Last Player Picked

So I’ve spent the past couple of days talking about the Sweeney Plan — a fantasy draft strategy for punting power (HR and RBI) and trying to win all of the other categories. It’s a pretty extreme strategy, and I’m a little skeptical of how well it can actually work in practice.

With that in mind, I’ve tried to assemble a couple of realistic sample teams that I think could be put together in a typical fantasy auction or draft.

Sweeney Plan Auction Team
First, I’ll try a possible auction team that implements the Sweeney Plan. I used fantasy dollar values from a recent CBS mock auction in constructing this team. Obviously, these prices would change somewhat if I were actually in this league, drafting this team. But the Sweeney Plan is flexible enough that I think I’d be able to find equivalent players at prices I like.

I’ve got strong pitchers, with 3 top SP and 2 top RP, plus a few others who I think could be bargains.

My offense is focused on AVG, R, and SB, so I targeted guys who help me in those categories without adding extra cost for HR and RBI (which are worthless for my team). Crawford and Ichiro are my big names, and I fill my OF with cheap fantasy speedsters. The rest of the offense are mostly AVG contributors who will also steal a few bases.

Sweeney Plan Draft Team
To assemble a possible draft team, I looked at MockDraftCentral’s ADPs and selected one player who could be available in each round. This should be a very conservative team; I think a better team would be available in real life. Here’s the round-by-round strategy:

1 Carl Crawford (OF)
2 Ichiro Suzuki (OF)

Crawford and Ichiro are the obvious choices with the first two picks. These are your offensive anchors to give you a solid start in all three of AVG, R, and SB. Ichiro is a reach in the 2nd, but, remember, I’m being very conservative in my estimation. For the 2nd round, I restricted myself to guys with an ADP above 24. If you thought you could get Ichiro in the 3rd, you could possibly take Halladay or Felix in the 2nd.

3 CC Sabathia (SP)
4 Zack Greinke (SP)
5 Mariano Rivera (RP)
6 Michael Young (3B)
7 Heath Bell (RP)
8 Wandy Rodriguez (SP)

With two speedsters in your first picks, it’s time to load up on quality pitchers in the middle rounds. I’m targeting at least a couple high-end SP and a couple of elite RP. Michael Young helps out my AVG, and drafting him in the middle of so many pitchers maybe keeps other teams from realizing my plan.

9 Michael Bourn (OF)
10 Juan Pierre (OF)
11 Rafael Furcal (SS)
12 Jorge Posada (C)
13 Hiroki Kuroda (SP)
14 Denard Span (OF)
15 Jonathan Broxton (RP)
16 Jaime Garcia (SP)
17 Ted Lilly (SP)
18 Rajai Davis (OF)

The mid-late rounds are crucial for the Sweeney Plan. In Rounds 9-18, grab as many fast OF as you can: Bourn, Pierre, Span, Davis. Interspersed with them, you can grab some SP and RP that have slipped through the cracks, as well as hitters at some tough to fill, non-OF positions.

19 James Loney (1B)
20 Placido Polanco (3B)
21 Russell Martin (C)
22 Tsuyoshi Nishioka (2B)
23 Alcides Escobar (SS)

The end-game is where you fill in the rest of your positions. Nobody here is make-or-break; I’m just trying to find starters.

Here’s is what the draft team lineup looks like:

So what do you think, can these teams win?

Yesterday I posted an article that described a draft strategy from 1991 — an attempt to punt HR and RBI. It’s an interesting strategy, but can the Sweeney Plan work in today’s game?

Obviously, both the real game and the fantasy game have changed over the past twenty years, and these differences require some adjustments to the plan:

1. The Rise and Fall of Power – In the AL in the early nineties, Sweeney could expect to win SB with just a couple of key players. The AL was a power league, and SB threats were few and far between. Stolen bases have made a bit of a comeback after the power-packed nineties and aughts. Now, there are guys in either league who could top 50 SB.

2. Mixed Leagues – Most fantasy leagues today are mixed leagues, with NL- and AL-only leagues largely becoming relics of the past. This is good news for the Sweeney Plan. Punting power means you are working with a restricted player pool. In an only league, the plan is dependent on getting a few key players. But a mixed league gives you options, and you aren’t ruined if you miss out on any one player.

3. 5×5 – Punting offense or pitching worked okay in 4×4, but 5×5 adds an extra counting stat that makes it difficult to get away with only starting 6 hitters like Sweeney did. However, punting 2 of 10 categories (20%) could be a slightly less risky proposition than punting 2 of 8 (25%).

These factors lead me to believe that the Sweeney Plan is still feasible today, with a couple of tweaks:

Draft a full roster of hitters.
Just like Sweeney, you need to draft a couple of top-tier anchors for your offense. Carl Crawford and Ichiro Suzuki are the two guys who excel in AVG, R, and SB who seem to be must-haves.

But part of Sweeney’s downfall was his reliance on too few hitters. In 2011, I think you fill out the rest of your lineup with bargain bin guys who can rack up steals or give you an empty batting average: Denard Span (175), Rajai Davis (219), Nyjer Morgan (301), Chris Coghlan (337), Russell Martin (250), Placido Polanco (244), James Loney (236). Especially in today’s 5×5 environment, you are going to have to have a full roster of hitters in order to be competitive in runs.

In a straight draft, you can also fill in some hitters from the mid-rounds — Juan Pierre (131), Michael Young (78), etc. However, if you can grab Crawford and Ichiro early, the middle rounds are the time to focus on pitchers.

Trade off excess for power
The obvious disadvantage of punting two categories is that your upside in the standings is very limited. So my second strategy tweak is to plan on trading some of your surplus midseason.

The great thing about trading is that you control how the standings will change. You only trade in categories where your lead is big enough you won’t lose ground. You only trade to teams that cannot pass you in the standings. You make sure your trades will negatively affect your biggest competition.

If you can get 4-6 points in HR/RBI instead of 2, you will have a little extra buffer on your lead, or you may be able to edge out another team threatening 100 points.

Tomorrow, I’ll unveil one possible Sweeney team created at an auction and another from a serpentine draft. I’ll let you judge how realistic it would be for these teams to be competitive.

Twenty years ago, in the spring of 1991, a guy name Hugh Sweeney tried a fantasy baseball strategy that sounds completely crazy — something so crazy no one had tried it before and few have attempted since. And for Sweeney, it was a strategy that almost worked.

The story of Sweeney’s attempt was preserved by Alex Patton in the 1992 edition of his annual fantasy book, Patton’s Player Profiles. Ask Rotoman has the full article, titled The Collapse of Russia available in PDF:

I want you to see what a no-brainer they had going for them; how bad luck and, yes, serious [mess]-ups were all that stopped Sweeney once he had devised his plan.

The plan was, quite obviously, to win in six categories, come in last in two. Had Sweeney succeeded in doing that, he would have had 74 points. He was counting on no team coming out of the auction in great shape; he figured all these old goats would punch themselves silly, and he was right. Seventy-four points would have won.

Sweeney’s simple plan was to punt HR and RBI. In a 4×4 league, he spent big on pitching and then grabbed a few hitters who could add steals and batting average.

I encourage you to read all of Alex’s essay, including his round-by-round post-mortem of the fateful auction. (I realize there’s usually nothing worse than reading about someone else’s draft, but this one is worth it.)

In the next few posts I’ll unveil a modern-day Sweeney Plan to see if it is at all feasible in today’s draft environment, twenty years after it was first attempted.