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Anyone who has played fantasy sports before being successful in fantasy sports needs to get out of the draft with a solid and balanced team. Sure, later on, you can patch holes in your team here and there and still be successful, but you would be hurting your chances of winning if you’re not good at fixing a team that’s short on power or if you don’t have a star player in your team.
However, even so, emerging from the draft with a solid team can be quite a struggle, mainly if you haven’t acquired the skills or don’t have any tips to follow. But if you make an effort to research beforehand and have a solid plan and information, you can be consistent with your drafting skills and make a great team by the time drafting is over.
That said, we will be talking about some drafting tips and tricks you can use in the drafts. You might be wondering how useful they would be since everyone has a unique way of building their team. However, if you have little to no knowledge about drafting and want to start somewhere, these simple strategies would greatly help you. Here are some of them.
Don’t Take Any Risks Unless You’re Confident
Unless you’re confident with your picks, you don’t have to take risks very early on in the drafts. When we say risks, we mean picking injury-prone players, players who just got out of surgery, or unproven players in your team. Yes, we get it; playing safe early on in the draft is boring, and you want to strike the iron while it’s hot, but if you have no plan whatsoever, we advise you against doing so.
Maybe you want that pitcher with a 100mph heater or try out that star player everyone is talking about, but if you are unsure of your draft picks, it’s better to stay safe in the early rounds.
Instead, what you can do is to find picks that are suitable investments that can carry your team in the late season. Remember, the early rounds are not where you look for profit but for picking safe investments that are more likely to get your money back in the future. You can just save your upside plays later on.
Don’t Invest Too Much in Sleepers
Let’s admit it; everybody has a sleeper. Even those people who continuously proclaim that they have no sleepers on their team probably have sleepers but call them late-round fliers, value plays, or some other clichéd term to make people think otherwise. Well, whatever they are called, people pick them because of their potential to out-cost their draft cost.
Sure, picking sleepers is a viable strategy, but if you reach too deep into them, you might be wasting your other round picks, especially early on the drafts. Yes, you would still likely waste a lot of draft picks, even if your sleeper made himself valuable.
For example, let’s head back to 2012, where Jose Altuve came off a nice and spectacular 57-game debut. The draft was going smoothly and nicely until someone drafted Altuve in the third round. There were a lot of head scratches back then. Sure, Altuve had turned out to have a nice year and probably exceeded more than his initial value, which is great.
Great for Altuve but not so much for the person who picked him very early on the drafts. Yeah, that person may have turned out to greatly value his third pick, but his ninth was just your run-of-the-mill pick. He could have drafted someone proven on his third pick and drafted Altuve on the ninth.
Make Your Own Cheat Sheet
This one is pretty simple. Study the league format you’re playing in as well as the roster requirements, and then make the cheat sheet that you can use in your drafts. Of course, putting a top 300 list won’t cut it since you won’t account when to draft the third outfielder and the middle infielder.
Also, you can utilize websites like FanDuel as they are streamlined to show you which player was drafted, your current roster, and allows you to queue a lot of players that you want to target. However, you have to choose among many live draft rooms on the internet, so it can also be a struggle.
We don’t only mean for you to make a cheat sheet on the internet. Emergencies happen like suddenly losing internet connection and the like. It’s more optimal if you make a cheat sheet on a piece of paper.
Final Thoughts
The drafts can be a struggle with many league mates you have to fight against for that specific player you want on your team. However, you can still get a good round if you know what you’re doing and have a target already in mind. You can even practice doing drafts by playing mock drafts that some websites offer.