Post Draft Season Checklist

The major league season is starting in just a few days. Fantasy owners are making the adjustment from pre-season to in-season mode. Before owners concentrate 100% on in-season topics, they should take a step back for a few minutes and reflect on their final rosters and the process they used to acquire them concentrating on what worked and what didn’t. Here are some areas to consider and how I struggle with them.

Player Valuation Process

This area is probably the one area I struggle with balancing the most. Do I over think the player values and more importantly do I make actual decisions based on these valuations? I start all my valuations by creating a composite projection system from several websites and generally probably lock myself into these projections to create player values depending on the league’s format. Usually, I just check each value and adjust them as I see fit.

Overall, 95% of the players don’t get changed. Is this too many changes? Not enough? It isn’t time to dig into this process but it’s something I can consider next off-season.

Other owners may want to create auction values for drafts. Create a tiered system. Compare projections systems.

Ranking Information Sources

I’ve been inclined to have a fear of missing out on any information so I try to accumulate everything. I can’t get to it all. Looking back, I don’t need it all. I’m ranking the information I’ve used, will cut out half next year, and focus on the most helpful ones. This list includes Twitter feeds, podcasts, magazines, etc. I’m scouting the touts and picking just the most useful information. I’m hoping to streamline next year’s process.

Some owners may feel they didn’t “study” enough. Or they concentrated on one area and not on others. Maybe they need to study up on processes versus players.

What Didn’t Work and Wasted Time

I wanted to spend the offseason concentrating on hitter values as I saw it as my weakness. As one solution, I created an under and over performance metric to help find targets. The problem was that I didn’t use the values much. I found them only useful in slow drafts when I could compare players. In fast drafts, I didn’t have time and in auctions, there was no one to compare them to.

Next offseason, I want to revisit the values and try to make two possible changes. First, I’d like to find a single simple value for the two values which will be usable in fast drafts. Second, I’d like to monetize the values and just incorporate the up and downside risk into the price instead of having two or more values.

For other owners, it could be creating detailed values. Averaging several projections. Digging through prospect lists.

Draft and Auction Improvements

This focus involves what went wrong during your drafts or auctions. Personally, I experienced no major area to focus on. This year’s “luck” came from years of screwing things up. One disaster I’ve had previously happened to one of my other Tout Wars contestants, no auction values at an auction. His values were loaded into an online program in which he couldn’t access due to spotty wireless. Instead, he was forced to draft out of a magazine. After an entire winter of work, at least have the data on your computer and I’d also highly encourage bringing a paper copy.

Is your buddy’s basement crowded and the draft needs to be elsewhere? Was the auction too slow and the group needs to hire out an auctioneer? Everyone will have their own struggles and it’s best to note them now.

Sources Only Available Now

I’ve been collecting these values while they’re still available to me. I got the preseason Tout Wars projections for my league to see who the end values lineup. I’m especially interested in how OBP projects. I’m collecting the final ADP values from several sites to see how the players ended up producing. Finally, I’m getting the auction values from a league which doesn’t track them once the auction is over.