Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy

There are millions of ways you can draft a fantasy baseball team; you can draft for young potential, you can draft proven veterans, you can draft your favorite players, focus on pitching, punt categories, focus on hitters, and thousands more. Many of us use a combination of several of these strategies, but the two ways I have found to be the most useful over my youthful three years (10 teams) of fantasy baseball are....

#1: Draft the best available player (preferably for an active manager)
----This idea is pretty simple, but it is a lot harder to really execute successfully than you would think. The idea, as I'm sure you well know, is to simply take the highest rated or best player available with your pick-regardless of position. You could end up with a solid all-around team this way, or you could end up with a logjam of players at a position and little to no depth or talent at another. Don't fret if the latter scenario happens though. Since you have such depth and skill at a certain position, other teams in your league will be hurting for a solid starter to plug into their lineup at that position. What you do next is simple, trade off your excess players at the position for well above what you normally could get for that player. Often times the other manager will feel as if he has to do the trade because he is running low on options, if he doesn't accept right away, keep sending proposals to he (or she) and other owners and you will eventually hit the jack pot.

#2: Fill all of your starting hitter spots first, then draft pitchers with upside
----This is the strategy that I use the most and have the best results with. To me, pitchers are far too hard to predict (they get hurt more and often without warning, they fall off the map quicker, etc) so, with your first 8 to 10 (or more) picks, fill out all of your hitting positions and maybe grab a few high quality or big-time potential players for your bench, and then for the remainder of your draft focus on getting the highest upside pitchers left. Sure, you will probably guess right on about half of the pitchers you pick, but that is why there is a free agent pool. You can add and drop your struggling pitchers for other pitchers who are putting up great numbers.

-The thing you have to remember though is...leagues aren't won with the draft. Sure a good draft will ease the road to victory, but you have to always be on the lookout for possible free agent additions and trades and such to make your team as good as it possibly can be.

If any of you have any thoughts, tips, ideas, or questions that you would like to share, don't hesitate to comment.

Good luck to everyone this year on all of your drafts and leagues.