My fantasy baseball philosophy? I have had a lot of success with a strategy called Value Based Drafting. I read about from www.FootballGuys.com and have applied with great success in my football leagues. I have since applied it to my work league and it took me to the Championship game two seasons ago and the Championship last season. If you are not familiar with VBD as it is called, here is a brief explanation:| The basic principle of VBD is: The value of a player is determined not by the number of points he scores, but by how much he outscores his peers at his particular position. |
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Think about it like this. We are NOT trying to assemble a group of the highest scoring players with no regard to position. If that were the case, the best team would be full of outfielders & first basemen. We are bound by our starting lineups as to the positions we must fill. Our team, consisting of a specified number of players from the specified positions will compete against the other teams consisting of the same number of players from the same positions. Think of it in terms of individual matchups pitting your team against another team, position by position.
Here's an example. For simplicity's sake, let's just say your starting roster is 1 first basemen, 1 second basemen, 1 third basemen and 1 shortstop. In a one game matchup (a week in real-time) against your buddy, your first baseman outscores his first baseman 18 to 16 (+2 points). You're up 2. Your second baseman is outscored by his second baseman 7 to 12 (-5 points). Now you're down by 3. Your third baseman outscores his third baseman 15 to 5 (+10 points). Now you're back up by 12. Your shortstop outscores his shortstop 17 to 16 (+1 point) This puts you up 8. You win the matchup 57 to 49. Listen up now. The point differences at each position, when totaled, will determine the winner. In this case it was a total team difference of 8 points. Simple, right? Now here's the important question. Let's say you and the owner above are going to throw all 8 players back into the pool, have a draft, fill your 4 man roster and play a 1 game season. For the sake of argument, these are the only 8 players available to draft ( 2 first basemen, 2 second basemen, 2 third basemen and 2 shortstops ) and you already know they're going to post the points I've stated. You must draft 1 first baseman, 1 second baseman, 1 third baseman, and 1 shortstop. Who would you draft first? It's an absolute no brainer. The third baseman who scores 15 points MUST be the #1 draft pick. The 15 point third baseman is by far the most valuable player even though he scored less points than both first basemen and both shortstops. Why? Because he gives you a 10 point advantage at third base while the better first baseman only gives a 2 point advantage, the better shortstop gives a 1 point advantage and the better second baseman gives a 5 point advantage. The third baseman’s 15 points were much more valuable than the first baseman’s 18 points and the shortstop’s 17 points because of how the player relates to his peers. It's like tic-tac-toe. The season is over once the third baseman is taken.
I will go into this more when I post my pre-draft strategies later.
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