Now that the Super Bowl is over, it is time for fantasy baseball season. In that spirit, let’s talk about draft methodology.

There are a bunch of websites that offer free fantasy baseball, including ESPN.com, Yahoo, and CBS Sportsline. These sites also offer free player rankings. DO NOT use them. In most cases, what these rankings come down to is some fantasy “experts” sitting around a table debating and deciding how a particular player will do in the coming season. This is horribly inefficient. I prefer a system of projection that is based on something more than what a group of like-minded guys think. There are better options out there.

Over at fangraphs.com, there is a link at the top of the page for projections. They have several there, including CHONE, Marcels, and ZiPS, all of which are free (CHONE does have a site that charges for certain types of projections, but for fantasy the free content is more than enough). Then there are systems that cost money. PECOTA is run by the fine people at Baseball Prospectus, and it is one of the most advanced systems out there. BaseballHQ is another fantastic site with great projections that is highly touted by very serious fantasy baseball players. Mastersball.com is the one I’m using this season, and I already like the scalability of the system and the methodology behind it. I suggest that readers check some of these out and use them in lieu of the standard ESPN/Yahoo/CBS guesses.

Another thing that is important in your pre draft planning is your knowledge of the draft pool. How many times have you seen someone go into a draft and pick a player that is injured for the season, or retired at the end of last season? I’ve seen it several times, and it is not pretty. In one of my leagues, one GM drafted 2 players that weren’t going to be playing that season. He shortened the list of players available to him by lopping off 2 picks and very predictably finished in last place. This is another reason to use a 3^rd party projection system. Most of the projections that you pay for are going to update their projections on a regular basis leading up to the season, so new injury updates and roster decisions will be factored in. This is also a good reason to schedule your draft as close to opening day as possible. You don’t want to draft Albert Pujols only to find out a week later that he’s out for 3 months with a broken something before the season even starts.

Now that we’ve got our projection system and we’ve looked over the players, we want to formulate a plan of attack. There are a ton of options for this, including just winging it, although I wouldn’t recommend it. One of the best methods, in my opinion, is the tiered ranking method. It is based on the premise that there are clusters of production at any given position. This allows you to focus on a tier of players rather than an individual player. If after your projection system is set up, you think Prince Fielder, Mark Teixeira and Miguel Cabrera are going to have similar production, it doesn’t really matter which one you pick. You don’t want to fall in love with one player so much that you start letting better players go in place of him. Another advantage of the tiered method is that it allows you to see where there are weaknesses in the player pool for each position. Some positions are top-heavy, some are bottom heavy, and some are middle heavy. It’s good to have an idea of which tier you want to pull from for each position, and what the last resort tier you’d pick from is.

Over at Mock Draft Central, they have been conducting mock drafts for fantasy baseball since early on in January, and they have some good Average Draft Pick data. As your draft approaches, using something like this will be key in drafting a competitive team. Most free fantasy baseball sites have mock drafts and ADP values available to you, so whichever one you pick is probably just fine. The advantage comes from knowing where the average market lies for certain groups of players. You can go through and see where, for example, the 2^nd tier of catchers is being drafted. This will help you to not reach for players too early. However, despite the ADP’s usefulness, it’s important to remember that each draft is different. You have to be flexible in where you are willing to draft different players based on how the draft is moving. Most times only a handful of starting pitchers will be taken in the first 3-4 rounds, but if the other drafters start a run on starting pitching, you had better be ready to scrap your previous plans in order to acquire a pitcher from the tier you want.

This article is one of several that I will do about methodology before a lot of drafts start. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at matt.milner@bringingheat.com.