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Friday, March 29, 2024

First, let’s be clear that I am not talking about mock drafting. I generally find those a true waste of time. Unless you have a very dedicated group of drafters who will be quick and attentive and you are using the exact format you are preparing for – and you rarely get that in free leagues or mocks.

But there are several places you can find $100 leagues that are drafting in January and February. The National Fantasy Baseball Championship in fact has two different ones and each has different advantages and disadvantages. So let’s look at both of those draft formats.

The Draft Champions format is very popular for several reasons. First, these $150 leagues WILL make you much more knowledgeable about the mixed league player pool. And knowing the “inventory” of players is a key ingredient to success in mixed league formats – especially those with deeper rosters. These drafts are either slow online exercises that will take several weeks (hopefully you will do two rounds or better each day but many get bogged down) or “express” versions in which you will draft all 50 rounds in around five hours. The 50-man rosters (as opposed to 30 roster spots in the regular NFBC leagues) is because there are no free agent pickups throughout the season. The 50 players you draft early in the year are your only players for the six-month season. One of the benefits of these leagues is that aside from setting your lineup on Mondays and Fridays, there is no in-season work – no FAAB to grind through each week (which is one of the downsides of doing too many leagues).

The other option is to wait for the NFBC satellite leagues to start up in late-February. Here you will draft 30 players for a $125 team in a regular 15-team mixed league. You will then have FAAB to add and drop players each week during the season. In essence, this is a cheaper version of the main event leagues and much better preparation for those leagues. You will also get a better return on placing in your league as it only pays three places with the prize pool while in the DC format the league payouts are smaller because a portion of the money goes towards the overall winners (which is very difficult to do). Another advantage is that these drafts are much quicker – done in less than three hours.

Whichever you choose, these early leagues will really get you ready for whichever leagues you will be drafting in March or April. And there are no bots or players that will disappear after a few rounds.

Next week we will look at some early Average Draft Position data from these leagues. {jcomments on}