2015 Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy: How To Use Tiered Rankings

What Are Player Tiers for Rankings?

Over the last few years in fantasy baseball, the topic of player tiers or tiered rankings has become a trendy way to approach your draft. Often times, in real life, something that is trendy doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best course of action or the smartest idea. It very easily could be something that will be temporary. However, in the case of looking at how to draft your team in fantasy baseball, breaking positions down into tiered rankings makes a lot of sense. This strategy is here to stay because it allows you to squeeze the most value out of your draft picks and draft position.

In fantasy baseball terms, a “tier” is a grouping of players at the same position who all have similar fantasy value, based on their stats and overall production. Once there is a significant drop off from one player to the next, this begins another tier. The main idea behind the tiered rankings system is to grab a player that’s ranked towards the bottom of a particular tier. Why is this the case? Well, theoretically if all of the players in a tier have similar stats, you want to try and wait as long as possible to pick a player in that tier because it’s maximizing your value.

Why to Use Tiers

Let’s use a quick, general example to help grasp this concept. Say player X, player Y and player Z are all in a tier together, meaning they all play the same position and they all have similar statistical projections. If Player X is picked in round 3, player Y is picked in round 4, and player Z is picked in round 5, who got the best player? I don’t even need to know who the players are…it’s the team who got Player Z in round 5. Why? If I can pick a player in the 5^th round who will give me the same production, or very close to it, as a player at the same position who is picked in the 3^rd round, I am getting the best value in that tier because I was able to use my 3^rd and 4^th round picks on other players, while my fifth round pick was used on a player who has similar stats to a player who went two rounds early.

Another benefit of using tiers is that it’s an easy way to keep track of who is left on the draft board at that position. By breaking a position into tiers, you can quickly glance at your groups of players during a draft. It will help you see if you should think about drafting a player because the position is getting thin, or perhaps waiting another round or two because there are still many, sufficient options left on the board at that position.

Not All Tiers Created Equal

One very important piece of information regarding tiers: they are not all created the same. One person’s tiers for a particular position could look different from someone else’s tiers. Just like player rankings, tiers are subjective, and everyone can have their own opinion on certain players relative to others.

For the purposes of this article, let’s use 1B as the position example, mainly because I think it’s one of the easier positions to break down into tiers. Again, these are my tiers for 1B. You might very well disagree and make different tiers, which is perfectly acceptable.

• 1^st tier: Paul Goldschmidt, Edwin Encarnacion, Anthony Rizzo, Miguel Cabrera, Jose Abreu
• 2^nd tier: Freddie Freeman, Albert Pujols, Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz, Victor Martinez, Todd Frazier, Prince Fielder
• 3^rd tier: Brandon Moss, Carlos Santana, Chris Davis, Chris Carter, Brandon Belt, Adam LaRoche
• 4^th tier: Matt Adams, Lucas Duda, Steve Pearce, Mark Trumbo, Eric Hosmer, Justin Morneau
• The rest: Mike Napoli, Joe Mauer, Adam Lind, Michael Cuddyer, Yasmani Grandal, Brian McCann, Billy Butler, Mark Teixeira, Alan Craig, etc...the list goes on...

Note: I excluded catchers who also have 1B eligible like Buster Posey and Jonathan Lucroy because you should be drafting those players as catchers.

The Home Stretch

As you can see, there’s anywhere from four to many players in a particular tier. Let’s say it’s your pick and you notice that every player in the first tier has been taken except Anthony Rizzo, and he somehow made it to the second round. You should draft him immediately because you're getting a tier 1 guy later than all the other tier 1 players. You see what I mean about value?

Hopefully you can apply the tiered rankings strategy into your own drafts. It will likely make your draft a little less stressful, and allow you to get the most valuable players, literally.