Why It’s Easier To Contend Than Rebuild In Deep Dynasty Leagues
Do you play in a deep dynasty league? Perhaps you’ve noticed something. Judging by your rival’s (and perhaps your own) behavior, it often feels like the point of the game isn’t to win the league. Instead, it’s a race to the bottom to see which owner can compile the youngest roster with the most “value.” While value can win leagues, first one must convert that value into production.
This race to the bottom mentality can make it easier to contend than rebuild. As most of your rivals fight for every scrap of youth, fringy prospects may return legitimately decent major league performers. This process of cycling iffy minor leaguers for established veterans can help to extend a competitive window for many years.
First, a poll.
Do you play in a deep dynasty league?
Let’s define “deep” as any mixed league that rosters 700 or more players leaguewide or any AL/NL Only with 350 or more players. At least half of players are kept.
Choice #2 is: I play in a dynasty league, but it’s not that deep
— Brad Johnson (@BaseballATeam) January 7, 2019
Certain conditions are required for this approach to work. You must understand the depth of your league. Is the prospect frontier Carter Kieboom (i.e. shallow), Jeisson Rosario (medium), or Osleivis Basabe (very deep)? I’ll call these “frontier prospects” going forward. Basically, they’re the guys with enough plausible future value to be keepable in your league. Add players at or better than your league’s prospect frontier as often as possible. Develop them for a few months, and jump on opportunities to trade them. These usually occur when a player goes on a hot streak or a rival decides they’re burning down the house.
Dynasty trade deadlines can often be a different sort of race to the bottom. Supposedly must-trade veterans are marketed to a smattering of contenders. Buyer’s markets are common. Dynasty contenders usually have a full major league roster and only covet premium upgrades at bargain prices. Meaningful prospects like Eloy Jimenez are only available for already-elite talents.
A cycling approach to prospects, taking players who frequently don’t have a fantasy-relevant future and trading them for current assets can create considerable value. Last season, some players who were frequently moved cheaply included David Peralta and Anibal Sanchez. Peralta has since settled as a consensus top 150 player in redraft. In our 25-team Dynasty To Be Named Later draft, he was the 151st player chosen. In most dynasty leagues, he was available for the equivalent of one or two frontier prospects.
Sanchez was even cheaper. When traded, he was frequently used as a zero-value throw-in to a larger deal. Although he’s still going very late in dynasty drafts (640th in DTBNL), I have him ranked near the front of The Glob for 2019 redraft purposes (I’m aware that’s a controversial position). A win-now roster should be very happy to keep Sanchez in, say, a 20-team format.
These are just two examples. Dozens of serviceable veterans were available for frontier prospects last season. Not all of them will be useful keepers for the 2019, but the same can be said for those frontier prospects. Many will be cut loose for whatever form of draft your league uses. Meanwhile, you’re free to rinse and repeat next season. In this way, you can stave off a full rebuild for years while remaining competitive. And if you happen to catch the right bargains – like an early-breakout Max Muncy – you may escape the rebuild cycle altogether.
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This makes a lot of sense. I’ve used this approach for a four years in three deep leagues that roster 1800+ players league wide. There is a killing to make around draft time as teams covet picks, in trades as teams covet the hottest new A-ball breakout (especially pitchers – they are way less likely to pan out), and if there is a prospect bidding period. Conversely with the prospect bidding, teams try to save so much of their cap in order to bid $80M on Rusney Castillo that larger contract, elite players are often available as salary dumps.
So far, I haven’t missed the playoffs in any league in any season
Stop it. Just stop your spreading your propaganda None of these strategies will work, particularly in the DTBNL. Everyone should ignore, everything written above, especially about cycling prospects in exchange for current mlb value… Except for how awesome David Peralta is and how he could put any of the contenders in the DTBNL over the hump, for the right price 😉 That’s sage-esque wisdom and should be heeded.
Honestly, I think it’s easier to contend than rebuild in almost any league. The vast middle ground of “boring” players who are a little too old or a little too average is always undervalued. The bust rate on almost any prospect is high enough that you can usually trade one for a truly useful today piece. Some of those useful mediocrities turn into Max Muncy, and next year there will always be more prospects!
So yeah, let the rebuilders take themselves out of contention and sell you useful pieces at a discount for tomorrow’s lottery tickets. I’ll take that all day long.
I’ll whisper this in the safe confines of this internet comment section: Hard agree. Last year in FG1 ottoneu (which, in addition to FG2, were my first salary-based dynasties), I quickly identified how pervasive market distortions were at the MLB level that I did (and will) not rely heavily on prospect talent — only to stockpile them to flip.
If rebuilders are thinking about contending while waiting for those prospects to materialize, there is a lot of talent that could be gotten cheaply as long as you’re looking at 30+ year old veterans. Really, veterans get such a bad rap given the big scare about age-based drop offs. However, guys like Nelson Cruz have pulled off 8 years of great production and he still isn’t waiver wire material. I remember trading for David Ortiz before his retirement year for pennies, because he was only a one year guy. That one year went *great*. Don’t discount the veterans, use them.
Most of the teams we refer to as “rebuilding” also feel like there’s no incentive to compete. The more they compete, the further away they get from the top of the draft, where they can add a potentially relevant player in 3-4 years to their portfolio.
I’ve very rarely come across rebuilders that are “thinking about contending while waiting for prospects.”
Great article!!! After taking over a team in a 20 team mixed (800 rostered) last year I went full rebuild out of necessity. The team had barely been managed for 2 years and things were dire. That said in a lost season I was still able to finish 12th thanks to a few SP panning out and getting all the AB possible on the wire. When I first took over I thought I was in for a 3 year wait now I’m looking to flip a couple “frontier” prospects to fill holes and hope for some big league help in the draft. To your point a full tear down in hopes of building a juggernaut now seems silly seeing how much value there is to be had when prospects are valued like gold.
The biggest fear for rebuilding teams came true around deadline time when only myself and one other owner had a chance at winning. Of course, there were small trades between rebuilding owners to shift an asset or two around but those essential “flip your aging vet producer for a Top 50-75 prospect or 2” deals never materialized. I think that’s always the risk you run when you tear it down and you start running prospective deadline trade machinations in your mind- sometimes, circumstances dictate an extreme buyer’s market and rebuilding teams do one of two things. They either realistically asses their situation and push their contention window accordingly or they refuse to acknowledge the deal that may have jumpstarted their contention window never materialized. In the latter scenario, I’ve witnessed far too many owners completely set themselves back even further by no readjusting their goals. Sometimes reality is a bitter pill to swallow but I’ve seen dynasty swallow up many fantasy players who have success in redraft.
Mine is not this deep in the slightest, but this makes a lot of sense even still. I have been “rebuilding” for multiple years and have the roster I think will finally crack the playoffs this year – but we’ll find out. I finished near 500 last season, and that was rostering Michael Kopech all year, and a handful of other prospects who were not yet on teams early. If I’d chosen CC Sabbathia or Anibal Sanchez, that’d have been a swing of about 300 points in my league settings, and I could have done that for 4-6 roster slots. And that matters. Not yet sure what my strategy is this going to look like this season (12 team keeper league, 20 keepers/team, 25 man roster).
We have used this strategy to win a dynasty league two years ago but some trades will haunt us this year or even last year. But you need to strike when the hype is the highest and not look back; if your going for the win go all in or forget it. This is a series of trades made to get us a win 2 years ago:
Rafael Devers for Jacob DeGromm
Rougned Odor for Whit Merrifield
Tristan McKenzie for Yasmani Grandal
Scott Kingery for Masahiro Tanaka
Chance Adams, Adrian Morejon, Trey Mancini for Luis Severino
Andrew Benintendi, Dylan Bundy, Kyle Muller for Charlie Blackmon (will hurt soon/already)
Joey Gallo, Dilson Herrera, Mallex Smith, Austin Riley for J.D. Martiniez
Michael Conforto for Corey Dickerson and Carlos Santana (will hurt soon/this year)
Mitch Keller, Estevan Florial, Aaron Altherr, WAlker Buehler for Elvis Andrus and Ender Enciarte (will hurt this year)
Noah Syndergaard and Lewis Brinson for Kris Bryant
All these trades won us a title two years ago by filling holes in our line up and now many look foolish or will soon look foolish but we moved from 12th out of 15th to winning the title by only 1 point so yes we needed these moves and get the players we got to fill holes in our team.
I usually have more criticisms than kudos around these parts… but this is all spot on. Don’t feel obligated to write too much more on the subject though.
I feel there is another cyclical layer to the discussion. This is the era of rapid promotions and limited opportunities for aging players and I think that feeds into the overvaluation of prospects even more. Another way to say that is, I don’t know how true this was five years ago – it is certainly true today. When a 20 year old hits a HR it generates headlines lol. I have been following prospects for 20+ years now and I have a rough understanding of how it all fits together but I think there are more people who are new to prospecting and lack the experience to be good at it – which further overvalues the prospects even more. When the pool of suckers starts to dry up, then prospects might be valued differently. When I started doing dynasties a decade ago prospects were not valued like they are today for many reasons. You are generally correct about the current state of affairs, but it should swing back the other way at some point. It seems like everyone in this thread agrees with your premise – the rest of the world is probably not that far behind.