Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy: Loading Up on Sluggers Early is a Must

While pitchers are certainly an important part of the game, nothing dominates fantasy baseball more than stud sluggers.

Snagging multiple players who hit for average, have power and can steal the occasional base, is invaluable when thinking about fantasy.

Obviously guys like Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols and Ryan Braun are all first-round picks, but drafting a guy like Jay Bruce a round or two early (in, say, the fifth round) is better than landing a No. 2 starter. They provide more consistency and aren’t as big of an injury risk.

Aside from the work horses like Roy Halladay and CC Sabathia, almost every pitcher misses a minimum of two starts in a year, and some can miss months at a time. With the way pitchers are babied these days, the injuries are only continuing to rise.

Obviously it’s hard to predict who gets hurt, which is why all of your top players should be hitters who will miss far less games. The risk that one of your top-five picks misses two months is not nearly the same.

So what are the most important aspects of a hitter to look at? Rotowire provides a simple formula:

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We try to focus on three aspects: power, plate discipline and speed. A hitter who has command of the strike zone is going to put himself in a better position to have a higher batting average than a free swinger. Years of Sabermetric evidence also show these players have a higher ceiling as well. Home runs are a key category in any fantasy game, so we like to see growing home run totals. Remember that often minor league doubles turn into home run power when players age. Speed on the basepaths is also an important element in most fantasy baseball games—but an overrated factor in the real game.

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The main stats to pay attention to are on-base average and slugging percentage. For OBA, a mark below .350 is very worrisome. It means plate discipline is questionable and strikeouts are likely high. For slugging, anything .450 or better should suffice. This is when a player’s power numbers can best be recognized. Home runs and RBI are not the stats you should be looking at.

I’m not trying to tell you that a guy like Carlos Gonzalez is more valuable than Tim Lincecum, but when you are in the 4-to-10 round area in your draft and you are on the fence between a slugger and a pitcher, take the slugger.