Post
by Buster » Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:36 am
Thank you all for your constructive comments. Please allow me to put this experiment/test into perspective.
CREATiVESPORTS.com has a varied readership. Many (at least I hope many) NFBC participants peruse the site. From my experience in fantasy sports, the NFBC participants are among the most knowledgeable and dedicated fantasy players anywhere.
If I wrote only for the NFBC players, my columns would be different than they are. However, in addition to the NFBC readers, we have readers who are fantasy fanatics, readers who are general sports fans, readers who play fantasy sports with friends in less competitive leagues, and readers who haven’t yet pulled the trigger on playing fantasy sports, but who are interested.
I do not profess to tell the NFBC participants how to draft. While I have had a modicum of success in this competition (less than some, more than others), I do not claim to know more about how to draft than any of you. What I want to do, and with your help I think I will be successful, is to demonstrate even in a rudimentary fashion, that there is more to drafting a team than making a cheat sheet and drafting the best available player.
I think anyone who is willing to plunk down $1,250.00 probably knows that taking the highest rated player on his (or her) cheat sheet each time it is his (or her) turn to draft is going to be a recipe for disaster. In a league where there is no trading, drafting 100 more home runs than the next highest team is just as good as drafting 10 more home runs than the next highest team.
The question then becomes, “Which is more important, accurate projections, or utilizing those projections?”
As Walla correctly points out, it is a “chicken and the egg” scenario. If your projections are much further off than the rest of the league, it doesn’t really matter how well you balance your team. If you projected Adrian Beltre to hit 48 home runs and bat .334 again in 2005 (following his breakout 2004 season), you were probably doomed from the start.
So, without reasonable projections, you already have one foot in the proverbial fantasy grave. I think that goes without saying. However, (as is probably clear to all of you), even if you have reasonable projections, then you still have to know how to apply these projections to put together a winning team.
Yet, when you talk to fantasy players, most spend at least 90% of their available fantasy time getting projections, tweaking projections, checking out cheat sheets, tweaking cheat sheets, etc. Is this time well spent? That depends upon the individual. However, my feeling is that some of that valuable preparation time should be spent looking not only at projections, position scarcity, etc., but also at figuring out how to best compose a team that will compete in your chosen league.
For example, if you are drafting 15 and 16 in the league, and both Chone Figgins and Jose Reyes are available, and for some reason, they are both the top two players remaining on your cheat sheet, are you going to draft both of them? Sure, you will win SB by a landslide, but your HR and RBI totals are going to suffer, as you don’t pick again until pick #45. Should you draft directly from your cheat sheet, without regard to position, or each players’ relative strong categories? What happens to that hypothetical team if pick #45 comes around, and Scott Podsednik is the highest remaining player on the cheat sheet?
Ideally, I would have wanted to do an entire retro-draft, using the 2005 statistics. However, this late in the game, with the NFBC draft just two weeks away, I did not believe that I could find 14 willing, knowledgeable, participants. As a result, I am using this very brief test to demonstrate to my readers that even with perfect projections (using last years’ as a basis), every team is going to construct differently, and the construction of a team is of utmost importance.
Much of this is obvious to all of you. However, think back of your home leagues wherein (I am willing to bet) the same few people win every year. The perennial losers will buy different magazines, check out different sites, and perhaps even adopt different strategies each year. Yet, no matter what, those perennial losers are going to continue to lose, and those perennial winners are going to continue to win. It’s not all about projections, but rather projections coupled with how you use them.
Now, I could have written the column without any basis, just including my opinions as stated above. However, that is no different than Gekko boasting about how good he is, or stating that someone’s team is worthy of a score of four out of ten.
No one seriously considers Gekko’s opinions, because they are opinions, only. Why consider my opinions without some data? Is the data that I am developing perfect? Certainly not. I will be the first to admit that, and will explain that in detail in the column. However, I can demonstrate that even given perfect projections, each team will be constructed differently, and the construction is a key element to forming a fantasy team.
When I took the California Bar Exam oh so many years ago, our professors told us to quit studying about three days before the test. Go out, enjoy ourselves, get some sun and clear our minds. On that note, I firmly believe that absent adjustments for spring injuries and depth chart changes, fantasy players need to step away from their cheat sheets and projections at some time before the draft, and spend some time figuring out how to best apply those numbers to best compile the most effective team.
That is the purpose of this experiment, and I want to thank the over two dozen people who have already submitted a team to help form the basis of this column, and urge the rest of you to also submit if your time permits.
Buster