What wins the Championship: The Draft or In Season Manuevering

For a great many of the people who participate in fantasy baseball, the draft represents the highest point in the season, an climactic end to hours or weeks of preparation and research. But is the draft really that important? The guys at the Fantasy 411 suggest that while one can’t win a league on draft day it is possible to lose one. While I understand their reasoning, as a historian I know an assertion like that needs intrinsic evidence to support the conclusion. In the hope of achieving this goal, I want to analyze some past leagues I played in to see how critical the draft was for a championship season.

Now before you start thinking that here I go again celebrating my past successes I should point out that I have never one a fantasy baseball league. I have come close, several times actually, but in the end I just couldn’t make it into the winner’s circle. Now that we established I am a loser, let’s take a look at how badly I lost and try to figure out whether the draft got the winner where he ended up.

For this article, I have three winning fantasy baseball teams in a league from the past three years. I have been playing in this league for the past 4 years. It is a competitive league of friends and family who live for no other purpose than to destroy each other in fantasy baseball. While we may get one or two managers who fall out before the season ends, most are active throughout the season, scouring the wires and looking for ways to screw over their competitors. Since this league goes from year to year, we have added and subtracted managers at various times, but the league format remains (12 teams, 5x5 rotisserie, 21-player teams).

Let’s start first with the 2005 League. This was my second year in the league and the first time I went into the draft really trying to win. My first year was not bad, with enough high points and trash talking to make me come back. Sadly, my team the Knights came in right in the middle of the pack at 6^th, which means we won’t even bother trying to figure out how I got there. But if we look at the winning team, The Alexander Hamiltons, the first thing we notice is that the manager of the team made a lot of moves: thirty to be exact. The number two man made 65 moves. Simultaneously, the two teams at the bottom made virtually no moves. In fact, I think I remember that both dropped out part way into the season for personal reasons, leaving their teams to languish.

2005 league standings

For a great many of the people who participate in fantasy baseball, the draft represents the highest point in the season, an climactic end to hours or weeks of preparation and research. But is the draft really that important? The guys at the Fantasy 411 suggest that while one can’t win a league on draft day it is possible to lose one. While I understand their reasoning, as a historian I know an assertion like that needs intrinsic evidence to support the conclusion. In the hope of achieving this goal, I want to analyze some past leagues I played in to see how critical the draft was for a championship season.

Now before you start thinking that here I go again celebrating my past successes I should point out that I have never one a fantasy baseball league. I have come close, several times actually, but in the end I just couldn’t make it into the winner’s circle. Now that we established I am a loser, let’s take a look at how badly I lost and try to figure out whether the draft got the winner where he ended up.

For this article, I have three winning fantasy baseball teams in a league from the past three years. I have been playing in this league for the past 4 years. It is a competitive league of friends and family who live for no other purpose than to destroy each other in fantasy baseball. While we may get one or two managers who fall out before the season ends, most are active throughout the season, scouring the wires and looking for ways to screw over their competitors. Since this league goes from year to year, we have added and subtracted managers at various times, but the league format remains (12 teams, 5x5 rotisserie, 21-player teams).

Let’s start first with the 2005 League. This was my second year in the league and the first time I went into the draft really trying to win. My first year was not bad, with enough high points and trash talking to make me come back. Sadly, my team the Knights came in right in the middle of the pack at 6^th, which means we won’t even bother trying to figure out how I got there. But if we look at the winning team, The Alexander Hamiltons, the first thing we notice is that the manager of the team made a lot of moves: thirty to be exact. The number two man made 65 moves. Simultaneously, the two teams at the bottom made virtually no moves. In fact, I think I remember that both dropped out part way into the season for personal reasons, leaving their teams to languish.

2005 Winning Draft (6^th pick)

When you look at the draft for the 2005 season, the winning team had a pretty good draft. He took 6 straight hitters before grabbing a closer and a pitcher, then went back to hitters. Most of his pitchers came from the middle to late rounds, a standard draft practice. But what is really revealing is that more than half of his draft picks (15 to be exact) were not be on his final roster.

2005 winning roster

With the winner of 2005 keeping 11 players on this team from the draft and having 15 drafted men either traded or dropped, it appears that two things made this success possible: 1) a solid draft where the first 6 guys provided value to the team either in production or as part of a trade. 2) the willingness to move players (including the first pick) in order to improve the team.

2006 League standings

In 2006, I actually placed higher than I have ever done before: 4^th place. While I was still in the middle, a new GM and team (The Big Jew Hitting Crew) took the top spot in our league. This as one of our most actively years. Not a single manager bailed on his team, shockingly this included the guys at the bottom who were essentially out of the race by the June. The championship came down to the final game, and the winner only won by 0.5 pts. That being said, the two top teams were active throughout the season, with the winner making 28 moves to 2^nd place team’s 55 moves. I really interesting event to point out is that the guy in third place only made 2 moves, which means he kept his draft team almost completely intact (a rare feat in my opinion).

2006 Wining Draft (1^st pick)

When looking at the winning team’s draft in 2006, it is obvious the GM drafted well, albeit heavily focused on New York Yankees. He picked up his first pitcher in the 3^rd round, and then two closers with the 4^th and 5^th picks. He went back to hitters for two more picks, but then grabbed a 3^rd closer. This pattern was repeated two more times, then he seemed to just fill in whatever gaps he had. This is a very usual draft strategy. While people often grab 1 pitcher (and usually a starter at that) in the first 4 rounds, it is rare to see someone grab 3 closers in the first 5 rounds. Yet despite the unorthodox nature of his draft, it seemed to work since he won the league.

2006 Winning roster

The winning team in 2006 really seems to add further evidence to what occurred in 2005. The GM kept only 1 more man from the draft than he dropped. That’s right, he dropped or traded 12 drafted players, while keeping 13. Again, this adds further support to the previous conclusions: A solid draft sets the core of the team, but then calculated moves are needed to fill in the gaps.

2007 standings

In 2007 I remained firmly entrenched in the middle of the pack. I would love to actually win this league, but it never seems to happen. In fact, a trend has begun to emerge. For one week at the start of the season, I always hold the top spot. Then I fall to the middle and never shift upward again more than one spot. Another important trend to point out is that in each year the winner won the championship by less than 2 points.

The winner in 2007, Ho Fo-Sho, actually was at the bottom of the pack last year, which gives me hope that someday I might break free of the middle. Although most of the GMs made 30 or more moves in the season, the wining team only made 16 moves.

2007 Winning Draft (4^th pick)

The wining team in 2007 had a good draft, but he had a very unusual draft strategy. In the first 5 picks, he took 2 starting pitchers. In the first 10 picks, he had 5 pitchers (1 of which was a closer). With so many pitchers taken in the early stages of the draft, he should have had a week hitting squad; but let’s not forget he won. What is interesting is that he kept more of the people he drafted than he traded or dropped (the first to do so in this sampling). Even more interesting, he kept exactly 8 hitters and 8 pitchers, which means he selected a solid core for his team at the draft, and then used moves to square away any weak areas.

2007 Winning Final roster

Is it a coincidence that despite what would appear to be a terrible draft, the 2007 team was the most successful team in the study? The team kept more players on its team than any other winner, while making the fewest moves for a winner. Perhaps this team was one of the best drafted in the grouping. When the 2007 draft is scrutinized deeper, the most apparent thing besides the fact that he took a lot of pitchers in the early rounds of the draft is that he seemed to be focusing on grabbing solid players in scarce positions. Last year it was hard to find a quality OF. Yet, his first 2 picks were OF. Another scarce position was 2^nd base; his 5^th pick. 1^st base had a lot more good players, which explains why he was able to pick up Prince Fielder in the 5^th round. Fielder was a bit of a stretch though, because no one could have known he would have such a great year.

All of this offers a lot to consider, but clearly the most obvious lesson here is that the most important thing a GM can do for success is stay active. Every one of the winning team made moves to adjust their team and fill in weaknesses during the course of the season. So while the draft may set the core players on the team, you still need to engage in trades and the waiver wire pick ups in order to secure the Championship.