by MTUCache » Thu Mar 13, 2008 11:45 am
If this is a league of savvy owners, you're going to have a hard time making this work...
I look at it kind of like punting a category... you're cutting off your nose to spite your face. There's no guarantees that the investments and risks that you make now will pan out. Even if you could grab all the up-and-coming future stars out there, you're not going to get them on the cheap at an auction. The rest of the owners are going to be looking towards the future as well, so you're still paying a premium.
Build for this year, hoping to get veterans on the cheap while everyone else uses this strategy. Don't assume that everyone else is going to be spending all their money on aging veterans and letting you pick up the prospects for nothing.
Saving money for the end of an auction is dangerous. Best case scenario, you get all the guys you want for less than you were willing to spend... but where does all that "extra" money go? All the players you should have spent those dollars on are already gone. Worst case scenario, two (or more) owners have the same idea and suddenly you're forced to pay more than you wanted on all of these guys and all you have is a team of expensive prospects, because there was no money left anyway.
Huge Risk for a high investment is not what I'm looking for... I want huge risk for low investment.
Spending an entire year combing through Minor league stats, picking and choosing when to spend your WW priority, all while falling WAY behind because of the weak team you drafted, sounds pretty miserable to me.
It's not all that hard to put together a balanced team that has a couple of gambles on it... putting together an un-balanced team with a dozen gambles on it just feels silly. Even if half of them pan out (which they won't), you're still left with holes in your team.
Plus, unless you're the kind of guy who can get in on these young up-and-comers before the hype (rather than during it), you're going to be left riding the backside of that wave forever... This takes an incredible amount of dedication, information, and LUCK, to build a team for two or three years from now around guys who most players have never heard of. Major league owners and GMs get paid big money to try and predict these things for a living, and even they are wrong most of the time.
If you're not "that guy" (who's willing and able to do that work and find that info), all you're doing is just buying into hype, paying a premium on it, and hoping it shows up... guys who play only for prospects look like a genius 10% of the time (i.e. Braun owners last year). The rest of the time they're just filling up their rosters with guys nobody else wants.
Adding to that risk is the fact that this is an NL only league... it's no secret that prospects get dealt (from league to league) all the time, even before they show up on the fantasy-map. If you've got a big stake in these guys, it's a good bet that even those who do make a difference in the bigs are going to be making that difference for an AL team. More established players (with Major contracts) are far less likely to get traded (although it does happen) than prospects (because established stars get traded for multiple prospects when they do get traded).
Last edited by MTUCache on Thu Mar 13, 2008 11:52 am, edited 3 times in total.
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