1st year keeper league draft strategy

[Knighthammer]

Have only played FB for 2 years. Saturday I have my 1st draft for a new keeper league. Is drafting strategy different than redraft leagues? Do you go for young studs early or do you still follow the Arod, Pujols, Vlad type strategy?

[Mugrila]

overall, i would say there is not a huge difference. firstly, you're still trying to win this year, if you always play for the future then you'll never win. however, in a keeper draft guys like randy johnson do lose value. however, he can also be a great pick if you get him later than normal as he should still put up good numbers this season. this is how i view drafting a keeper league, play it like a yearly league but just keep the future in mind. and good luck

[Matthias]

well, it depends quite a bit on the actual setup of the league. do you keep everyone? do you keep a few people? do you have to give up anything for keeping someone?

in a league where you keep 10-15 guys it may effect your drafting strategy by up to 2-3 rounds. but if you're keeping only a few guys then you have to realize that most of your team is NOT keepers and so you draft normally, moving a few, promising guys up by a round maybe and young studs up about half a round over older studs (for example, if you had harden and rj projected equally, you would move harden up half a round due to his age).

also, some leagues you forfeit your draft pick the next year in the round that you drafted your keeper the year before. then the premium would be the diamonds in the rough that you find late rather than scooping up young guys early.

so... it kind of depends. but one thing that probably is universal is that people overvalue the idea of a keeper and undervalue the year that they're playing. quite frankly, lots of things happen over time. who knows if you'll still want to do this 2 years from now, much less in this league. so don't go crazy picking, "huge upside" guys and leaving the j.d. drew's of the world on the rubbish heap.

[The Loveable Losers]

Also how many players do you keep? That will have a big effect on drafting strategy. Namely that you might reach a bit for a young stud early but once you have your keepers it goes COMPLETELY back to standard redraft tactics. So if you keep 6 for example only the first 6 rounds would have any difference at all. Mugrila is right too...you still want to play for this year unless you're taking over a weak team and rebuilding. Since you're drafting from scratch you definitely want to play for now.

It's only when players are close that age should be an issue. For example, right at the top of the draft I would DEFINITELY go Pujols over ARod. Pujols is 26...ARod is 30. They're so close together that you have to go with the younger of the two. Also, depending on the format of the league I would give some SERIOUS thought to moving Crawford up a bit in the draft.

Honestly I'm a bit of a Crawford fanatic so you'll have to take this with a grain of salt but in a format like the keeper I'm in - 14 5x5 h2h league keep 6 - or ESPECIALLY in a 5x5 roto with a mid number of keepers like 6 - I would consider Crawford at #3. He's very young so barring injury he'll still be running for several years. He'll also develop more power over the next 6 years if he's like most players which puts his ceiling for HR's in the 20's. TB's offense is young and is going to keep getting better which bodes VERY well for his r/rbi #'s. As he adds power and gets better over the next 3-4 years he's likely to raise his average every year.

I'd say his ceiling could be in the .320/23/100/100/50 range. That's a SPECIAL player from a fantasy perspective. TONS of ab's to let that average help your team. Decent power. Very good run/rbi production. And all of that from a guy that puts up top shelf sb numbers. I mean, those numbers are better than or equal to Matsui if you take the sb's away. Matsui is a keeper in my 6 keeper league. On the other hand a scrub like Podsednik that ONLY puts up the SB's is also a keeper a lot of the time. When you combine the two...that's just huge. He's a case where I might make a slight exception to the 'win this year' mantra just because he WILL help you win this year if you reach for him but he's going to only get better and he gives you stolen bases which are VERY valuable in most formats while giving you solid mid-tier OF'er hr/r/rbi's along with a very good average.