If you are new to the high-stakes world, the drafts can be overwhelming when you first sit down at the table. It is not just the larger amounts of money being played for or the amazing talent drafting against you that can be jarring, but the way rosters are constructed which is different from your average fantasy league.

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High-Stakes Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy: Pitchers

One of the biggest differences between a high-stakes roster and an average league is how much emphasis is placed on pitching. Elite pitching is more expensive on a site like NFBC vs the traditional fantasy ones in general. Then, it can get even more expensive when we start talking about high stakes leagues.

To illustrate this, I made a table of where starters and relievers went in the ADP of the NFBC Main Event ($1700 buy in) vs NFBC Draft Champions ($150 buy in).

As you can see this big difference is eight starters went on average in the first two rounds in the Main Event while just two went in the average Draft Champions leagues. As the draft wears on, typically they tend to even out a little more but this is much more aggressive than a traditional league.

Why do players in high stakes prioritize pitching? It is because all the data points to the upper tier of pitching being the safest. While that is not always the case, usually busts in the first two to three rounds of a draft are because of injury (i.e. Jacob deGrom and Brandon Woodruff). While the deeper you get the same injury risk, but added risk of skills related regression (i.e. Cristian Javier and Alek Manoah.) This makes the less risky propositions in the early rounds of the draft and the best place to invest in an ace.

Selecting a No. 1 Starting Pitcher

So, with this knowledge in hand, what type of player should you invest in as your ace in high stakes? You are looking stable upside down without big health concerns. If you look at the major busts from early pitching, most of them came with injury red flags because of the previous season. It is ok to take risks on pitchers, but wait until later. As far as upside, you are looking for your pitching to reach certain category targets. In the Main Event in 2023, the category targets looked like this:

The big thing you see with these numbers is how great the ratios are. Yes, you need strikeouts and wins, but the ratios are really important. The early round pitchers are the best way to get them all.

Should you pay for saves?

One of the other big things that are different for high stakes leagues and your average home league is that you pretty much have to pay for closers. I think the old moniker that “you shouldn’t pay for saves” still gets overused in the industry. First of all, that thinking is over a decade old at this point. Second, that saying was in reference to shallow formats in leagues that aren’t extremely competitive.

When you are moving into high stakes, you are playing in 15-team leagues that are very competitive. If you try and wait on a closer, you will be spending a lot of your FAAB and time during the season trying to find it on the waiver wire. I typically like to have a closer in the first five rounds and then two by round 15.

The later rounds

Finally, let’s talk about the end game. Quite often in a 30 round draft, you are going to drop 10-15 or more of the players that you drafted. So in your last 10-15 rounds I prefer to take chances on pitchers that are either going to help me immediately because they have a good early schedule or have a big upside.

I prefer not to draft a Miles Mikolas type (unless he has a good opening schedule,) but instead draft a guy that might fall into saves early on or has huge upside if things come together. You are probably dropping these guys in a week or two either way so don’t draft a guy that is injured or you will be super attached to late.

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