Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy: Target Certain Positions In Redraft Leagues

Image credit: Jeremy Pena (Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images)

After my first foray into the NFBC high stakes redraft leagues last year met with success, I felt emboldened to join my first NFBC Draft Champions (Draft & Hold) league this upcoming season. The format is quite similar to NFBC Main Event leagues (and TGFBI) but without the weekly FAAB component. In other words, it’s a standard 5×5 roto league (batting average and saves) with 14 hitters (2 C, 1B, 2B, SS, 3B, 5 OF, MI, CI, UT) and 9 pitchers.

The hitting lineups can be set for Monday-to-Thursday and then Friday-to-Sunday, whereas pitching lineups are set for the entire (Monday-to-Sunday) week. To round out your roster—and to provide substitution options for the lineups—the roster also has 27 bench slots (which can be allocated amongst the positions in any combination you wish). Once the 15 fantasy managers in the league have completed drafting their 50 players, those are the only 750 players that can generate statistics in the league. There are no further in-season pickups.

Compared to Main Events, the Draft Champions are usually slow drafts that happen across multiple days and have a lower entry fee (and prizes). The inability to make in-season pickups from the waiver wire is the biggest difference between the two league formats. Because there is no opportunity to grab the latest promoted prospect, newly anointed closer, or simple replacement for an injured player, one needs to account for all of these foreseeable scenarios when selecting the 27 players for your bench.

In other words, not only do you want to have a solid idea of which prospects are most likely to get 2024 playing time (and provide meaningful value), but who might become a closer, or which players may become full time contributors.

This is the first installment of a multi-part series. My goal is to discuss some of the observations I made looking at the positional landscape while planning my draft. In part two of this article series, I will look at some interesting prospects of note and other “late-round” options at each position. Although I will be providing some first-hand comments about the one league that I participated in, I will also discuss the Average Draft Position (ADP) from across multiple leagues some trends I noticed there.

Positional Landscape

When preparing for a draft, I like to look at the entire positional landscape compared to the “market” to see where the “pockets” and “cliffs” might be. For example, if a player seems to project well but isn’t going in a representative round, perhaps one can wait on that position and target that player.

Here are some of my observations from this planning—with notes about how I put it into practice in the draft. Note that the “round” shown in parentheses is based on ADP and should be reasonably accurate in most cases. One word of warning: please remember that the risk in waiting on a player because he is a “value” is that another fantasy manager has the same plan as you, grabs this same target before you can, and leaves you with no good option for the position anymore because you forewent all previous options. Tread carefully.

CATCHERS

Even with 30 catchers drafted, there are quite a few solid options. In years past, there was usually a clear top tier—for example, J.T. Realmuto, Salvador Perez…or going even further back, Buster Posey. If you didn’t draft them, it was an exercise in trying to fill your roster with backstops who hurt your batting average or didn’t provide too many counting stats (or both).

This year, however, there are good, productive options throughout the draft. The No. 15 catcher on our list, Mitch Garver, is a sound option who should be getting plate appearances as a DH leading to solid production. Even though I’m usually someone who likes to draft a productive catcher early so as not to worry, this year I feel comfortable waiting on Salvador Perez in the eighth as a first option, or even having my first catcher be Gabriel Moreno, Logan O’Hoppe, or Keibert Ruiz in the 10th or 11th. Although we like Bo Naylor’s ability to steal bases more than most catchers, especially for dynasty, drafted are taking him earlier than warranted.

FIRST BASEMEN

The first basemen look to be similar to the catchers. Getting a Matt Olson, Freddie Freeman, or Bryce Harper early, although nice, doesn’t appear to be necessary. There are solid options you can find in the seventh round and later: Josh Naylor, Yandy Diaz, Triston Casas, Spencer Torkelson, and even Vinnie Pasquantino (who isn’t going until the 13th).

Focusing your early-round picks on a different position, where the options in the seventh to 12th rounds are much less desirable than those in the early rounds, is a better allocation of resources. In this case, the position that seems much more top heavy (and dries up significantly by approximately the10th round) is starting pitching. More on that later.

SHORTSTOP

Shortstop is in a similar predicament to first base. Taking Bobby Witt Jr. or Trea Turner in the first round isn’t a “mistake.” But there is a nice pocket in the 12th through 14th rounds of Trevor Story, Ezequiel Tovar, Willy Adames, Jeremy Peña, and if you’re particularly convicted, Jackson Holliday (who is shortstop eligible right now but should gain second base). Waiting until the double-digit rounds and still not having a shortstop can be terrifying and may not be for everyone, but from a “value” optimization point of view, can be rewarding.

STARTING PITCHING

There’s availability at plenty of previous positions in the middle rounds because starting pitching anchors are scarcely distributed. This was even before the potential full-season losses of Gerrit Cole and Eury Perez.

After the top 20 to 25 pitchers are selected, the remaining starting pitching options become quite thin in the sixth round and beyond—right where a number of pitchers with question marks congregate: Chris Sale, Shane Bieber, Dylan Cease, and even Carlos Rodon.

Although it has not been too many years since these pitchers were throwing substantial innings with excellent ratios, there is a non-trivial chance that they do not approach anywhere close to these previous highs in 2024. For this reason—my humble opinion is that one should focus on starting pitching in the first 5 rounds more than one might normally do, in order to avoid having to rely on these pitchers with wide variances. Couple that with the injury severity uncertainty surrounding Kevin Gausman, Kyle Bradish, Kodai Senga, and Taj Bradley – and the scarcity in the early rounds is even more evident.

As a result, I believe you should dedicate at least three of the first five rounds to starting pitching. If you include closers, four of the first six picks should be on pitching. If not, you might be scrambling in the later rounds.

CLOSERS

In the Draft Champions (and Main Events), all of the teams in the leagues are also aggregated into an overall competition. Last year, there were 795 teams (53 x 15 team leagues) across all Main Events with the prize for winning the overall being a cool $200,000. We compare the statistics for your team with the other 794 teams and derive roto standing points from your team’s ranking in each of the 10 categories: if your team had the most home runs in the league, you receive 795 points, the second-place team receives 794 points, and so on, with one point awarded to the team with the fewest home runs.

Last year, our winning team finished with 7115.5 points, an “average” score of 711.5 in each of the 10 categories. That is an average of 84th percentile in each category. The main takeaway from this is that in order to win an overall, you must have “balance” across all categories. If we “punted” saves, for example, and finished middle-of-the-pack (with, say, 400 roto points in that category), in order to have 7115.5 points (to win), one would need 6715 points (7115.5 minus 400) from the other nine categories. That’s an average of 746 pts or 94th percentile in all of the other categories in order to have won the overall. That is nearly impossible—or at the very least—extremely difficult.

So, now that we’ve established that in order to win an overall, you need balance across all categories—aiming to finish in the 85th percentile in each. That means you need to have at least two closers. There has been some recent research in The Process by Jeffrey Zimmerman and Tanner Bell that, historically, if you don’t draft two closers by the 10th round, the likelihood of being able to accumulate sufficient saves (to hit that 85th percentile target) drops dramatically.

Chasing saves on the waiver wire (or hoping to bid on the next closer during FAAB) has not historically been a winning strategy (for the overall). The best way to put yourself in position to get sufficient saves is to use two of your first 10 picks on closers. Many other drafters seem to agree with this approach too. Per ADP, 19 presumptive closers are among the first 150 picks.

OUTFIELDERS

Regarding outfielders, drafters seem to target—and why wouldn’t they?— those outfielders who have both power and speed: hitters like Randy Arozarena, Luis Robert Jr., Nolan Jones, Cody Bellinger, and (before the news broke that he’d begin the season on the IL), Josh Lowe. This makes a lot of sense. They help provide “balance” across multiple categories discussed above. But based on expected production, they are being drafted earlier than where they should go.

Based on this market premium, if you focus on early starting pitching, you will unfortunately not be able to draft these outfielders. It is not all lost though, as there are some outfield values who can help make up this ground. Some options in the 10th round or later who offer some value are Cedric Mullins, Starling Marte, Tyler O’Neill, Lourdes Gurriel, and Kris Bryant.

SECOND BASE/THIRD BASE

The final positions to discuss are second and third base. Interestingly, from a high level, there are no obvious values to target (Anthony Rendon?) or landmines (um, Anthony Rendon?) to avoid. They are generally drafted in rounds corresponding to projected value. In other words, I think if you just fill these positions where it makes the most sense for your build, you should end up in good shape.

Putting it all together, my main takeaway—and what we did for our Draft Champions team (which I will share in a future article)—is to focus on pitching in the early rounds, making sure to get two closers within the first 10 rounds. If you can stomach the patience, waiting until the seventh to get a first baseman and catcher(s) and the 12th for a shortstop, is the “ideal” build if you believe in the public projections.

In part two of this series, I will discuss some prospects or late round targets. You may have noticed that I didn’t discuss where to take Wyatt Langford, Jackson Chourio, Junior Caminero, Jackson Holliday, or even Paul Skenes. For my opinion on that—for redraft leagues—stay tuned for the next installment in this series.