How to draft Pujols

Since Pujols seems to be the big prize in American League drafts it seems apropos to offer a quick guide on how to draft him. The strategies that follow are made within the Baseball Manager game, affectionately known as BBM. These strategies are not the only way to get him but they work. I drafted him this year in one of my keeper leagues and am in position to get him in a non-keeper league.

The first step is to set the SP and OF caps to the bare minimum (3,500 at SP and 3,000 for the outfield.) This assures you of not spending more than that. However that is not enough. You have to actually spend less than that in order to position yourself first for the 1^st base draft. How can that be done? Read on.

If the league is a Keeper league you want to keep 5 cheap SP and 5 cheap OF. By cheap I mean the 100-200 type players. These don’t necessarily have to be dogs. You won’t have much of a team if you have no pitching and a worthless outfield to go along with Pujols. The good news is that in a keeper league there are usually several players worth keeping who don’t cost much. Look at this list of names – Viciedo, De Aza, Boujos, Reimold, Crisp, Gardner, Dirks, Cain, Boesch and Austin Jackson. These are some of the outfielders in my keeper leagues with salaries of 100-200k. A manager can put together a pretty promising outfield with that kind of talent. Keep 5 of those and you’ll get a 100k player with your 6^th pick. Do this for both the starting pitching draft and the outfield draft and you’ll have the #1 selection for 1^st base (assuming that no one else is using the same strategy).

A note: You may be able to reduce that keeper number to 4 players at those two positions and thereby keep two other promising cheap players on your roster, but the risk is that you might draft someone with a higher salary with the 5^th pick. The safer play is to keep 5 at each position.

For non-keeper leagues, the strategy is more difficult and less “guaranteed”. Once again, set the salary caps to the minimum. The challenge now is to draft cheap quality. Duh. Everybody wants that. The trick is to figure out how to do it. The Verlanders and Weavers will cost more than 3,500 so players of those type of players are out of the question. You can, however, draft some quality players by zeroing in on the 3^rd tier players. These are guys who will cost around 400-800. Guys such as Floyd, Peavy, Mendoza of KC, and even Freddy Garcia will likely have salaries under 800. And there are plenty more. Drafting 3 or 4 of those types coupled with the 100k players at #5 and #6 and you come in under the salary cap AND you have a squad you can work with.

Once you determine a dozen or so players to target, do you rank them at the top of your draft list? No. A player you rank #1 will add 500 to his salary. Even if everyone else had him ranked 20^th he would still cost 1,400. The strategy is to rank this group just below the high-priced players. An even better strategy is to rank one or two just below the top group of players, then rank the others just below a second tier of quality players. Yeah right…grin…therein lies the rub. How do you know where that magic cutoff position is located? The answer is you don’t.

This is why non-keeper leagues are more difficult to maneuver into that numero uno position. But cheer up…you can still make some reasonably good guesses about who is going to cost the most. Put the Verlanders and Weavers at the top. Just below them add the next most obvious group of stars. Then, somewhere around number 10-15 you put in a couple of your targeted 3^rd tier players. Move down the list a little and add the rest of the target group. The better you are at this the better your chances of getting the prize. And if you aren’t number one after the SP draft you still have the OF draft to squeeze past that team ahead of you.

It’s fun to go after Pujols. The downside, however, is bypassing all the talent to get the cheaper players. That really shows up in the keeper leagues. It’s tough not to keep the stars but they usually cost the most. There’s no way you’re going to be able to keep those high priced players and still get Pujols.

With all the leagues in Baseball Manager there must be some other strategies that work. Let’s face it, someone in every league will get the 1^st pick and not all leagues are going to have managers who think like me. It would be very interesting to hear how your league worked or how you nabbed the big guy. Leave a comment. Let’s see how you did it.

Draft Mistake #1

Waffling. The Urban dictionary defines it as “unable to make up one’s mind…” Man, oh, man does that strike a chord. Let me tell you about what just happened in one of my drafts. Hopefully you can learn from my mistake.

I play in several leagues. Most of them are keeper leagues that force you to make decisions before the draft. You select 7-10 players you want to keep. You enter the draft with a keen sense of your strengths and weaknesses and target the needs. Great fun. I love the keeper concept as it seems a little closer to real life managing, and even more like general managing.

Anyway, keeping all my teams straight is sometimes a challenge, especially during this busy drafting stage. After spending weeks studying which players to keep, decisions are made. You hit upon a strategy. You sleep on it. Heck, you end up sleeping on it for weeks and months. You’ve had all winter to mull things over. The decisions have grown on you as you considered how things will play out. And finally you become…comfortable with your decisions. You’re at peace. You have a strategy.

Then one morning you get an email. “Let’s trade.” Oh boy. Here it goes. All of a sudden you see new possibilities and before you know it the “grass is always greener” game gets played. Each new trade offer opens new fresh ways of looking at things and for some reason new seems better. Pretty soon your team is a shadow of what it was. The team you thought about all winter is no more. Planning is out the window.

Then suddenly part way through your draft it hits you – the dreaded waffles. “What the heck have I done? I’m no better off than I was. In fact, things are worse. Why didn’t I stick with my original plan? Why didn’t I think things through? I shouldn’t have made that trade. I should have spent more time thinking about the trades rather than just accepting them.” Can you spell waffle?

It’s a killer. It spoils the fun of the draft when you constantly second guess yourself. And it’s a horrible way to start the season. You looked forward to something for so long and now you’re disappointed. It’s a shame to let indecision cloud every move. Don’t do it. Don’t succumb to playing the “what-if” game. Either your off-season strategy was sound or it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, then fine. Go ahead and make trades. But if you had a good team and your plan was sound, stick with it.

It’s one thing to draft someone not as good as you had hoped. It’s quite another to draft that guy and blame the last minute trade you made. Those things gnaw at you and ruin your fun. My advice is develop a strategy based on what you have to work with. Just about any strategy can work. You can keep expensive guys, cheap guys, load up on one or two positions or spread the keepers all around the field…it doesn’t matter. Each strategy can produce a strong team. Trade only when the new piece fits seamlessly into your plan. Don’t throw everything away just because of that new shiny trade offer.

Waffles are meant to be enjoyed smothered with lots of syrup. Why else are those holes there? Don’t let this fun time of the season and all your hard work get shot full of holes because you aren’t satisfied with your decisions. You made a plan, now follow it through.

Here that, Owl? Yes. I need to look past the mistakes and enjoy the rest of the draft.

General Manager

This time of year we naturally focus on the draft. Who do we think is going to have a good year, how do I rank my players, how much am I willing to pay for this guy…those are the kind of questions every good fantasy baseball player asks this time of year.

We must do this because a good draft is the foundation of a good season. Managers who don’t work diligently now in ranking players will end up with mediocre teams from which they may never recover. So, we read everything we can, watch TV reports, find out who is injured and set up our spreadsheets to make draft day a little easier.

One bit of advice…the best team in April and May isn’t nearly as important as having the best team in August and September. It is a mistake too many of us make. We think we are set after the draft. The season starts off, we do well, and we sit back contentedly knowing that our pre-season efforts have paid off. That just won’t work. Unfortunately players get injured, traded to the other league, and don’t perform as expected. If we spend all our money in the draft and have little left over for claiming free agents we are in trouble.

Baseball Manager is one of the fantasy games where money management is as important as identifying key player personnel. It is a fantasy game where one’s general manager skills are tested. You must reserve a good chunk of cash for post-draft free agent claims, and those claims will continue throughout the season…especially in August and September. Teams that sit pat are doomed.

This should come as welcome news to those of us knew at the game or are unsure of our drafting skills. Don’t fret too much if you don’t get who you wanted. Teams that constantly morph into different teams with new lineups, new pitching rotations, and new rosters throughout the year are the ones that will be sitting pretty when it’s all over.  Yes, a good draft is important. It’s a good start, but only a start. What happens after the draft is just as, if not more, critical to a successful campaign.

Spring Training

How much emphasis do you put on player performances during spring training? At the start of spring training I tell myself to ignore the results…ignore the guys hitting home runs all over the place, ignore the pitchers throwing shutouts for their two innings work, ignore the….you get it. Then every year I peek at the data, just a little, and then the closer to opening day I look a little harder and see if I can discern who is ripe for a great year and who has isn’t. Good grief, is that dumb or what?

Why bring this up? Because this is the time of year when we start craving data, is why. We’ve been starved for player input all winter. Finally, the Rotoworlds of the Internet are filling our heads with daily reports of who’s knocking the stuffing out of the ball and who is throwing lights out. This is what we’ve been waiting for. We are finally getting our fix. “He hit two home runs today, that guy had three doubles, so and so is now batting .450, poor Joe is now 0-8 so you better give up on him, and old Bob gave up five runs today so he’s toast.”

Darn it. None of this matters. It’s practice. The fences in some of these stadiums are a notch above little league. The ball carries in Arizona like it’s been shot out of a cannon. And half these performances are against guys who aren’t anywhere near the quality they’ll face during the season. We have to temper all of these results with some common sense.

Yet we look. And we move players around on our lists in part based on what we read and see happening in these spring training games. Inevitably what happens around May is that the “real” player shows up and performs the way he usually performs. And then we kick ourselves because the guys we moved up are doing bad and the guys we moved down are doing well. Grrr….

Stick to the plan. Base your rankings on proven yearly data especially for veterans. The longer they’ve been a veteran the more unlikely it is that spring training matters to them. They are just getting in shape. We would spend our time wiser if we studied previous years’ performances rather than reading that the Tigers hit 9 home runs today.

“Gee, I wonder if I can still make a trade for Ryan Raburn?”

Baseball’s New Playoffs

1968. The last year of baseball without “playoffs”. All we had back then was the winner of the American League regular season versus the winner of the National League regular season. The two best teams pitted against each other. Period.

That marked the start of the end of an era. One year later Curt Flood refused a trade that started the movement toward free agency. Baseball changed after 1968.

Now we have three divisions and 4 playoff teams. Soon we’ll have a 5^th playoff team (maybe this year). Good for baseball? Let’s take a look at it. The immediate pros of more teams in post-season is more fans get to root longer for their teams and get to prolong the hope of taking home the big prize – World Series champs. So that’s a good thing. Another good thing is being able to watch an additional post-season game with everything riding on the outcome. The new playoff system pits the two wild-card teams against each other in a best of ONE “series”. The winner moves on to play the best team in the league. The loser of this one game goes home.

That aspect is another reason to like the system. The team with the best regular season record plays the Wild-card winner. Logically that should be a good incentive to have the best record – you get to play “a lesser” team in the first round of the playoffs rather than another division winner. This also makes it a little harder for the non-division winners to move through the playoff system.

This one Wild-card game will be watched by a lot of people. Games with that kind of meaning (winner takes all) are always interesting and fun to watch. Everything’s riding on this one game. And that leads to the fourth and dare I say most important reason? Money. An extra game like this means more money for the interested parties.

All good right? Well, here’s what I don’t like. You play 162 games. You’ve done well. You make the post-season. If you are one of the division winners you play in the Division Series (a best of 5 affair). The Wild-card teams play a best of 1 affair. Yuck. I’m sorry but you have a weak argument if you are going to convince me that the better team moves on after a 1 game playoff. It’s hard enough to convince me that the better team moves on after a best of 5.

That’s what I don’t like about these things. In baseball more than any other sport a single game can be skewed so out of whack compared to the way it normally plays. One stud pitcher does not a team make.

I want the better team to win. The better team should be the one that moves forward. If you’re going to have a playoff system instead of the best versus the best (which I know we’ll never have again) then let’s at least give the contenders a fighting chance! Letting them duke it out for one game doesn’t do that.

The underdog winning makes for a nice movie or TV show, but the team that played better for the whole season is the better team – not the one who happens to have the one best pitcher or the one who gets lucky or the one who wins because of a stupid fluke. Those are all things that can happen in one game. And that’s why we don’t settle the World Series in one game. The long haul winner deserves the title…not the one-hit-wonder.

A one-game decision? Yes, I’ll watch it. But don’t tell me the better team moved on.

Pre-Season Trading

One of the enjoyable features of playing in a Keeper league in fantasy baseball is what happens in the off-season. If you happen to play in a league that only uses one of the two leagues (American or National) you have the scenario of new players being available during the draft due to trades and free agent pickups in the real major leagues. That sets up a very interesting dynamic for keeper managers. Do they try to draft one of these new players or not?

In the BaseballManager game you have a set payroll that must be managed so you cannot keep all your expensive star players and still expect to draft one of the new players to the league. And this year the American League has some hefty new stars with Pujols and Fielder leading the pack. I’ve already seen some trades in my keeper leagues that demonstrate managers jockeying for position to be able to draft one of those two superstars.

We have to keep at least 7 players from the previous year so they will automatically cut into the payroll. By keeping the least expensive players you’ll have the best chance of drafting first when the third round of the draft comes along (which is the 1^st base draft). Decisions need to be made whether to simply keep the seven players with the lowest payroll or try to keep good players even though their salaries are a little higher. What some of the managers are doing is trading away very good expensive players for pretty good inexpensive players. They will then be able to keep 7 moderately good players and still have a shot at getting Pujols.

Good strategy for both trading teams. The one gets the lower payroll and the other gets the better player. This makes for some very fun times especially for guys who’ve been sitting around without baseball for months and are eager to do something…anything…to get back playing the game. It is one of the main reasons I joined a keeper league several years back. I love the ability to manage year-round. It also means more strategy in the draft as you analyze each position relative to what you already have. Should you keep the 2^nd baseman you have or try and get a better one? The risk is that if you don’t keep what you have you could end up with worse. Ah, great fun. If you’ve not tried it I heartily suggest it.

Weighty Issues

I read Rotoworld.com every day. It’s a great site (and it’s free). You get lots of nice tidbits of information on player injuries, guys being sent to the minors, trades, etc. For us older fantasy players this kind of website is light years beyond what we used to do. Remember Baseball Weekly? I don’t even know if they still publish that but it was the source for all that player information. We’ve sure come a long way.

So what’s so weighty about that? Nothing. It’s just that I have to say something I’ve seen in their pre-season assessment of players and it’s rather amusing. Have you noticed how they keep mentioning that so and so has put on 20 pounds and he looks so much better? And then you read down the list of player info and you’ll find another one saying just the opposite – so and so has lost 20 pounds and is rearing to go. That just makes me smile. Yeah, okay, maybe one guy was fat and another skinny but I get the feeling that they are just looking for something to write.

I’ve been trying to lose weight lately so I’m probably more sensitive when I read something about weight. 31 pounds so far, thank you very much. Too much sitting in front of the computer screen playing fantasy games put me way out of shape. So, it’s nice to start looking and feeling more like I should.

Anyway,  I’m not going to change my assessment of a player’s worth based on whether he’s been on a diet this winter or has been drinking power shakes. Historical stats are still the best estimate of how a player is going to perform this year. Too often I’ve been sucked into some of these online assessments only to be bitterly disappointed. Sites like this love to tout rookies. Good grief, how much hype did we hear about B.J. Upton? Jeepers, he was supposed to be the next superstar in ALL categories. So, when he finally became available in the free agent pool we were tripping over each other to land the bid. And of course, he could be had for a song last year and I assume this year too.

Yep, I still read Rotoworld each day and usually several times a day. But with age I’m learning to take their assessments with a grain of salt. Now I mostly use it for player moves and who just got injured. But as far as predictions…I’m the biggest loser if I put too much stock in what they say.

Valentine’s Day

Sweetheart’s Day, right? Bah humbug. Somehow the older we get the less enthused we are with these dates. About the only thing sweet for me this time round is knowing that just around the corner is the opening of another year of Baseball Manager. Ha.

And that is nice.  If you’ve never played this game you too are in for a treat. For years I’ve played and it’s yet to get old. Unlike some of the beauties of my youth this game has aged well (sorry ladies). In fact, the game has actually improved. It seems to get a face lift each year and unlike some of those Hollywood stars that cause you to cringe when you see a picture of them too soon after surgery, these improvements look good.

Take this year’s treats. We draft two catchers instead of three, six relievers instead of five and the salary structure for determining those dime a dozen relievers changed so that we’ll have more money to spend elsewhere. What’s not to love?

This sounds like an advertisement and I don’t mean it to come out that way. But when you talk about something you love, that sometimes happens. So even though this is just a baseball game, it’s something I am really passionate about.

First thing every morning I check my scores. Baseball Manager plays a game each night using that day’s real statistics. How your players and your opponent’s players did that day is what you get in your game that night. How cool is that? No goofy points in this game. It’s all about hits, and walks, and errors, and pitching performances – a real box score from a “real” game. Totally sweet.

And let me tell you something about seeing those results each morning. For a while (I’m a little embarrassed to say it)…but for a while I either feel good or grumpy. I know…it sounds stupid. How can a silly little game make a grown man feel good (or a loss make him feel down)? I don’t know but it does. I’m going to call it the competitive nature but I love to win….and hate to lose. And so I try hard to see good things each morning. And no other fantasy game I know allows you to really have a lot of impact on that. There are so many things you can control – the draft, the lineup, rotation, which players are active and which are on the bench, free agent claims, trades…you even on a batting lineup versus the throwing hand of your opposing pitcher!

I’m telling you, you gotta try this game. Click here and check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

1st Base

Are you as stoked for this year’s 1^st base draft in the American League as I am? Wow, is this going to be good. It’s like you can’t go wrong.  New players, proven stars, and a promising rookie or two…this draft has it all.

First, there are two HUGE additions to the American League. Need I say more than simply mentioning their names – Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder. I mean what more do you want? Rank them #1 and #2 and move on. The prospect of being able to have either of those guys on your team is exciting. And if you miss out on one you’d just as soon have the other anyway. And these two guys come on the heels of two other studs that came over in 2010 and 2011 –  Mark Teixeira and Adrian Gonzalez. Jeepers, now we have four that could be ranked in any order.

And what about Detroit’s other stud – Miguel Cabrera? You know he’s still going to play some 1^st base even if the majority of his time is spent at 3^rd and DH. He has to be in your top group simply because Fielder will be hitting next to him in the order.

And let’s not forget Paul Konerko, Justin Morneau, and last year’s Kansas City rookie – Eric Hosmer. Konerko’s old and Morneau may still be hurt but good grief…that makes eight sure things. Heck, you could pretty much rank anybody we’ve mentioned so far anyway you wanted and not make a mistake.

Are we finished? Nope. Let’s add a rookie to the mix. Russ Canzler from Tampa Bay hit .314 last year at Durham with a .930 OPS. He may only DH which moves him down on my list, but he could also end up playing some 3^rd base and the outfield which bumps him back up. I love that kind of flexibility on my fantasy roster.

Had it not been for Pujols we’d also be salivating over LA’s duo of Kendrys Morales and Mark Trumbo. One of those guys probably gets moved to DH and who knows about the other.

One bit of caution is what to do about Justin Morneau. Are his past concussion problems over? That’s a tough call and makes him a bit of a gamble…plus that new stadium in Minnesota just isn’t as hitter friendly as the old one. Hard to believe, but Morneau may not even crack my top eight list.

Almost lost in this land of stardom is Billy Butler from Kansas City and Justin Smoak of Seattle. Butler is expected to DH but you know he is really only an injury (or trade) away from claiming a 1^st base starting gig all to himself. Mr. Smoak is a tougher call. I can’t see ranking him higher than 9^th but I won’t be sad if he ends up on my team.

Yes, this is going to be one fun position come draft day. We’re all going to have bragging rights.

Martin Luther King Jr.

There was a time when black men were not allowed in major league baseball. Shameful. I am glad that when I started following baseball in the 1960’s that was not the case. My Detroit Tiger heroes back then were Al Kaline and Willie Horton. What a one-two punch. Those guys had it all and when they came to bat you knew magic could happen. Games turned on their at-bats (and Al’s arm). I happened to grow up in an all-white city so naturally my friends were all white; but we could care less the skin color of our Tigers. We rooted just as strongly for Willie, Gates Brown, and Earl Wilson as we did for Al, Norm Cash and Bill Freehan. And that’s the way it should be.

Back then I listened to almost every game on the radio. My mother and my grandfather grew up with the Tigers and I followed suit. The radio was my comfort as I listened to the easy tones of broadcasters George Kell and Ernie Harwell. What a pair. BTW, the now legendary Ernie Harwell played 2^nd fiddle back then to Mr. Kell. He only announced the middle innings of the game as George was the main play-by-play man.

Listening to a game is different than watching it. For one, unless you know a player you don’t know his skin color. It’s irrelevant. What matters is how well the guy plays. What a shame that so many people have spent so much time disliking someone because of the color of their skin. Just saying it sounds ludicrous.

Anyway, my point is that radio had an equalizing effect. A name had the winning hit. A name had a pinch hit home run. A name regularly pinch hit even though he was a pitcher. Yes, I knew that Willie, Gates and Earl were black but over the air everybody was the same. I like that.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Among his many quotes is this, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Maybe it’s a stretch to apply that to what I’m talking about here but you get the point.