Fantasy Baseball: More Snake Draft Strategy

Part of my pre-draft research/work, for snake drafts, involves reviewing the draft tendencies of other owners in my league. I participate in 3 NL-only leagues, two are auction/keeper leagues, and one is a 5 x 5 snake/non-keeper league. In the snake draft league, I take a look at the prior year draft results, by round, to determine what round I can draft starting pitching, before I lose out on the top 10 starters. Well, I did that until my wife threw away all of my prior year draft results.

I also do this work to see if certain owners are consistent in drafting pitchers in the first or second round, and you will be surprised, every year the same owners draft hitter/pitcher in the first two rounds of the draft. Me, I like to draft all hitters until at least the 6th-7th round, making sure I draft enough power hitters and speed guys to ensure I can place well in the hitting categories. For some reason, I have never really drafted based on the BA of the hitter I am drafting.

But during the draft, I usually try to draft the best available hitter, rather than focusing on filling a position of need. If I have drafted 3 outfielders with no first baseman, and the best available hitter is an outfielder, I am drafting the outfielder. Between the 6th-8th rounds, I like to draft at least one solid starting pitcher. I will focus on drafting a closer by the 11th or 12th round, and sometimes, I will draft closers back to back just to make sure I get two decent closers. I am not drafting one of the top closers like Jonathan Broxton or Heath Bell.

Another thing I do is look back at last year's results to see what HR or SB total would place me in the top 3 in these hitting categores and draft to those numbers. For example, if 240 HRs would have placed me in the top 3 in HRs last year, I try to draft enough power to get to that 240 HR total. The same goes for the other hitting and pitching categories. It is not easy to draft a balanced team, but it is a good idea to know what the results were in each category from the prior season going into your draft.