Fantasy Baseball Cafe Forums

by **silk** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:47 pm

This is my first year to use the Fantistics software. What are some of your draft strategies? Do you draft the best player available, or do you draft top 10 depending on need. What kind of success rates have you had with your various strategies?

by **Bloody Sox** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:59 pm

If you do a search in this forum on "draft strategy" or "draft strategies" and tell it to display by "Topics" not "Posts" you'll find a slew of threads covering tons of draft strategy related issues.

Most would say to go by best player available, but there are many other schools of thought out there.

Here's a thread that contains some of my draft considerations:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=317771

by **Ender** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:02 pm

Their VAM ratings seem to create some really odd draft choices so not sure I'm going to really use them at all during my drafts.

by **RugbyD** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:17 pm

I haven't seen the softtware you speak of, but I would generally be very hesitant to rely exclusively any software for baseball drafts (snake, I assume) b/c of the high degree of art involved. I have my own system that breaks things down to a very detailed, logical, quantitative level, but even still there is rarely an easy or clear choice presented after the first few rounds b/c so much of the draft is reacting on the fly to the actions of others and accounting for many different positions. Software is better suited to football drafting where positional profiles and scoring variables are so limited and uniform in nature. The art in football drafting is mostly limited to having the right projections while baseball is more about skillfully filling out your roster and knowing when to pounce on value.

by **Ender** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:41 pm

The system attends to create new values depending on short term and long term positional scarcity. The idea is fine but I don't know if I like the methodology they use because it creates some weird values. you can either sort by VAM which has the positional scarcity or just by total value (and you can enter your own projections). It is certainly a nice draft tool since it lets you see how you compare to all other teams during the draft in every stat etc based on your own projections.

Broncmet724 · by **Broncmet724** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:59 pm

I used Fantistics a few years ago, and while a nice program, to me they undervalued pitching to the extreme

by **Ender** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:34 pm

Well you can reset the values on every stat so if pitching is undervalued you can just adjust it. Personally I adjusted ERA and W's down because they were set too high, but I think taking pitching early is a losing strategy in an 'expert' league.

by **BigMak** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:46 pm

I used their software for the first time last season and finished first in a highly competitive private money league. When it was my pick, I would look at the top few players they have remaining and make my selection based on that. So I used a combination of their software and my own judgement. Make sure to read the documentation so you understand how to best use the software.

by **haggis** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 4:41 pm

I've used fantistics the last 2 years, but have yet to purchase it this year. Part of my reasoning is lack of money right now, but the other is that I was nowhere in my leagues last year with them. So I'm not sold on them. I probably will cave in, though. Any other options? Any free ones other than the likes of yahoo rankings?