10 Draft Day Tips by Aaron Baker

As your draft day approaches, there are certain criteria needed in order to complete a successful draft. Here are 10 draft day tips I believe will help you have that successful draft.

1. Have a good idea of your league mates strategies. Communicating with your competitors during the course of the offseason whether fantasy or just baseball related will help give you insight on player preferences and possible strategies.

2. Have a plan in place. Whether you decide on position scarcity, team balance, highest rated player, or punting a category decide on that strategy and stick to it. Creating a cheat sheet or downloading available ones will help in your decision making, and in formulating what strategy will be best for your skills.

3. Make sure you have good knowledge of offseason moves that have taken place. A hitter going from friendly hitters’ park to a pitchers’ park could effect his value moving forward. Vise versa for pitchers.

4. Participate in mock drafts during the offseason. It would be best if you could get your leaguemates to participate in a mock draft with you, but if not, getting a general idea of where players may fall will help in your decision making as to where your type of players will fall.

5. Buy or lookup as many fantasy articles/magazines as you can before your draft. Getting many different perspectives will help you make your own conclusions on players you prefer. You should never rely solely on “expert” evaluations, but rather use them as stepping stones to create your own.

6. Go for the win now strategy. In keeper leagues, there will be the rookie prospect guy that will always be looking for the next big thing. It’s likely that this guy will never win. You should always be looking to win now and stay away from the highly touted prospect and take the established player(s). You can also pickup the midseason rookie callups to use as trade bait to help enhance you championship aspirations by trading with the prospect guy getting that proven talent for the stretch run later on.

7. Have a plan in mind as to what type of sleepers you will target. Look at overall numbers, season splits, and lineups. Season splits will give you the best insight, as players like Rich Hill and Adrian Beltre don’t have impressive overall numbers, but looking at their splits will give you an idea as to how their season began and ended.

8. Save these sleepers for the middle-to-late rounds of your draft. Although some of your sleepers will be hyped by “experts” to breakout control you excitement. Try to get them where you have them targeted on your cheetsheets where their value will be maximized.

9. Be conscious of roster flexibility. Try and draft some players with multi-eligibility. This can help fill position needs when injuries occur.

10. This may be the most important tip. Be ready to ADAPT. Don’t necessarily change your strategy, but have multiple players for each round that you want to target. Drafts rarely ever go perfect, so implementing multiple options can be a lifesaver when problems arise.

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