Mocking your draft, Part One

One of the most beneficial steps in my draft preparation the last few seasons has been to do a 3-4 round mock draft of my league.  Only 3-4 rounds because after that it's mere guesswork that can cause over thinking, and also because after Round 10 (when the 6 keepers are taken into consideration) I generally have a good idea of how the rest of the draft will progress.  I'll try and keep the article as general as possible, but I might use some specific examples to help convey my point.

The first thing that I like to do is draw up a roster for every team in the league as it would look under the current settings, filling in keepers in where I believe they'll be played by my opponent managers.  This not only gives me an idea of what type of players my opponents will be targeting in terms of statistics, but also by position.  To facilitate that, I like to overlay a grid on the players and list the 5x5 categories with either "+" or "++" in each category if the player is an above average or elite contributor in that category, a blank if they're league average, and a "-" if they're well below league average.  For example, Ichiro is "++" in AVG, "+" in SB, but blank in Runs and "-" in Home Runs and RBIs.  This allows me to to assess a team's strength and weaknesses with a quick glance, something that's invaluable during the draft when I'm on the clock.

Once I've done this with each team I put the draft order down on another page and next to each team write down the manager's name and any obvious team weaknesses/deficiencies.  The manager's name is important because it allows me to use any knowledge I've obtained about that manager to influence the mock.  The weakness list is the real key, however, and sets me up for the next step.  Here's an example of what I had at this point so far for one team, whose manager shall remain nameless.  The included players are the team's keepers.

 

In Part Two of this post I'll run through how to run the mock, but most importantly what information you can gain from an exercise like this, and how you can apply it not only to your subsequent draft preparation, but also how you can use it to your advantage with your competitors to manipulate the actual draft to your advantage.