If you are reading this chances are you play in a league that is more than a standard 5X5 roto league. Unfortunately 97% of the draft prep items out there base everything they do on 5X5, 260$, 12 team formats. The inherent problem is that the players who are doing the legwork and reading into all of the player rankings and information on the 30,000 (roughly) sports blogs and fantasy sites out there are in more diverse, interesting leagues. This week I’m going to run through some helpful ways to enhance those “cheat sheets” you see everywhere by going a bit further into keepers, minor leaguers, specific stat categories, hitting pitching balance, and many other strategies.

In keeper leagues everywhere this year players like Shane Victorino will fetch just about the same pick or value as Gary Sheffield. Now, on the surface that statement seems about right. Shane is younger, and has future value as well as present value, but Shef is in a potent lineup and has proven to be a reliable fantasy player for many years now. These guys are both going to fetch more value than they are worth and will (in all likelihood) be too expensive to realistically keep for years to come. Therefore you can take age out of the value chart. Now are you more likely to pay for a proven stat sheet filler in the best lineup in baseball, or a young player entering his first full year in the starting outfield role? Now the choice becomes easy.

The moral of the story? When you are in a keeper league PROSPECTS have incredible value, players who are young and up for auction do not. If you could pick last year between owning Gallardo on draft day (who would now either be free, or 1$ for the future) or have won the Chase Utley sweepstakes for 82$, pick Gallardo. I think you know what I’m saying here.

This makes internet research incredibly important when doing your homework as far as minor leaguers go. When Ryan Braun came up in ‘07, there were sly grins and dreams that maybe those extra sleepless nights had made it worth it. Suddenly, Ryan Braun at 1$ is the cornerstone of a franchise and the MVP value-wise of almost any league. It is never too early to take a flyer on a former top 20 pick or a BP top 50 guy, never.

As stated in the opening (and correct me if I’m wrong), I highly doubt readers are participating in only standard 5×5 roto leagues. So do yourself a favor and take whichever site you use for your rankings and head over to mlb.com and sort by your leagues stat categories when addressing your offensive rankings. Sir Andruw for example is a pretty good option at OF because of his power numbers. His BA has always been crippling. In 5X5 sheets he is only docked value for bringing down your average. However, if your league uses OBP as a category (in say a 7X7 format) then instead of hurting .125 categories, he hurts .285 categories. Should anyone drafted in the top 10 rounds really hurt you in 2 categories and not contribute to a third (SB).

This theory is also wildly underutilized in a league that favor high K pitchers. There are so many high profile stats with K’s involved. That being said, there is an even more important art to drafting pitching, starters (SP) vs. relievers (MR, CL). In general there are more categories that favor SP (starting pitcher), followed by CL (closer), then finally MR (middle reliever). Obviously I cannot discuss every scenario, but just take a look at the league rules to see if you can gain a quick leg up by not drafting a top 15 closer when a top 15 starter is more valuable. One last note on this subject…. with few exceptions, if a set-up man were good enough to be a closer, he would be one. The 5th best MR is not close to the value of the 5th best CL. Also, not drafting MR doesn’t mean you won’t get any all season. I can promise you J.C. Romero was available in every league last year, and when he got dealt he turned it around and earned a fair amount of holds in the second half. Teams change things around in the pen constantly, and there is potential for 4-5 holds in a good game and only one save. Do not draft middle relievers high, or at all.

Two major “strategies” that are often thought to be better that the rest are streaming and punting. The thought process behind streaming is that if there is no transaction limit in your league you can out-total everyone by picking up starters daily and dropping ones who are not starting. This ensures wins in a bunch of categories and doesn’t always mean losses in the average categories. Streaming almost goes hand in hand with punting a category. However, you can draft to punt categories.  Here is why neither of these strategies are going to win you a league.

Streaming - If you are the only one in your league who knows sabermetric stats, ADP, and things of the sort, you won’t need to stream to win. If you are in a competitive league, then there will be rules against it, or other owners doing it as well. Have you ever picked up the 5th and 6th best free agent starters on a given day? Let’s say sometimes they don’t have the longest outings. Also as soon as another manager catches on, he can ruin your plan by streaming a day ahead of you. Now suddenly you are stuck with horrific starting pitchers and a league who isn’t happy you were trying to back your way into the playoffs (not a good combo).

Category Punting - we will attack the obvious example which is just picking between saves and holds and completely punting the other. Let’s first assume you go with a “holds only” strategy. As previously stated, unless you end up with Shields, Okajima, Turnbow, and Linebrink there is no surefire way to win holds every week. There are always (and I repeat always) guys on free agency who are the flavor of the week for holds. Also, a team who is CL heavy only needs to start one to beat you. Therefore, he can ensure wins in SP categories and challenge you in the categories you are trying to get by punting the others.

If you are trying to get 5-7 closers and win that every week the “pick up a MR” theory works to your disadvantage, and you will lose holds having not started any MR and lose the SP categories (especially if he has a few closers he can threaten to start to make you start yours). If you are into waiting up until 3AM EST (yahoo, make it adjustable please) to see what exactly you are going against, then go for it. It just doesn’t make much sense to me.

I’ll leave you with a few useful links to help you prepare for your draft.  That is besides fantasygameday.net’s wonderful FREE ADP and scarcity reports!

MLB Park Factor
Baseball America’s Prospect Page
Sortable Stats From MLB.com
The LIMA Plan

Thanks guys, as always comments are encouraged and feel free to leave your own useful links!