Amazingly, the mock draft season is already in full force. It sure seems like mock drafts have started wayyyyyyy earlier than in previous years. Heck, the first one that was held was actually one I participated in and occurred on the last day of the regular season! Anyway, I wanted to touch on something that continually crops up when people talk about their draft strategy. 

On message boards and in mock draft commentaries from its participants, fantasy owners are always talking about "reaching" for a player. Is it a good idea in certain situations? How early is it still considered okay to reach? First off, I'm not even sure I fully understand the definition of reaching. I feel like it could be either of the following two:

1) You value a player as a 10th rounder, but for whatever reason, he gives you a boner when you look at his name during the draft and decide to "reach" for him and take him in the 9th round

or

2) You value a player as a 5th rounder, but his average draft position rates him as a 10th rounder, so you figure you could wait a round and take him in the 6th, which would be a "reach" compared with the player's ADP, but not compared with your own value

The second scenario is probably what most fantasy owners mean when talking about reaching for a player, but I'm sure that's not always the case. The first scenario might come into play when you panic after a position run and feel you must take the best available player at that position or you forgot that stolen bases was a category and decided you had to take a steals guy immediately.

Whatever your specific reasoning, I don't understand how it's ever okay to reach for a player. Only in certain rare occasions could I see it being acceptable. Though I will note that our Editor-in-Chief takes teh exact opposite position, something we have discussed on the Roundtable Show.

In the first scenario above, something must have happened during the draft that caused you to draft the player earlier than you valued him. Panicking during a positional run and drafting the next best player there so you don't get shut out is almost always the wrong move. I understand you don't want to be stuck with one of the bottom tier guys, but these bottom tier guys are worth a last round pick, which is where you would get them. That means you will break even with the pick. By reaching for a player to fill a position after a run, you're in essence paying $10 for a $7 player because you don't want to pay $1 for a $1 player at that position. As a result, you're giving up the opportunity to draft a player at a different position who actually gives you $10 of value, or more if someone slipped through the cracks because of the position run.

My second example of forgetting SBs was a category and then reaching for a steals guy is similar to the above. You don't need to leave the draft with a 100% perfectly balanced team. Accumulate value, worry about category needs later. Many will disagree with me on this one, but I've always gone for value in drafts. Given how we're dealing with baseball players who are still human beings that are unpredictable, you really can't be sure what categories you'll end up needing, even if you think you're low on power or steals. 

Moving on to the second scenario, this is why ADP is so important. If on average the rest of the fantasy playing population is drafting David Price, for example, in the 16th round, don't take him in the 10th because you love him, believe he's the real deal, think he has a good chance to earn top 20 starting pitcher value, and wanted to "make sure you got him". You're greatly limiting your profit potential by doing this and now Price suddenly has to perform like a top 20 starting pitcher just to break even for you! Besides that, you could have probably waited until the 14th round to draft him and instead drafted another player in the 10th who typically goes there. In that case, now you'll get both, but you certainly wouldn't have if you took Price in the 10th instead.

I think a big reason this second scenario happens so often is because fantasy owners, and especially "experts", try to get too cute and want to show off how knowledgeable they are about impending breakouts and rising stars. So they ignore value and draft their big sleeper way too early just to show everyone they saw that huge season coming. Of course, this is terrible draft strategy and actually proves that this fantasy owner is really no expert. He might have some expertise in player evaluation, but when it comes to draft strategy, he's lacking.

Another reason for reaching is because fantasy owners seem to always target certain players. I know we've talked about this on the Roundtable Show and here before, and Patrick and I disagree about this. Personally, I don't draft players, I draft stats. I have never and will never target a player or have some sort of list of players I want. I go into all my drafts with projections and dollar values and draft based on who falls to me. As a result, I won't ever reach unless it's that rare occassion where it makes sense to (unfortunately I can't think of an example right now). You could greatly reduce your temptation to reach for your super duper breakout sleeper by just sticking to your values and having a good set of ADPs on hand so you don't take a player earlier than you need to, thereby limiting your profit.

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Moving on From Postional Scarcity...
written by Anthony Catanzaro, January 31, 2010

In past years, I was obsessed with positional scarcity and it served me well. But its certainly true that I reached more often than I should have (i.e. Rollins, 1st round last year)

But as I move on to tougher competition each year, I'm trying to balance the specific categorical and positional scarcity perameters with strict value drafting. (I wrote about it in Positional Scarcity Killed My Parents...)

This is a valuable perspective Mike, I think readers should appreciate your advice. Makes me wonder what your teams are gonna look like this year too.

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Once in a While
written by Greg Marta, January 29, 2010

I'm a big fan of 1 calculated reach. There's no faster way to run your team into the ground than persistent reaching throughout the draft. 1 reach in the first 10 rounds is acceptable if you have a little bit of a hunch. Cole Hamels and Jose Reyes are 2 players coming off of down years that could far surpass their ADPs. Age and previous performance make them strong candidates to bounce back completely. "It's time to ask yourself what you believe".

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