Hidden Draft Day Bargains

by Lou Poulas of Fantasy Insider Online

The key to any draft - whether it is auction style, scratch, or keeper - is to find value where your competitors don’t see it. Each year owners scour the web and other print publications for information on sleepers, injuries, and any type of data they can get their hands on to help weed through the hundreds of available players to discover who’ll breakout in the coming year.

This is at best a painstaking exercise at the worst a fruitless one. Each publication has their own ideas and frankly they don’t always do a great job of backing up their beliefs. Sometimes they even contradict each other.

An alternative way to look for value is through gauging your competitor’s belief in certain players, and anticipate where they will fall in the draft. A common bias in all leagues is to put too much emphasis in how a player faired in the previous season, instead of looking at a player’s career path as a whole. Statistics fluctuate annually (sometimes through luck, other times due to legitimate reasons such as injuries) and for established players most of it is just noise. A player may simply have a good or bad luck year.

A quick way to get at this data is to compare the Fantasy Rank of the previous year to their projected rank to the upcoming season. Large differences often signify where an owner may over or undervalue a player, and knowing this allows better planning for your draft. I’ve identified some batters who are likely to be valued incorrectly.

Overvalued – These players are likely to be drafted earlier than they should be. They still may be good players, even great, but don’t plan your draft strategy on obtaining their services.

Aaron Rowand - At 29 years of age, Rowand had his career year in 2007, setting career highs in R, 2B, HR, RBI, and OBP. A great rule of thumb is to never pay a premium for players coming off a career year as they are almost always going to disappoint. Rowand is no different. If you need more reasons to avoid him, remember he’s leaving his bandbox of a park (Citizens Bank) for San Francisco which is average at best. Plus, and more importantly, he’ll be surrounded by one of the worst everyday lineups in baseball.

Magglio Ordonez – I like Ordonez, he’ll certainly be a good player this year, but too much of his value in 2007 was in due high batting average (.363). He is a career .312 hitter with a previous high of .320 and in 2008 projects to a line of .308, 85 R, 20 HR, 94 RBI which is more in line with a top-20 Outfielder than the Top-3 version he was in 2007.

Mike Lowell – I admit I dislike Lowell and usually avoid him at all costs. This didn’t work out so well for me last year, but it will work out fine for me in ’08:

2007: .324 AVG, 79 R, 21 HR, 120 RBI, 3 SB, 8th Ranked 3B
2008: .283 AVG, 68 R, 15 HR, 77 RBI, 3 SB, 18th Ranked 3B

Other Mentions
For each player below, the difference between his 2007 Rank and 2008 Projected Rank is displayed. All Rankings are “within the position” as opposed to overall.

-20: Ichiro Suzuki, OF (17, 37)
-20: Randy Winn, OF (40, 60)
-19: Eric Byrnes, OF (2, 21)
-11: Shane Victorino, OF (29, 40)
-10: Placido Polanco, 2B (9, 19)
-10: Casey Blake, 3B (12, 22)
-6: JJ Hardy, SS (9, 15)
-5: Khalil Green, SS (6, 11)

Undervalued – the heart of every winning season is finding the draft day steal.

Nick Swisher – The new Chicago White Sox center fielder had a down year in 2007, batting just .265 while achieving close the bear minimum of counting stats required for a fantasy outfielder – 78 R, 84 RBI, 22 HR. With no speed, Swisher ranked the 38th best in the OF in 2007.

2008 looks to be a bit different. Why? Swisher is better than what he showed last year and is moving from an extreme pitchers park to an above average hitters park. His projected stats are improved almost across the board t0 91 R, 94 RBI, 30 HR. His batting average still figures to be low (.264) but this projection makes him a top 20 outfielder.

Alfonso Soriano – Many, including myself, had Soriano ranked 1st coming into last season and he never did live up to expectations, even when on the field. He missed almost a month of playing time, but even projected over 160 games his 2007 stats don’t electrify – 39 HR, 114 R, 83 RBI, 23 SB. Very good of course, but not worthy of a 1st overall pick.

Fast forward to 2008. Owners still have sour tastes in their mouths having spent $40+ on him last year, and are likely ready to stay away this draft day. His projections are still great though – 35 HR, 97 RBI, 91 R, 22 SB. Watch him fall a bit and grab him early in the second round.

Miguel Tejada – We can all agree Tejada is no longer the elite shortstop that he was a few years ago. Coming off an injury plagued and disappointing 2007, Tejada finds himself with a new team and ready to start anew. He is 32 years old and not likely to completely self destruct. For fantasy owners, the better news is that his counting stats were held down last year due to his missed playing time. He hit 18 HR, with 72 R and 81 RBI making him a lower tier option at shortstop.

His projections are solid - .297 AVG, 76 R, 19 HR, 85 RBI, 4 SB and perhaps more importantly his competition will not be as good. Khalil Greene, Orlando Cabrera, JJ Hardy, Julio Lugo, Jhonny Peralta, and Edgar Renteria were all ranked higher than him last year but project to be ranked worse than him this year. Let your fellow owners draft this crew before Tejada, and a few rounds later get the same value for less cost.

Other Mentions
For each player below, the difference between his 2007 Rank and 2008 Projected Rank is displayed. All Rankings are “within the position” as opposed to overall.

+19: Andruw Jones, OF (31, 12)
+16: Vernon Wells, OF (42, 26)
+9: Rafael Furcal, SS (15, 6)
+7: Troy Glaus, 3B (22, 15)
+5: Miguel Tejada, SS (14, 9)
+5: Tad Iguchi, 2B (19, 14)
+5: Aramis Ramirez, 3B (10, 5)
+5: Josh Fields, 3B (16, 11)
+4: Alex Gordon, 3B (17, 14)

Final Note: Earlier I said, “A common bias in all leagues is to put too much emphasis in how a player faired in the previous season, instead of looking at a player’s career path as a whole.” This only works for established players and you should of course pay specific attention to players at the very beginning or very end of their careers.

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Top 10 3rd Basemen 2007

1. Alex Rodriguez
.314/143/54/156/24
The only sign that he was human this year is when he was caught in a strip club. The effortlessness in which he plays the game makes it extremely effortful (I made up that word) to like him, but if you had him on your team you probably were able to show some enthusiasm. He will probably go down in the history as the only number one in his sport that no one really loves. People loved Jordan, Tiger Woods, Pele, etc. With Arod, I feel people don't show him the love that his skills definitely deserve. Perhaps it is his effortlessness or maybe the New York media. Oh, and the other thing surprising about Arod is his heritage. He's about as Latin as Taco Bell.

2. David Wright
.325/113/30/107/34
These top two weren't that close to the rest of the field for 3rd base and this year 3rd base was a pretty loaded position. What I love is how the New York media terrorizes Arod, but can't find any fault with Wright. Sure, he's a great bats-smith, always hustles with his natural speed, power, next door neighbor good-looking... Darn, now I wanna marry him, too. Loved to see what Wright could do playing in Citizen's Bank. Actually, I don't because I hate Wright. Seems a bit too perfect. Like O.J. in the 70s.

3. Chipper Jones
.337/108/29/102/5
And he missed some time. (Of course, he did. He always misses time.) I usually don't draft Chipper. Nothing personal, although Chipper does strike me as a racist. Usually I'm all for drafting people who are injury-prone because if you fill in for them properly you can actually do quite well. The thing with Chipper is he's not injury-prone as much as he is always playing hurt. He's the kind of player that sits for a day or two so you take him out then he plays. By the time you get him back in there, he's hurt again. And the cycle continues. This year, injuries or not, Chipper gave you more than value.

4. Miguel Cabrera
.320/91/34/119/2
If you take Pujols, subtract sixteen years and add eighty pounds, you've got Cabrera. He could weigh three hundred and twenty pounds and still hit .320 and thirty homers and he might just weigh that by this time next year. The Latin Prince Fielder. At least with the extra poundage, it now makes sense why he has absolutely no speed.

5. Ryan Braun
.324/91/34/97/15
To the alien that just landed from another planet, "He might be fifth but this is the absolute best player on this list because you got him for nothing." In one league where I picked him up off waivers as soon as he was called up, guess what? I won. In another league where I drafted him but dropped him when he didn't get the immediate call-up from the minors, I finished third. Had I not dropped him, I would have won. The owner that did pick him up ended up in fourth, they would've been in eighth. Know what I really like about him? He goes to the opposite field. Know what I don't like about him? He struggles a bit against righties. Um, this might be a problem.

6. Mike Lowell
.324/79/21/120/3
Wow, Julio Lugo, Coco or Varitek couldn't drive in poor Mike Lowell more than 79 times? Here's another guy that was on a lot of winning teams. He went from an afterthought to .324 and 120 RBIs. He was slotted into more corner positions and got more hits against a wall than a twenty dollar whore. This was a career year at... Wait, how can he be 33 years old? He looks older than my father and he's supposedly younger than me. Can we just make it a law to add seven years to everyone's age that was born outside the U.S.? (Lowell is from Puerto Rico.) Like if you moved to another country you wouldn't go by whatever age you could pass for. BTW, I'm twenty-two in the Dominican Republic.

7. B.J. Upton
.300/86/24/82/22
(See Top 10 2nd Basemen for why guys love them a B.J.)

8. Garrett Atkins
.301/83/25/111/3
Okay, you could have done better with your fourth round selection than G.A. (apologies to the trademark Garrett Anderson has on those initials). But you didn't lose your league because of Atkins (apologies to the Atkins Diet people). Sure, he started slow. Yes, he could have topped thirty homers and hit for a slightly higher average. Okay, Garrett (apologies to Garrett Morris and Leif Garrett) didn't win you any leagues either. But the only thing you can get down on him for is coming in no higher than second in a Google search of any variation of his name. He will forever be known Garrett Atkins, anything shorter is someone else.

9. Adrian Beltre
.276/87/26/99/14
In a mixed league, you didn't even draft him so "You're welcome." In an AL-only league, you didn't want to draft him and he was the fourth best AL 3rd baseman so "You're very welcome." With skills coming out of elementary school, so much should have come from Beltre yet he will be forgotten in less than seven years by everyone except possibly family members. Perhaps we should start a Remember Adrian Beltre? website now before he fades from memory. Someone registers www.rememberadrianbeltre.com and I'll be your first supporter. As long as I don't have to give my email address.

10. Aramis Ramirez
.310/72/26/101/0
What's that funky smell? It's Aramis! Injuries weren't too kind to Aramis this year and who knows how long he might have been playing hurt, but he still got 500 at-bats. Geez, his stats remind me of the Kaiser Chief song, "Everything Is Average Nowadays." If Derrek Lee and him would have had their normally productive years, the Cubs would've ran away with the division.

Just out of the top ten, Chone Figgins (41 steals in part-time action!) could have helped, Ryan Zimmerman (really average in full-time action!) never took the next step so many predicted, Alex Gordon (struggled mightily for three months!) is not winning the ROY and his teammate, Mark Teahen (7 home runs!) sucked, but not as bad as Aubrey Huff. But, then again, no one is really ever as bad as Aubrey Huff.
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