This week is the most exciting time of the year for me because it’s draft week. After spending three months preparing I’m ready to get this show on the road. Last night I had my 16-team ESPN Up & In draft and I totally crushed it. After four or five rounds people were complaining about how its brutal playing with this many owners and that draft pool was thinning out. Like last year I bet most of the owners (including myself this year) will stop making daily moves after about six weeks. I’m participating in four NFBC Leagues, one 15-team and three 12-team; one of the 12-team leagues is for the $50K grand prize. I added the $50K grand prize a couple of days ago. Having three leagues already on my plate I was hesitant because I thought I wouldn’t have the time to be successful, but then I realized this may be the only time in my life where I’ll have the most time to devote to fantasy baseball so I said “Screw it. I spent a lot of time preparing and it’s time to see how well I can do.”

If you never heard of NFBC, you should give them a look if you’re looking to play for money with a larger payout. I never played in NFBC before but after doing a little research I realized I should’ve started a long time ago. Anyway, enough of my self-indulgence; let’s talk about my approach to my drafts.

Categorical Thresholds
The first thing I wanted to tackle during my draft prep was the category thresholds I would need to get to in order to win each league. I believe in order to win I will need to finish in the top 75% of every category (i.e. 3^rd and 4^th). The thresholds were based on data from my previous leagues and other sources such as here and here. Since this is my first year in NFBC I put a more weight on the external sources. The table below provides my categorical/statistical thresholds necessary to win a 15-team and 12-team mixed league.

My Draft Approach
NFBC allows owners to provide a weighting preference to each draft position through a system called Kentucky Derby System Preferences (KDS). Suppose an owner doesn’t want the first overall pick, he can give that pick the lowest weight. In my 12-team leagues I targeted the 8^th and 9^th pick because they provided the most consistent value with the first four rounds. After Ryan Braun and Miguel Cabrera every hitter is surrounded by question marks; now, Braun has off the field question marks and could be subject to a 50-game suspension, but the chances of that happening are less than 5%. The reason why I choose the 8^th or 9^th picks was I want to try to get either Joey Votto or Prince Fielder with my first pick and a fantasy ace in the second round; preferably Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw. With so much uncertainty for hitters in the first two rounds, starting pitchers are safer bets to sustain their draft day value. If one of those two pitchers does not fall to me, I’ll probably punt pitching with my first four picks.

For my 15-team league I wanted either the 14^th or 15^th pick; I got the 14^th pick. I want Bryce Harper and Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw in the second round. If you’ve read my blog you would have seen me utter the phrase “you can’t win your league in the first, but you can lose it” on multiple occasions. Targeting Harper goes against that adage because he has a lot statistical outcomes when it comes to 2013; he could be a monster and hit 30 home runs with 20 stolen bases or he could repeat his 2012 season. I agree drafting Harper goes against what I’ve preached, but in order to win I’m going to need players who outperform their draft day values and Harper is one of the players I feel has the greatest likelihood of achieving that.

My goal is try to get 100 home runs and stolen bases along with two pitchers with my first six draft picks in my 12-team leagues. In the 15-team league, I’m targeting 80 home runs and stolen bases with the first six picks along with two pitchers. If I can hit those thresholds I’ll be extremely happy and I’ll like my chances of winning. After the first six picks I’m going to go with value based drafting (VBD) and try to get players who can outperform their draft day value. With seven bench spots I want six of them to be devoted to pitching so I can stream them every week.

There were few strategies I considered. Waiting on pitching was a strategy I originally considered, but after more thought it’s imperative to draft a fantasy ace in order to create a competitive advantage. An ace is defined as a pitcher in my first tier of starting pitchers in my fantasy guide. There are two reasons why I want an ace. First, pitching is the deepest position and therefore everyone is going to have great pitching. Therefore, having an ace will allow a greater opportunity to win more categories. Second, as I mentioned before, aces are just as safe as hitters this year this year.

The next logical transition would be to draft two aces, but after I ran all the simulations I saw my hitting would be too low to offset the gains I had in pitching. Also, there’s more variability in wins and saves, making them less reliable. The only way this strategy could work is if I filled all the hitter positions before drafting another pitcher. Under that scenario I would have to stream pitchers the entire year, which carries a lot of high risk because pitchers are free agents for a reason; because they’re not good and therefore are subjectable to blow up starts (starts where they give up 5+ earned runs).

Closers
In my 15-team league I’m going to draft two closers and two high end relievers, preferably their “backups.” I’m going to wait until about 16^th closers are off the board before grabbing the two closers with back to back picks. In the 12-team league I want at least two closers, preferably three, with two-three relievers. Again, I’ll probably wait until the 18^th closer goes off the board before I try grab my closers.

Well, there you have it…my draft strategy. If you have any questions feel free to hit me up on Twitter @MattCommins.