Fantasy Baseball: Class Exercise

[Hot Hot Heat]

Hi Guys,

Not a newbie myself, but figured this was the most appropriate forum for my question.

Long story short: later this week, I'll be teaching a class in fantasy baseball 101 to a group of newbies. I'll have the basics covered - snake vs. auction, h2h vs. rotisserie, some draft and management tips. But I thought it'd be cool to run a class exercise that might make the class a little more interactive.

Given: Class is between 60-90 minutes long, and has 5-8 students. My only idea thus far is to run a small mock draft - maybe just the first 5 rounds or so.

Any thoughts? Suggestions?

[pjalst]

Teach them the Johnny Damon Rule, Value vs. Worth

[Pochucker]

Teach them the Ron Shandler rule --draft skills not stats

[Hot Hot Heat]

pjalst - Actually, I'm not familiar with the Johnny Damon rule. Unless this is some sort of riff on Damon/Winn in NYY?

Pochucker - I plan on it...to an extent. Keep in mind, I've got a group of complete rookies, and like 90 minutes to go over as much as possible. At the very least, I'll be sure to cover stuff like chasing Command and not chasing Wins.

Any other thoughts?

[urbanbreez]

You're going to cover the basics of position scarcity of course...

[Hot Hot Heat]

I guess I should probably just share the course outline with you guys, huh?

Part One: Overview
- Snake vs. Auction
- Rotisserie vs. H2H vs. Pts

Part Two: Drafting
- Draft for reliability and scarcity, then draft for upside
- Err on the side of caution when drafting starters, relievers

Part Three: Mid Season
- How to not get duped into a trade (and also, how to dupe someone else)
- Easy hidden stuff that most people don't look for (like home/away splits, quality IP from middle relievers)

Part Four: Geeky Junk
- Statistics vs. Sabermetrics vs. Skills

Part Five: Practical Applications
- How fantasy baseball relates to project management
- How trades relate to sales pitches, or relate to playing the stock market
- etc.

What do you think? I'd still love to do some kind of exercise that's more interactive than just having the class listen to me talk. Anything else worth adding?

[pjalst]

I think you might want to cover league settings.

[dmendro]

Hi Guys,

Not a newbie myself, but figured this was the most appropriate forum for my question.

Long story short: later this week, I'll be teaching a class in fantasy baseball 101 to a group of newbies. I'll have the basics covered - snake vs. auction, h2h vs. rotisserie, some draft and management tips. But I thought it'd be cool to run a class exercise that might make the class a little more interactive.

Given: Class is between 60-90 minutes long, and has 5-8 students. My only idea thus far is to run a small mock draft - maybe just the first 5 rounds or so.

Any thoughts? Suggestions?

How do you get a job teaching fantasy sports?? I want in!!


Here's a couple ideas.


Excercise 1: Daily Lineups
It's Sunday, morning. Lineups lock in 30 minutes. Your H2H game is really close and you trail Hr's by 2, SB's by 1 and AVG by .004. All the other categories are pretty much locked up and you trail by 2 (6-4). How do you set your lineup given who's on your team and who you are facing. Give themboth lineups, how many games each player has played each week, who is playing on Monday, etc.

Excercise 2: Scoreboard Watching.
It's now Sunday night and you are staring at the last game to be played on Sunday night baseball. You trail in BA by .001 and you and have 1 player left to play. How many hits and how many AB's do you need to assure yourself of winning the game

[pjalst]

What?

Your assuming he's teaching a class on H2H play.

[MTUCache]

I think you might want to cover league settings.

This is big... there's some major adjustments needed in strategy when you're talking about leagues with different categories, different bench settings, different amounts of starting roster spots, etc.

In fact, once you get beyond the basics (roto vs. h2h), I think this is probably the most important thing you could teach them.

Even something as simple as an inning cap of 1250 vs. 1500 could alter your entire rankings and draft strategy.

This type of information that is available to everyone in the league as soon as they sign up, but is the most often overlooked as people just assume that all rankings will apply to their league equally.