Tempering Your Enthusiasm for Minor Leaguers

I am sure that many fantasy players are now curious about how or when they can acquire the recently drafted players, dreaming of getting next year's Tim Lincecum or Chad Cordero. I once played in a league that allowed you to pick up any player at any time as long as they were under contract. That means that in that league you could pick up David Price as soon as he signed even though he never threw a pitch. In fact what happened was that the owners would snatch up these guys as soon as they were able. Occasionally this strategy worked, but more often it blew up in their face. Even outside that league, many players put undue emphasis on picking up minor leaguers.

On his BaseballHQ site, Ron Shandler wrote an excellent piece on this topic. He made the observation that those in mixed leagues have no reason to be following minor leaguers. This is advice that I have long followed myself.

In one of my leagues this year, a 12 team mixed league head to head based on points, one of the owners stockpiled Phil Hughes, Yovani Gallardo, Homer Bailey and Kevin Slowey, all in the late rounds of the draft. This league puts great emphasis on the two-start pitcher. So this owner has traded the potential of these pitchers for the actual, real return of two start pitchers in the first eight weeks. This is a disastrous outcome; and in fact this team is in last place. Of course, he also has Tim Lincecum and is at least seeing the profit on his performance. Did I mention that this is not a keeper league?

Note that even in a keeper league this is usually a flawed strategy. Though most owners would disagree, they are simply not correct in the vast majority of mixed keeper leagues. In mixed leagues, as I will discuss below, most rookie performance is replaceable with a lot less risk. In AL or NL only leagues pursuing these guys as keepers is valuable, but even in these leagues it is of much less value than owners expect. Occasionally you will see an owner who stockpiles rookies win, but it is rare, and almost never happens against tougher competition.