Four Big Answers: Advice for a Fantasy Baseball Beginner

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Sara Hannon, a writer here at the Bleacher Report, posted a great article about four questions new fantasy players often have. As a long-time fantasy baseball player, I'd like to offer some friendly nuggets of advice that might help not only her, but many of you out there, surprise your more experienced friends with your fantasy acumen.

Question One: What's the best strategy?

The most common strategy is draft hitters early, closers late, and pitchers when they provide maximum value. This leads to many experts drafting around the average draft position, or ADP, quite often.

While any coherent, thoughtful strategy can win a league, I prefer the standard strategy because it takes advantage of several factors.

First, saves come into the league more than any other statistic. With a few specific exceptions such as Papelbon, K-rod, or Nathan, many teams have fluid closing situations or injury risks in their closer position.

A smart, active team can grab potential closers very late in the draft or off the waiver wire, essentially getting saves for little investment. This allows you to compete in saves without overpaying on draft day.

Second, pitching is more volatile than hitting. Part of this is due to the increased injury risk pitchers face and part is simply the nature of pitching. Pitchers get injured or endure bouts of ineffectiveness or bad luck with significant regularity.

There are very few pitchers who are reliable enough to take early in the draft.  Johan Santana and Tim Lincecum are the two who jump to mind immediately, although Johan has had elbow problems and velocity loss in the past couple seasons.

Investing a huge amount of money or top draft pick on a pitcher is putting a lot of eggs in a very fragile basket.

Also, quality pitching comes into the league pretty often.  Every year, there are guys who will surprise you with dramatic comebacks (Cliff Lee) or dominate right out of the minors (Tim Lincecum a couple years ago). 

Active teams can scour the wire looking for bargains and often get great production at little cost by playing matchups.

Lastly, good hitting comes into the league very, very seldom. Puny contact hitters do not suddenly become sluggers and most breakout candidates get snapped up far too early or for way too much, like Justin Upton last year and possibly this year. 

You cannot expect to be the team that gets a Ryan Braun or Carlos Pena off the waiver wire. It is wise to invest in reliable hitters early, while snapping up a few "lottery tickets" in the last couple rounds or for a dollar if possible.

Question Two: How far do you trust your instincts?

That's a tough question to answer because everyone has different predilections.  Believing that Jacoby Ellsbury and Jason Bay are going to have phenomenal years is not useful until you can translate that belief into quantifiable projections.

I would take a close look at the PECOTA projections for this year (subscriber only at baseballprospectus.com but totally worth it) and see if your projects seem reasonable.  If they are on the high side, that's fine, trust your gut!

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