Tiers of a Crown

[Arlo]

The latest installment of Point of View features something a bit different: our very first guest article! Fantasy veteran Greg Sanders shares his draft strategies with us, showing how the use of tiers in evaluating talent at each position can make draft day decisions clearer and form the foundation of a solid roster.

As always, we welcome your thoughts on this article. With so many unique draft strategies, there are bound to be lots of opinions on this one...

[Knotfaust]

Excellent! (Thanks....

[gogiants]

Nice article
I like the system

[B.O.S. Owner]

I really enjoyed this article. I am a second year owner headed towards my first live draft. I think that the tiered system will certainly get a player off to a decent start with a balanced roster. I have already did a pre-spring training ranking using the system and will monitor players during early spring to make any necessary adjustments.I look forward to future articles!

[PennStater98r]

I see some really good logic to this, but I found one flaw. Every year, there are 'ready-to-break-through' players... Like Santana last year. Those of us who paid attention to what he did in 2002 knew he was pretty special; however, he did not make any short list of pitchers to take on draft day. How do you account for those 'nearly-sure-things' that just has not made the list this year. One example might be Rafel Soriano. I highly doubt he'll make many top 100 pitcher lists, but he's definitely worth looking at and maybe even going down and getting...

Thoughts?

[AcidRock23]

This is a very good article. I really based most of my reasearch on this, breaking each position into A/B/C/D categories, based on where various fault lines appeared. I didn't refer to my 'chart' that much while actually drafting but knew pretty quickly which guy was 'higher' at two positions.

I also counted how many people at each position were in each category so I 'knew' that, based on last year's numbers, there were 4 'a' second basemen (w/ two 'superstars', or A+ guys) and 6 'a' shortstops and then 15 'a' outfielders. That's kind of how I got onto the idea to wait and get Berroa later than worrying about Nomar or Tejada. Similarly, I had 4 'A' 2B and 6 'B' so I felt I could've waited for a 'B' and been 'ok' had I not been able to snag Soriano, a potential A+ 2B (b/c Arod and Nomar were gone already...).

As far as draft tactics go, I was able to get this all into a 7 point spreadsheet that was pretty hard for the guys sitting by me to 'poach' which included each position, where the 'fault lines' between 'ABCD' players were, how many were at each position AND what an the bottom limit of an'A' shortstop was as far as numbers (0.328, 13, 100, 34) vs., for example, an 'A' starter (17-8, 2.34,0.95, 208) or an 'A' catcher (0.281,30, 101, 2).

Here's what I ended up with though...

Ramirez, Soriano, Sheffield, Sexson, Vazquez, Foulke, G. Anderson, C. Lee, Berroa, Zambrano, Livan Hernandez, D. Young, Santana, J. Estrada (cue 'Ponch' jokes...), Contreras, Donnelly, Ensberg, R. Hernandez, Worrell, A. Benitez, A. Rhodes, S. Burroughs, Lugo

[AcidRock23]

PS, I have a spreadsheet if anyone would like one...just stick a post here and I'll try to figure out how to PM you or whatever...tomarrow, crashing out for now.

[mport1]

I'd like a spreadsheet if you have one.