Fantasy Baseball 101 -- The Market

Welcome back! I am happy you are reading and I hope you are enjoying. I apologize for the delay since my last article, but it seems "draft fever" is highly contagious and I have spent the past 5 days in bed hopped up on some flu remedy or cough syrup. For those of you who participated in the draft, I am sure you noticed how your pulse raced a little bit as your pick neared. I am also sure that you broke a little sweat when the player you had your eye on was suddenly taken off the table by the manager ahead you. Draft Fever. Feels good.
It's remarkable how rewarding this is -- I don't think that there was one person who participated in the live draft who didn't walk away thinking, "Yes, this is the team I wanted." I even think that the non-par managers fared pretty well too.
Generally, the first 5 rounds of the live draft are pretty standard. There are rare surprises, and each manager expects to get their handful of studs to help carry their season. Of course there are a few "OMG's" here and there, but that is the nature of the live draft. It's beginning with round 6 that the challenge, and the stress, really begins.
Rounds 6-10 of this draft will be the hearts of your lineups, the souls of your pitching squads. These next 5 players you will pick aren't as good as the "studs" but they are still solid players on their own. In fact, there may be a few "sleepers" in the pack; players who might at the right time suddenly awaken into the star player you want them to be.
There are a finite number of strong players at any position that you want to build your team with, and after that the pickings are slim. In some cases, a bad pick an hurt more than it can help. In the search for that perfect sleeper I found myself stretching for Rob Nen, the once studly closer, who decided midway through a season on the DL that he would just retire. Ouch -- a wasted pick.
Let me look a little further at that one position - the Closer. The closer produces Saves (that coveted stat), K's and eats innings while keeping his ERA and WHIP down. Every team has at least one closer, so there are plenty to go around, right? Not exactly. There may only be 12-14 worthwhile closers in the entire league. These closers will do exactly like i had said, produce good numbers, while at the same time do not get hurt. Figure that a strong Fantasy Team needs up to three decent closers. If you settle on poor closers in later rounds of the draft, you might get your Saves category locked up, but it could be at the expense of Losses, Hits and Earned Runs. Managing these risks are the nature of the game. Knowing ahead of time that RP are few and coveted, it is wise to earmark a few for early rounds of the draft.
This is where the idea of "the market" comes into play. In Economics 101 we learned the law of Supply and Demand. A lower supply causes greater demand, and higher supply causes lower demand. If during the draft you notice that a certain position is being picked ahead of where you thought they would normally be ranked this creates a change in "the market", where this one position becomes overvalued because of their scarsity.
It happens often where some managers might get anxious and draft that position immediately after that "trigger". Situations where 4 or more players are drafted from one position is called "a run". This is why it is important to pay attention to what every one else is drafting while you make your picks. By the time the draft comes back to you, you may feel pressure to join in that panic buying and draft the same kind of player. Chances are, in these cases, you pick a player who is overvalued at this level of the draft that you still have a chance at getting in later rounds if cooler heads prevailed. Then again, sometimes you just have to strike when the iron is hot.
The types of positions that typically experience Market fluctuation depending on how others are drafting are: Closers, Ace Starting Pictures, Catchers, 2nd Basemen and Shortstops. Each of these are high-impact positions where the talent pool is thin. There will undoubtedly be a run on one position or another during this draft -- its just important to plan ahead so that if you get caught up in it, you can still come out ahead.