Welcome to our ninth season of fantasy baseball coverage as we help you get ready for your drafts and prepare for the upcoming season so you can become a champion.
As a refresher for those who have followed our coverage throughout the years and to any new readers, in fantasy baseball there are different league formats that are used, but the traditional is the five-by-five rotisserie league format, and that is what I will base my advice on.
For those who are not familiar with what that means, there are five hitting categories — consisting of batting average, home runs, runs scored, RBIs and stolen bases. For pitching, the categories consist of wins, strikeouts, ERA, walks plus hits per innings pitched (WHIP) and saves.
On-base percentage (OBP) continues to become more popular as a replacement to batting average, so I will refer to that stat as well since it could change how we evaluate certain players.
I personally feel fantasy baseball is at a crossroads with the current format. Major League Baseball teams are not valuing starting pitchers and closers anymore, and we need to adjust as an industry. Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened yet.
Even though roto leagues are still the standard, I encourage commissioners to think about implementing head-to-head formats along with total points. By adding more categories and creating the fantasy football feel of going against an opponent every week will only help enhance the fantasy baseball experience.
Here is part one of my 2023 fantasy baseball draft guide.
DRAFTING MULTIPLE-POSITION PLAYERS
Flexibility is crucial in fantasy baseball, and having multiple players you can move around to different positions will set you up for success. This is especially important for those who are in leagues that require daily moves.
The shortstop position is always a position to target in drafts, and 2023 is no different. There were 16 shortstops ranked in the top 100 overall on FantasyPros.com in early February. Of those 16, five are eligible at other positions. Fantasy managers will have an opportunity to draft multiple shortstops, a position we want to be invested in because of the flexibility to use them at different positions.
This may be one of the most important strategies, so I can’t stress it enough. Targeting players who can help at multiple positions is paramount.
It is important to know the rules of the site you play on. Some players are eligible at a position on one site but may not be on another. Other sites grant eligibility quicker during the season than others. Knowing your league rules goes a long way to building a championship roster.
DRAFTING MULTIPLE-CATEGORY PLAYERS
In order to build a strong, well-rounded team, we need to target players who will help in every category.
A player like Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson doesn’t get drafted in the first couple of rounds because he does not lead the league in any category. However, he posts solid stats across the board, which makes him extremely valuable. ESPN Player Rater ranked Swanson as the No. 11 fantasy player in 2022, yet he did not finish in the top 10 in the major leagues in any of the key offensive categories.
Mariners third baseman Eugenio Suárez ranked in the top 20 in home runs and finished in the top 30 in RBIs. However, due to a low batting average and an inability to steal bases, he was the 75th-best fantasy hitter.
The perfect strategy is to draft the elite hitters in the early rounds who will finish in the top 10 in many offensive categories. Then, in the middle rounds, attack hitters who will help each category, even if they don’t perform in the upper echelon of those categories. A balanced roster allows fantasy managers to compete throughout the long season and helps minimize the possibility of making mistakes on the waiver wire or in trades.
A player who can be taken after Round 7 and fits this profile is White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson. The 29-year-old had a down season in 2022, so he currently has an average draft position of 97. However, he is a player who will hit near .300, mash 15 home runs, steal close to 20 bases, score more than 80 runs and drive in around 60 runs. Those are all solid numbers for a player who can be taken later in drafts.
POSITIONAL TIERS
In case you aren’t familiar with positional tiers, it simply means ranking players by position who you think will put up similar value. It helps you avoid drafting players based on their overall rankings. The elite players at their position go in the first tier, the next level in the second tier and so on.
Some positions may have five elite guys in the first tier, and others may have two. Some positions may have a strong second tier, while others are deep and have three tiers of players who make sense to draft. Instead of targeting a certain player, target a certain tier.
Fantasy owners get so caught up in drafting a player based on their average draft position, they lose sight that they could fill that position later with another player who could provide similar value.
If you are drafting solely on player rankings and not positional rankings, it’s more likely than not that you’re going to reach on a position that you probably could have drafted later and gotten similar value to a player you drafted a couple of rounds earlier.
Photo Credit: Colin Murphy/PressBox
Issue 279: February/March 2023
Originally published Feb. 15, 2023