Something's come up, and I can't make my Yahoo online draft. As I try to modify my draft list, and hope for the best -- I realize that I'm not sure about something. Does anyone know the process that Yahoo's draft engine follows for making our choices? I remember back when we used to Autodraft that it would fill all the named positions first -- our 9 offensive positions, including Utility, and and 7 pitching slots -- before it started filling your Bench. So you could wind up with two shortstops, because it would plug one into Utility. But you wouldn't wind up with two shortstops, and two catchers, two first basemen, etc., before you started filling some other holes.
Is that true in my situation? Where my league is drafting in real time, but I just can't be there?
I believe yahoo will still fill up all your designated positions before it will draft any of your bench. That's what it seemed to do for a few of my opponents who recently missed the live draft. Unfortunately for them, after the starting positions were filled, it drafted offensive players for their entire bench because of the way their players were ranked.
Thanks. I was able to find this on the web site, which seems to agree with what you are telling me:
When you are unable to draft for yourself, our computer system will make intelligent choices for you. This will happen if you signed up for an Autopick Draft or are not present for all or part of your Live Draft.
The autopick system looks at both a player's position and ranking before making a selection. The computer looks to see which starting positions you need to fill, then selects the highest-rated player based on either our default ranking or your custom pre-draft rankings to fill one of those positions.
I guess I can do a mock draft on the Yahoo site to confirm this, too. Thanks for your help.
Yahoo is generally ok with filling positions and your UTIL with a solid player. However, where it kills you is pitching. It will never draft bench pitchers. You will either get like 5 starters and 2 RP, or like 2-3 SP and 4 RP. Either way you'll get hosed.
I'd try to make your draft, because you'll be trying to dig yourself out of a hole.
fezzik wrote: it drafted offensive players for their entire bench because of the way their players were ranked.
very true. In one of my leagues, we drafted the other day and only 4 out of the 10 managers made it to the draft. For the 6 teams that didn't show, it auto picked best player available until every position was filled. Then it started to fill bench spots w/ best available player.
The best thing about this was after the pitchers had been selected by the computer for each teams starting spots (2 SP, 2 RP and 3 P), then it filled up every team w/ batters, as they tend to be rated higher than pitchers. Therefore, by the time we hit the 15th rd, only about 70 total pitchers were off the board and pitchers were no longer being drafted by the auto-pick teams.
I picked up several "high" reward players late, as the computer was drafting left over batters for the 6 auto-pick teams deep into the draft.
J. Vazquez (16th) E. Bedard (17th) A. Harang (18th) M. Gonzales (20th) C. Qualls (21st) H. Bell (22nd) Carpenter (23rd) F. Fransisco (24th)
Thanks for your thoughts, guys. Yes, rescheduling the draft would have been my first choice. But I've won this league several years in a row, and I'm starting to get off now on the challenge a little bit. Of autodrafting while others are not, I mean. My first mock draft using my draft list wasn't a complete disaster. I'll tweak it and try again...
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by rainman23 » Tue Mar 24, 2009 7:38 pm 
