While year-to-year leagues remain an interesting challenge of draft rankings, waiver-wire work, and successfully dodging injuries, more and more fantasy owners are curious to try a keeper or dynasty set-up.
The allure of a deep roster league is that it focuses around a manager’s ability to snag talent before his competitors, allowing for a gifted manager to steadily assemble a star-filled roster.
But how many keeper-league managers are anything more than dead money? How many are frustrated with an inability to rebuild a losing team?
This week I detail two important elements to keeper-league success: Talent Acquisition and Successfully Navigating Trade Markets.
Talent Acquisition
Although
winning any league requires a balanced team – good players at every
position, relievers to garner saves or whatever categories your league
uses – too many managers cling to the notion that their rosters must
always have balance, sacrificing their potential to pick up more
talented players at other positions.
If you are a mid-level
team or lower without much hope of winning the league, do you really
need to carry a back-up catcher? Do you need to patrol the waiver-wire
for a David Weathers-type closer who might get 15-20 saves this year
but is not reliever to build around?
In deep roster leagues, do not be afraid of collecting simply the best talent,
preferably young or entering one’s prime. Carrying a huge surplus of
outfielders isn’t a great permanent strategy, but if a young stud is
available, don’t be afraid to drop a mediocre player at position you’re
currently lacking in order to secure the better prospect or young
player.
Too many keeper-league rosters are laden with average players who will never figure into that team’s future success.
Secondly,
so many young players go through cycles of overvaluation and
undervaluation. It is essential to become aware of when a prospect’s
popularity is peaking or currently neglected.
If you had
secured and protected erstwhile prospect darlings Andy Marte, Casey
Kotchman, and Dallas McPherson two years ago you’d currently have a
seriously weakened crop of young players, unless you were astutely able
to find buyers for these players as they began their struggles.
Project
Prospect exists for a reason: to offer better analysis and detailed
summaries of the respective potentials of young players. Keeper league
strategists must always be on the alert for when a young player’s value
is peaking or in decline.
Becoming a Successful Trader
The greatest ramification of acquiring a large pool of talented players is roster flexibility. A plethora of options will allow a competent fantasy owner the ability to shape his trade via productive trades.
If you have been able to hoard and collect a multitude of talented players, or valuable commodities, you will then be able to use the other managers in the league to acquire commodities that your team currently lacks.
If
you have seven outfielders, every one should be available to trade. Do
not focus solely on trading your weakest assets. Similarly, do not feel
that because you now have depth you must trade your best assets to
strengthen the areas in which your team is currently weak.
This is where analyzing your league as a distinct commodities market will yield its most striking benefits.
Suppose
in a losing year I managed to collect a bunch of highly-regarded
pitching prospects. With so many pitching assets, I now have the
opportunity to patiently find and acquire other players from other
managers.
The key phrase, however, is patiently. I
cannot emphasize enough the role that patience plays in becoming a
successful commodities trader. If you have spent many months acquiring
outfielders, only to find that the managers you want to trade with are
not so interested in paying top value… wait!
One can never
guarantee in the short term that you will always be able to trade away
assets at your leisure - they are not a liquid medium of exchange. Just
as the prices of metals and stocks fluctuate, so too will the markets
for your players.
However, if you have indeed collected
talented players, your trading efforts will eventually be rewarded. An
impatient manager eager to change his roster will finally agree to the
move that best suits your team.
Maybe you can find an owner
desperate for your top asset, so as to build your team’s talent pool
even higher. Perhaps your mid-range assets have now become more
valuable, and will finally bring very good players at positions you
need.
Be open to ideas, be flexible with your roster, and be patient in making sure that no deal was accepted to quickly when more value assets could have been obtained had you waited a few weeks or talked with more rival managers.
Remember, a deep-roster league is essentially its own commodities market. How well you play it on a consistent basis will eventually determine your year-to-year success.
Nick Christie can be reached at nickchristie@gmail.com.