Mocking your draft, Part Two

Taking off from where we started yesterday we're ready to run through our mock keeper league draft.  I like to take into account 4 factors when I do this, namely:

1) What names will be in my opponent's faces? I.E. Who are the highest ranked players available at the pick?  Even if my opponent managers are targeting say, Adam Jones, they'll likely be inclined to pass him up if he's the 12th best available OF.  The natural response is to assume that he'll remain available for another round.

2) What are the team needs of each team?  Using my cheat sheet from Part One I've identified the major deficiency of each team by category and position.  This factor needs to be taken with a grain of salt though, as some statistics (steals) and positions (catcher, starting pitcher) naturally gravitate towards later rounds of a draft.  In most advanced leagues, you'll probably see closers take a back seat as well.

3) What are each manager's preferred styles of play?  In any keeper league you need to make it priority #1 to know your competitors.  Know their player preferences, know their drafting tendencies, know if they're a homer, know what their favorite color is, etc.  Knowing if someone is a Sox fan could mean the difference between them picking Jacoby Ellsbury over Ichiro or BJ Upton as an early speed option.  Knowing if someone reads Fangraphs or not could mean a 4 round difference in when Brett Anderson is drafted.  Does a manager favor rookies or veterans?  FIP or ERA? Etc, etc.  It's not always information you'll have, but when you have it you'll find that you can always use it to fine-tune your strategies.

4) Keeper positional scarcity.  Were 11 first basemen kept in a 12 team league?  Were all of the power options at second base kept?  A smart owner will know that if there were 6 shortstops kept, but there are 8 good shortstops, then they should reach for one of the two good remaining players at that position.  That's fine.  What isn't fine is reaching for a shortstop if there were 7 good remaining players.  A panicky owner will do that, and if you can predict who that is, and when, you can profit from it.  Look at what positions were kept compared to your positional tiers.  Now apply that to each team.

Okay, now that you've done your homework, run through 3-4 rounds of picks.  Take into account all four factors I listed above and try to combine them to predict the picks.  When will the closer run happen?  You'll be able to answer that if you find the round when enough teams have addressed their major problems and are confident enough to start picking luxury players.  If you're trying to stash Adam Jones as a sleeper in the 14th Round but there are 4 teams picking ahead of you who only have one or two outfielders picked so far, you're probably not going to get him.  Take that information and take the Pac-Man in the 13th, or find those 4 team's managers and talk down your boy, or talk up some other outfielders that would also make sense at that position.  With your mock you have an invaluable weapon.  You can use the information that backs up the picks to either make that mock a reality, or to manipulate the league into shifting the probability away from it happening.  This is your chance to re-write history.

Thoughts? Was this helpful?  I'm interested to hear your comments.

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.

BAP Kardashians: Closers

Just a quick explanation here.  Because of the small quantity of innings that relief pitchers contribute there really aren't any "plus-plus" players outside of the elite.  For contributors that will help you in ratios or pitcher counting stats you're better off looking towards the deep pool of starters, where there can be some later bargains.

BAP Kardashians: Catchers

Catcher is another "easy" position in this years' draft because there are very clear tiers.  There's Joe Mauer by himself, then a nice little pack of Carlos Santana, Buster Posey, Brian McCann and Victor Martinez.  Tier three has some guys with either obvious warts or limited ceilings like Mike Napoli and Geovany Soto.  After those guys the talent really levels off, and you can easily wait until the end of your draft to take one of these guys.  BAP is not a bad strategy to use here even if you don't feel comfortable using it for your entire draft.  Remember as you read this article that "plus" in a category is really mitigated by the limitations of the position, and while you can certainly make up some ground contributors here won't be able to make nearly of an impact as say, an outfielder.

Home runs / RBIs:
Chris Iannetta, COL
John Buck, FLA

Stolen Bases:
Yadier Molina, STL
Miguel Olivo, SB
Russell Martin, NYY

Runs:
Due to the fact that most catchers hit 8th or 9th there aren't a lot of opportunities to score runs here.  The best you can hope for outside of the upper tiered talent is 55-60 runs scored, so I recommend that you look elsewhere for help in that category.

AVG:
Carloz Ruiz, PHI
Yadier Molina, STL

No one's going to draft two catchers in a standard league, so you should end up with one of the top 10-12 without trying.  You really shouldn't need to touch any of these players, but it's good to have a reference guide to prevent panicking.  You don't want to stare at these stats for too long though, so let's move on as quickly as possible...Outfielders next!