Are you banking on Trea Turner carrying your team in Philadelphia? Are you hoping to cash in on the Ronald Acuna bounce-back season? If so, you’ll need one of the first three picks in your draft to land either superstar.

Exciting for you if you get it, but lame if you don’t.

See, the concept of snake drafts is fine, as more times than not, your first-round pick isn’t the one that will make or break your team. But the thought of needing added luck in hopes that a person falls to the available pool of players in order to put them on your team sucks.

That’s why I’m an advocate for salary cap drafts, and I encourage everyone to try them at least once.

Not only is there a new level of strategy that comes along with them, but it’s the most fun you’ll have drafting a team. And the draft is our favorite part of fantasy, after all.

Below, I’m going to go through my process when entering a salary cap draft and why I think it can help you when you enter yours. Just don’t use mine against me because then I’ll be mad.

2023 MLB Salary Cap Draft Primer

Establish Values

Every player needs to have an associated cost with them. Full stop. You need to make sure that you’re putting together a spreadsheet where you know what you expect the player to go for, what you value him at, and the max you’ll spend on him.

Where do you get these values, though? Well, many websites will list the salary cap (or old-school and archaic “auction”) values that you can use. I take the projection systems that I trust the most (The Bat and ATC), run them through FanGraphs Auction Calculator, and adjust them to my league settings. From there, I take the average of the two projection sets and tweak them based on my rankings and projections.

That’s the list that I take in, and it gives me a good idea of how much a player will go for.

Break Players Into Tiers

This is crucial for salary cap drafts. If you think the top five SPs are close enough in value, your goal should be to get one of them at the best value. When does it happen? Well, in my experience, I find it pays off being either the first or second to last to grab a player from a tier. After the initial price point is set, the second player in that tier tends to go for a little more. And the last player? Forget about it. The people will be so desperate to get a player in that tier that they’ll pay more money for them than the players ranked above them.

Have a Spending Plan

Do you know how many steals, home runs, saves, etc., you need? Map it out ahead of the draft so that you know how much you want to allocate to each position and each category. Know where the dips are and know when you want to pounce.

You have to be flexible with your spending, or before you know it, you’ll be spending more than you want on third-round players and missing out on the studs.

Don’t Get Caught

This can apply across the board, but we’ll talk about a few different ways you can get caught in a salary draft.

The first is price enforcement. This is where you bid up a player that you don’t really care to have but know that others like. This is a fun way to get someone to spend up on a player they love (do this with Vladimir Guerrero and me, please). But if a player has a $33 value and you see a bidding war happening, jumping the bid up to $40 could result in you getting stuck with them. That’s seven precious dollars that could have gone somewhere else and now forces a dramatic shift.

The other way is getting caught with money at the end of the draft. Most drafts are set where teams have a $260 budget, and the goal is to leave the draft not only by spending $260 and leaving no money behind but also walking away with a team that is valued at far more than $300.

Teams will say they leave the draft with no money, but they’ll also spend $8 on a $1 player just to do it. If you look back at bids throughout the draft where you bowed out by $1 only to spend $8 on Mike Clevinger, you’ll regret it deeply.

The last way is mixing up your bidding strategy. I try to mix and match between players who I actually want and those I don’t. If you do one or the other, you’ll be showing your hand too much, allowing your league mates to take advantage of you.

Adjust and Tweak

As the draft goes on, your target sheet can be used as a guide, but you’ll need to be willing to adjust as the draft goes. One of the biggest detriments to drafters in this format is that they stick to their targets and prices too much. This allows a ton of value to take place on the board.

And if you already have an elite third baseman, but Nolan Arenado is sitting there $5 below your value of him, take him, too. Figure the rest out, but don’t be afraid to jump up and take advantage of the discounts. There will be a ton, so you’ll need to pick and choose, but you’ll get a feel for it as you go.

Pay the Extra Dollar at the End

It’s not smart to spend $8 on a $1 guy, but spending $2? Yeah, that’s fine. See, the end of the draft can take a while because most teams will be working within a strict budget, allowing them only a dollar or two wiggle room for the backend guys.

There are also a lot of sleepers at this point in the draft, so having that extra dollar matters. Pay attention to what the other managers have and what they need. When you nominate someone that you really want, nominate them for $2 instead of $1. It will increase your chances of landing the player if the other manager has to pay $3 for the $1 player instead of $2.

Beyond our fantasy baseball content, be sure to check out our award-winning slate of Fantasy Baseball Tools as you prepare for your draft this season. From our free mock Draft Simulator – which allows you to mock draft against realistic opponents – to our Draft Assistant – which optimizes your picks with expert advice – we’ve got you covered this fantasy baseball draft season.

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Michael Waterloo is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Michael, check out his archive and follow him @MichaelWaterloo.