The Draft
It's where it all starts. Here I show you how I set up for a season and the way I maintain my team with maximum efficiency. Along with my strategy, are several downloadable worksheets. These may be useful as is, or give you some ideas to incorporate into your own sheets.
Step 1:
"The most valuable commodity I know of is information." Gordon Gekko from the movie Wall Street
Yep, that pretty much sums it up. But the key is getting the information quickly and keeping it organized. Fantasy baseball is very time consuming. You have to love it, otherwise you will quickly become overwhelmed. Be smart about it, use Google reader to do the heavy lifting for you. Most people already have a google account set up, if you don't; run, don't walk to go and sign yourself up. You can't beat the price....IT'S FREE!!!!!
The power of an RSS reader is awesome. It allows you to blow through information faster than Congress though a pile of taxpayer dollars. Go to the Research section here on our website and peruse the media and independent sites listed. Choose your favorite ones and then subscribe to them through Google reader. You will then be able to quickly go through the latest info in a fraction of the time it would take you sifting through various websites. It brings all the info to you.
Next, go to google alerts and set up notifications on any player you like. You can set it up to deliver the info right to your Google reader. You have the very latest right at your fingertips in the blink of an eye. Meanwhile, your competition is slowly combing through their familiar sites and possibly missing needed info that you already have.
Step 2:
This is where I start putting all the info together. I have found what works best for me is using worksheets to make notes, writing down prospective players, players I want to avoid, etc. This is one of last year's sheets that I used. The first five picks listed are keepers from the previous year.
2010 Draft
We do a keeper league, so my first 5 players were already penciled in. There were other sheets that I used also. I have found that going into draft night after all the research is done it is much more efficent to have just a few sheets in hand, along with one comprehensive player cheat sheet printed out from your favorite website. Too much info gets cumbersome, even if you have a lot of time to make your picks during the draft. You can get lost in a sea of information. We do a Yahoo plus league, so we do a live online draft and it goes pretty fast, as you probably know. With only 2 minutes to make your pick, you had better have your player ready to go, especially after say round 10 (This is where championships are made!) Listed here in pdf downloadable form are some of the worksheets I use.
Worksheets:
** The ticket and graphic pictures are just some images I found on the web. I happen to like the way old tickets and graphics look and just decided to put them on there. Excuse my nerdiness. ** I will add any more sheets here as I make them and also list them in word format as well as pdf.
Step 3:
Once the draft is over, I do a quick run down on my list of players that I had notes on to see if I missed anyone that wasn't taken. I put them on my watch list on Yahoo for possible pickup. I put Google alerts on all my players and possible pickups. I also make sure my RSS reads are all up to date on all the news sources I need. That's it, now your are ready to roll for the season.
