Kicking Rocks: Autodrafters
Come on, man. It’s one day out of the year. That’s all we’re asking for here. We’re not asking you to split the atom or anything; just give us your undivided attention for only a few hours on one day out of the year. You better have one hell of an excuse for your absence because even just one team on autodraft messes with the draft strategy of everyone else.
Frustrating, isn’t it? I know we’re not curing cancer here or anything, but to a lot of people who play this game, draft day can be the pinnacle of their year. It’s the only time during the season, barring keeper leagues, at which they have a fresh start and a reasonably equivalent chance at winning the league. But your autodrafting, especially if you don’t take the time to set up a queue list of 300 or more players, dramatically affects the outcome of the draft and ultimately, the league.
Forget about the fact that the rest of us have to sit and wait while the clock ticks down on your first pick. We use that time to make fun of you in the chat area and in the end, you help move things along quicker from round two and on anyway. That’s not where the problem lies. The problem lies in the fact that the computer is placing the next best available guy, regardless of position or injury status, on your roster and causes grief to those who either covet a guy they know they’ll never get as few players slip through or were hoping to wait on someone for a more appropriate time to draft them.
Have you seen where ESPN ranks Michael Bourn? The fourth round is way too high to draft him, but if you want his stolen bases and you have an autodrafter in there, you’re going to have to take him early. Or how about the way Yahoo ranks and lumps together a number of this year’s “sleeper pitchers?” Gio Gonzalez, Brandon Beachy and Cory Luebke are all right near each other which means I can probably have one but not the others.
You’re killing me, Smalls!!!
Then of course, there’s the fact that you’re likely to hate the team the computer drafted for you, thus lowering our chances of getting your full participation the whole year. You’ll check your roster, post-draft, and see it littered with players like Ryan Howard, Michael Pineda, Chipper Jones and Ryan Madson and you’ve given up before you’ve even started. Nothing worse than a dead team in the league because you autodrafted the guest list of Dr. James Andrews’ most recent office party.
It’s not that we don’t understand that things can come up and you have a life outside of fantasy baseball. But more often than not, commissioners set draft dates early enough for you to adjust your schedule. Tell your wife/husband that you can’t go to you neighbor’s barbecue until late. Send your kids off on a play date with one of their friends. Tell your mom that you’ll clean out the garage next weekend. We’re not saying skip your grandpa’s funeral here, but give us the courtesy of making your presence in the league felt in the right way.
Howard Bender has been covering fantasy sports for over 10 years on a variety of websites. In addition to his work here, you can also find him at his site, RotobuzzGuy.com, Fantasy Alarm, RotoWire and Mock Draft Central. Follow him on Twitter at @rotobuzzguy or for more direct questions or comments, email him at rotobuzzguy@gmail.com
In free leagues, it’s usually bad. In money leagues, it is delicious.
I autodraft because I like to be surprised. If I’m dealt a bad hand I like the challenge of turning that team into a winner.
What I want in my league are more people that bitch about autodrafters, because they’re so focused on picking specific names that they lose the forest for the trees. Ohnoez, the guy that is going to finish in last place is wasting perfectly good players that I covet! Get over it.
Had to auto-draft today. Suprised how good my team looks, and no injured guys.
Auto drafting is usually a recipe for disaster.
You’re not really complaining about autodrafters, but people who autodraft without preparing their rankings.
Picking a team without the ability to adjust your approach on the fly presents an incredibly interesting optimization problem if you really get into it – I do it in at least one league per year just for the challenge. Plus going through that exercise helps me prepare for the risk of life interfering with a “real” live draft. For example, last week an 8 hour flight delay forced me to miss a draft. Because I was prepared with intelligent rankings just in case, I picked a very fine team anyway, thank you very much.
Yeah, it’s all about the pre-draft rankings and prep. Two years ago I was in Nepal when one of my most competitive leagues drafted. When I got back, I thought my team looked great. I ended up placing in the top 3 (can’t remember which of the three).
Even when I’m not going to autodraft, I fine tune my pre-rankings anyway, just in case I miss it. When drafting I always look at the Y! ranks just to have an idea of what the rest of the room sees. I just take Beachy two rounds ahead of where Y! tells me I should.
I guess I don’t see the problem here. So, an autodrafter takes Michael Bourn too early. That’s never happened with a live drafter?
Of course, sometimes people just can’t make the draft because of more important obligations. I know it can suck for the rest of the league, but I don’t think we are justified in blaming someone for not caring about fantasy baseball as much as we do. Yeah, intentionally autodrafting when you have no other committments is dumb, but I’ve never seen that happen in my leagues.
Autodraft away, I say. My chances of winning just went up by 8-10%.
I have at least 1 autodraft team every year. It’s fun to “fix” the team through trades and waiver wire pick ups. My auto draft league this year I got three 3rd basemen Panda, ARod and Wright. I turned Arod into Carlos Santana. I also turned Dustin Pedroia and Ubaldo Jimenez into Matt Cain, Joey Votto, Brandon League and Chris Young. And grabbed Aaron Hill and Jose Altuve off the scrap heap to cover 2nd. I came out a bit ahead I think…
I don’t know about other leagues but Y! has adjustable pre-draft player rankings that allow you to exclude injured players and bump up others you might want to grab early.
You turned a second round second basemen and a broken pitcher into a Cy Young candidate and a first round first baseman? Plus a closer and a plus outfielder (assuming it’s the right Chris Young)?
Maybe you need to stop playing in leagues with idiots.
Y! public league… I cant say who plays, all I can do is try to win.
I got autodrafted this offense in a 12 team league bc I got to the draft late.
C: JP Arencibia
1b: Miguel Cabrera
2b: Neil Walker
3b: Brett Lawrie
SS: Hanley Ramirez
OF: Desmond Jennings
OF: Michael Bourn
OF: Shane Victorino
Util: Mark Teixiera (whom I had trade along with K-rod for Walden, Konerko and Goldschmidt)
My pitching staff has a lot of upside but lacks super elite pitchers. But that offense is nasty and autodrafted.
“Nasty” good or “Nasty” bad? That’s pretty limp, even for a 12-team league. It started out ok with Cabrera, but went downhill pretty quickly with Ramirez, Bourn and then that inexplicable trade where you diluted Tex and got back three lesser players (one of whom is closer, no less).
I eagerly await the follow-up article “Kicking Autodrafters Rocks!”
ESPN’s rankings are nutty. I’ve drafted several teams on there and Bourn is just the tip of the iceberg. Desmond Jennings’ pre-draft rank is something like 105, Youkilis’ is in the 80s, Kipnis’ is in the 200s, Ike Davis’ is in the 240+ range, Logan Morrision in the 150 range. Thank God for FG!
Had a guy in our 10 team draft that got these first six picks
Kemp – Cano – Kinsler – Wright – Bourne -Hosmer
I understand that autodrafters can be annoying, but to harbor such vitriol seems a little over-the-top.
dude, relax. the whole point of the “kicking rocks” serious is for fun, hopefully humorous venting about the little things that annoy Howard (and potentially many others) in fantasy baseball. It’s not ‘vitriol’, it’s good natured whining.
I autodrafted for a money league tonight because I had to work.
I set my pre-rankings and I’m VERY pleased with the results. I’ll take Yahoo’s pre-ranking, remove guys that I hate and absolutely don’t want in any round (assuming that someone will take them much earlier than I would anyway). Then I take the guys I love that are undervalued and slid them up the rankings. Voila. Stud Team.
Espn’s draft applet is terrible for fantasy baseball. The applet tells you about injuries, it allows people to look up/sort any stats, or if the league is roto it gives the “player rater” value. There is little need for actual knowledge. At least some of their projections are still off the wall.
Like Matt Moore
185IP 194K 3.02 ERA 1.09 WHIP
It’s possible for him to put up that line, but saying that is the expected outcome is ridiculous.
You really should try a completely autopick league. It pits your ranking/valuation system against everyone else’s – some personalized, some default. None of which can be adjusted on the fly during the draft. And since a few of those are usually default autopick, the obviously screwy stuff and last-minute injury news gets distributed over multiple teams. The result is always an imbalanced team – for everyone – but a surprisingly well balanced league overall.
It also creates far more willingness to actually trade players because you didn’t actually pull the lever for those individual players in the draft room and thus fall in love with particular players. In most leagues, trading players is nothing but theory – because inactive players never respond to offers and active teams rarely agree on value.
Your only valid complaint here is that autopick can be a sign of an inactive player. And yes inactive players really screw up every league.
That sounds horrible. Draft night is the best night of the year, bar none. I look forward to it more than Christmas or Thanksgiving.
Had to autodraft yesterday, no other way around it. Did my pre-draft rankings which were very different from ESPN’s and ended up with 1 good SP and we start 4. I also screwed up on my RP rankings so now I have more closers than I need.
Regardless, autodrafting puts you in a huge disadvantage IMO
Also I have to agree that ESPN’s rankings are outrageous (to put it mildly).
if u autodrafted in cbs leagues some people got some trash players. haha
it was hilarious. i should upload a picture.
anyways, i seen freese go in the last rd, cespedes not even drafted, and cain go as early as the 17th rd in a 10 team league
ive seen matt moore go 1st pick in rd 5. which is way early… darvish is going ahead of ian kennedy in some leagues…
it depends on format though, bourn in espn leagues could be money, but in a h2h pts league where SB is 1 pt its nothing but a worthless pick.
matt moore will be 201inn w. 220K and a 3.30-3.72 era and a 1.06-1.10 whip…
i could be wrong though. hes up there.
Love to do one autodraft a year. I pre-rank my players and always come up with a strong competitive team. A lot of fun IMO.
Had an autodrafter in an auction yesterday. Bastard had the nerve to be by his wife’s side as she gave birth. He may have a new baby boy but his team is in the toilet this season. Someone needs to get their priorities straight…
Auto draft with a pre-ranked list is okay and shows some effort, but otherwise it is a disservice to the rest of your league and just plain lazy. If you like to be surprised by your team start up or join an auto draft only league where everyone knows ahead of time what they’re getting into.
Not sure I understand the excitement some FanGraphs readers seem to demonstrate regarding “turning around” a crappy autodrafted team. How can missing the single greatest day of every year be a fun thing??? Does not every fantasy baseball manager wait on pins and needles for spring leagues to begin so they can drag out their 5-months-in-the-works spreadsheets and charts for 3-4 hours of exhilarating drafting pleasure???
Speaking of auto drafters. I’m having a draft tomorrow night for a league on Y!, hopefully a dynasty league, based off fangraphs linear weights system, and someone dropped out at the last minute. STEALTH, above, will be in it.
This is a heave in the dark, but would anyone here be interested in taking that last spot?
I’m interested, though the Tuesday night draft may be an issue for me, depending on, well, life. Of course I can always autodraft! [rimshot]
I’m failing to understand how an auto-drafter hurts your team? If they pay “too much” for certain players, that should create an inefficiency you can exploit (same as a poorly prepared “active” drafter). If they take a high quality player away and lose with them, that is one more quality player not available to your competition.
The argument that autodrafting doesn’t allow high draft-position players to slip through is fairly weak. Your strategy probably should not depend on the blunders of others with the hope that you will be the individual that benefits. Isn’t it more than a 90% chance that your competitor will be the beneficiary in a 12+ team league?
In some instances I think a current and well-prepared auto-draft list can make for a better draft for the individual, if you view the goal of the draft as grabbing as much “value” as possible. After all, you can always trade high-value players to balance any positional inefficiencies. I would expect I can get a pretty good OF for Jose Reyes if I’ve already got Tulo (or I may choose to do as I did last year and start them both).
Autodrafting actually reduces opportunity for poor emotionally-based decisions, reducing the temptation to get caught up in the momentum of a draft and overpay because of perceived growing scarcity.
Though it is, unquestionably, much less fun
I am in two leagues this year that are auction drafts. The autodrafters ruined the auctions. The bidding will be at $20 for a player and then the autodrafter will bid something like $49. They use up their money quick, but it also makes it hard for anyone else to do stars and scrubs as they own 4 or 5 players at max dollars and then buy $1 players to fill out the rest of their roster.
Isn’t that just a stars and scrubs technique unto itself, only executed poorly? A live drafter could similarly overbid. But when you overbid, you lose. With live and auto-drafters that are executing stars and scrubs poorly, you can get them to runout their money by nominating players you don’t really want. Throw Cabrera out there if you really want Pujols (or vice versa) to get them to spend their money early and inefficiently.
I saw that exact thing happen in a football auction league. Nobody pays more than $2 for a defense or a kicker, yet the league had the best kickers worth like $5. It was so fun to see the autodraft teams (there were several) draft two kickers and two defenses before they had anything else.