The art of in-season player acquisition in fantasy baseball
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Competitive fantasy baseball owners spend months researching the player pool for the upcoming season. Most people who have ever played any sort of fantasy sport at any level of competition claim the draft is the best part of the entire season. It's also where many novice owners will stop paying attention to their league, particularly if the league lacks a significant monetary incentive.
With months of buildup, there's no denying the fun and importance of a fantasy baseball draft. While choosing all the right sleeper players and avoiding the high-cost busts at the draft can go a long way for a team's future success, it's vital to recognize drafting neither wins nor loses a single fantasy season.
Drafts comprise just one third of the necessary features to securing a fantasy championship, with the in-season components of waiver moves and trades representing equal importance and value. This article will focus on the latter two-thirds of your path to a fantasy baseball victory.
Waivers
From the second your draft ends to the final day of the fantasy baseball season, the waiver wire will be the best source of infusing additional talent to your team. Even after a perfect draft, you will need to make many additions and subtractions to and from your roster for a variety of reasons.
FAAB
More common in fantasy football leagues, competitive baseball leagues have also adopted the FAAB system, in which owners have a set budget to spend on free agents. This system was primarily developed to create a free market in which any owner can acquire any available player instead of the last-place team or first place on the waiver wire rotation having the first opportunity.
Under a FAAB system, owners will typically begin the season with $100 to spend on available players. Some leagues will further restrict owners by not allowing free-agent bids of $0, instead forcing owners to spend at least one dollar for every player they wish to acquire, thus restricting the total number of moves each is capable of making.
Conventionally, $0 bids will be allowed, but owners need to be confident in their ability to acquire said player, particularly early in the season. It's often worth the minimal investment.
Waiver advice articles often refer to the percent of the available budget owners will need to spend on a player. With this, owners will often be more willing to unload on available players early in the season. This method does assume all owners in the league are spending money at similar rates, thus the percentages of remaining budgets will remain similar throughout the season.
Closely monitor the remaining budgets of your competition while deciding on your own bid. Should you have more money than your closest competition, it can and should be used to block other owners from acquiring talent they need in the event of an injury to one of their top performers.
Adding top talent early in the season makes sense as the player's services will be available for most of the season but it's important to save some of the budget for injuries and prospect call-ups later in the year. Washington Nationals SS/2B/OF Trea Turner was the most valuable rookie call-up in fantasy last season, despite a grossly delayed start to his MLB season.
Adds
Much more simple than FAAB systems, most standard leagues will simply have the waiver priority follow the standings, whereby last place has first chance and first place has last chance. Alternatively, leagues can follow a rotation, cycling through the reverse draft order when assigning priority.
There are three main reasons to add players: undeniable production, potentially key contributions from an unknown/unowned prospect or an increased role - likely resulting from an injury. Be careful adding players who have produced well above their career rate for a select amount of time. While the production can certainly be used, they should be returned to the waiver wire immediately upon the expected regression.
A handful of key prospects will debut in the MLB every season. However, for the majority of these prospects, their value can often be at its highest prior to ever taking a single swing in the majors. Know your prospects, and strongly consider trading them immediately if you make the successful claim.
In the event of an injury to a player on your roster, the real-life replacement is the most obvious fantasy option, and is also the most likely to provide similar production. Always measure the available options against each other, but a newly-minted starter will have tremendous value in deeper leagues.
Drops
Most leagues will provide the benefit of several DL spots, on which to place injured players. Owners may need to make difficult decisions in leagues without this luxury, or once injuries begin to pile up by the middle of the season. It can often be far more beneficial to stash an injured player on the bench and relinquish a lesser, healthy talent.
Be sure to inquire around your league for trade interest before dropping any notable player. More on this below.
Streaming
Most beneficially used on pitching, immense value can be gained by using fringe fantasy starters only in their most ideal matchups. With the standard fantasy pitching categories consisting of wins, saves, strikeouts, ERA and WHIP, owners can forego the latter two categories while assuring some level of added production in the simple counting stats.
Hitters can also be streamed during torrid runs of offense or in weeks where their team will be playing a full set of games, in favor of an alternative with a couple of off days scheduled.
Trades
Much more fun than simply trolling the waiver wire, trades are also far more rare and extremely difficult to pull off in most competitive leagues. Being smart about your trade offers can be extremely rewarding and vital to the future success of your team for any length of time.
Buying low/selling high
The most obvious moves to make are often the most poorly executed. It makes sense to acquire a star player in the midst of an inexplicable slump or to sell off a relative no name enjoying the best success of his career.
Unfortunately for those trying to make these moves, most others in your league are also well aware of this logic.
When buying low or selling high it's important to seek out the proper trade partner. Find the owner who just lost a key position player to an extended injury. Look to acquire pitching help from the owner flush with SPs but struggling to keep pace in the hitting categories. All trades will need to help both parties. The edge to be gained is by ensuring the players you acquire will help you for longer.
Player-acquisition limits
Hopefully your commissioner is savvy enough to do without transaction limits. It's a real skill in fantasy baseball to be able to maximize the amount of stats your team compiles by ensuring you're also getting the highest amount of player usage. Innings limits in particular should be avoided.
Standard leagues will limit owners to five or six moves per week. Moves early in the week should be looking at the top available talent at either hitter or pitcher, while any newly named closer or starting position player is a must get.
Owners should be sure to preserve two or three moves for the weekend, when they should be looking to stream some starting pitchers if trailing by marked amounts in any category.
It's also important to use up all remaining weekly limits by Sunday night. Go ahead and pick up and rookie rumored to be receiving a promotion, or add the previous week's hottest hitter.
Weekly moves
While most leagues allow daily roster transactions (though it may take a day or two for the move to be reflected) others allow only weekly moves with lineups locking after the first pitch is thrown in the first game of Monday's schedule. In this instance, owners need to correctly prioritize their desired transactions.
It can be more valuable to grab the top available player on the wire as opposed to the top positional need, as they'll hold more value in the league, even if not necessarily for your own team.