Draft Preparation Research - combine your knowledge with the on-line experts to mold your Draft Day strategy. Gather all your accumulated research data and post it to a cheat sheet. You can use the following resources to gather important research information.
- News: Each owner will want to read up on all of the news before every draft. Check out the player news at RotoAmerica.com daily to see if there are any injuries or changes to any team's roster or depth chart that would affect your draft.
- Predictions: Also read up on who some of the writers are predicting will have big seasons -- even if you don't agree with them, it's good to know what some others are thinking. You can use that to your advantage during the draft. Also, which players are considered possible busts for the upcoming year?
- Expert Mock Draft Picks: Each preseason, the writers at RotoAmerica gather to create a Mock Draft. The experts make recommendations based on their in-depth experience and knowledge of the game. Before your draft, print these expert opinions to give you a better gauge as to where a player will likely be selected.
- Average Draft Position: Another great tool to use is RotoAmerica’s Average Draft Position (ADP) rankings. This tool will reveal the average position where a player was taken in the draft. This is valuable information to approximate when and who to select while optimizing your draft opportunities.
Ranking Players – All Fantasy Baseball host sites (i.e. ESPN, CBS, and Sporting News, etc.) have created default rankings for every draft pick. You can certainly use these for a successful draft, but it would be a smarter idea for you to re-rank them according to your preferences using the following suggestions-
Consider Fan Base: Consider the character of your opponents (Team Owners) within your league. Who are they rooting for? What professional baseball team is your opponent most familiar? Are your opponents blinded by their own excitement/passion about their home team? Example: If all Team Owners participating in your draft live in Southern California, then the Angels players might be selected a little earlier than another team's player. You can use this bias to your advantage when a player from another team is overlooked.
Prioritize the Value you place on Performance and Position: Most leagues value skill and positions/categories differently: Some leagues preferences lean toward certain player positions or performance categories. In some cases, you'll see speedsters taken a number of rounds earlier than some sluggers, but in other leagues it could be the opposite. Or starting pitching goes early and relievers late. Either way, you know best which categories or positions your league leans toward, so rank your players accordingly. If you should need any help evaluating your league and its priorities shoot us an email at RotoAmerica.com-we will be glad to help.
Use your Cheat Sheets – RotoAmerica provides you with updated rankings on every position in baseball. Use these as a guideline for a successful draft. Remember that the depth of your league goes a long way in determining where value resides on your cheat sheets. If you are in a 12-team league, the depth is much weaker than if you were picking players in an 8- or 10-team league. For the most part, catchers, closers and middle infielders are usually the thinnest positions no matter which type of system you choose.
Free Agents - Any player that went un-drafted is considered a free agent, which basically means that any owner can sign him to their roster.
On-Waivers – Is an accumulation of all remaining Free Agents available after the initial draft process that become available on the waiver wire. Any player that is cut from a team or is newly added to the player pool, like a minor leaguer or a player traded over from a different league is considered on waivers. In order to provide an equal opportunity for all owners to add players to their roster that are recently cut or new to the free agent pool, a waivers process is used. The time allowed for a Team Owners' requests to add players on waivers to their roster vary per League Commissioner. Typically, the request is placed in pending status for at least 24 hours. This allows multiple teams to request the same players. When a team makes a successful waiver claim during the waiver process, the team's rank is set to last and everyone else's rank moves up one. The initial waiver rank order is the reverse order of your league's draft. Once a player clears waivers, they become a free agent and can be picked up on a first come, first served basis.
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