-A he wasn't on anyone's top prospect list).

It's a tedious way to do it, and especially so when you're clicking through to look at players you think you know pretty well like Weaver or, for example, Adrian Gonzalez. While knowing vaguely what a player produced last year and where he's going in drafts is one thing, I'll still spend time clicking through to learn the specific details. With Gonzalez, for example, I discovered that even though his cosmetic numbers were pretty close from 2008 to 2009 (HR, RBI, R, SB, AVG), his plate discipline, on-base and slugging went through the roof last year. I also had a vague idea that he was likely to be traded because the Pads can't afford what he'll command in free agency. But I didn't know that the Pads have a no-brainer $5.5 million team option for 2011. So there's no particular urgency to trade him as he'll fetch plenty even a year from now. (Of course, he *should* fetch even more now, but it doesn't always work that way).

One advantage to this method is your understanding of each player's role is cemented into your memory by how he fits into his team. It's much harder to recall facts about 900 isolated players if you do it by, say, cheat sheet ranking. But this way, you can mentally go around the diamond for each team, and recall who the first baseman, second baseman, third baseman, etc. is. Who the primary utililty infielder is. Who the fourth outfielder is. Who the key setup guys are. Who the key prospects are that are pushing players. Your research on one player will reinforce your knowledge about his teammates.

I'm not claiming this is the only way to get ready - only it's how I do it after having been a bit out of the baseball loop for the last five months. Spend 16 hours or so building my own cheat sheets, by slowly and tediously clicking through most of the players listed in the RotoWire depth charts.