Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

Been having some interesting discussions in other threads about good verses bad drafts, luck, and recovering from bad draft.

Seems to me while debating whether you can recover from a bad draft at high cap levels is interesting may not be most productive use of time. So starting this thread.

What do some of you do after the autodraft to analyze whether you had a good draft or not? Assuming it is not just luck then what do people do to improve for future drafts.

Do you simply look at waiver position and say #1 must have been bad draft and #12 must have been bad draft. True or not this is not very helpful for being better prepared next time.

One thing I like to do is look beyond whether I got what I wanted to whether I am happy with my consolation. For example I list Mantle #5 and get Snider as consolation prize do not consider that a bad pick or bad luck. Might slot him same place next time. If get stuck with Combs and consider that a bad pick. Either draft someone else or move Mantle higher on card next time.

I track who I pick by cap and park and the rank that I placed them in. If I don't get someone I deem very important, I will move that player up in my rankings. I tweak it just about every time before entering a team.

I also pay attention to who I receive if I miss a pick. If those players are any good, then I will list that player near the end of my draft hoping to pick them up next draft.

[quote:3bb27c179b="Valen"]What do some of you do after the autodraft to analyze whether you had a good draft or not? Assuming it is not just luck then what do people do to improve for future drafts.[/quote:3bb27c179b]

The pre-waiver autodraft outcomes are too dependent on competitor experience level and park selection weightings. Thus, it is difficult to declare whether you had a good or bad draft card.

If anything, not getting my "must have" cards is a blessing as it forces you to change your park paradigm.

If I change one thing from draft to draft, is a selecting a park to match what I sense is the opposite of the league's leanings e.g., Forbes festivals.

I'm still green when it comes to experience in this game, so I am not going to try to go deep into these discussions with you more experienced & more knowledgeable players simply out of respect. But sometimes a fresh set of eyes can add a perspective, so here's my two cents.

IMO I think analyzing the building of a team gets over complicated sometimes. Sure there are multiple factors involved due to the inherent dice probability AND due to the game of baseball itself (and its inherent & differing strategies). But personally I don't see the building of a strat team being all that different from sitting down at a blackjack table in Vegas.

BJ is a game of odds/probability (albiet not exactly the same) in which those odds are stacked in favor of the house. It's you verse the house, in a battle to take each other's money (for the moment ignore the impact of other players at the table).

Now in strat it isn't the player verse strat, it's players versus other players at the mercy of probability, but the house in this case is the nature of the probability in strat. We have no control over how the dice will roll, just like we have no control over the cards that we're dealt in BJ. However one of (if not the biggest keys) to winning at BJ is optimizing/maximizing your opportunities, namely through betting (double down, splitting etc). You can change the circumstances to play more in your favor through that little bit of control you have over your chips. Same with strat. Again no control over the dice, little control over the draft (in a sense draft:cards dealt::you:full table of BJ players), but through the selection of players in accordance with ballparks, approach to scoring or preventing runs etc by the manager you optimize your opportunities (if/when they arrive) and change some circumstances to your benefit.

Don't take my comments as suggesting it is a waste of time to try to get somewhere discussing this, b/c it probably isn't, and to be honest it can be educational and borderline entertaining.