Draft strategy: Injury risks can lead to big rewards (Part 1) from The Hardball Times Fantasy

Draft strategy: Injury risks can lead to big rewards (Part 1)

by Derek Carty
February 02, 2009

On draft day, one of the primary goals of all fantasy owners should be to acquire value. While the theoretical definition of value is a discussion for another time, and while the strategy you're using will alter who you select, it will be very difficult to win a competitive league without hitting on a couple of high-upside players.

While there are different categories of high-upside players, one such category that can pay high dividends is players with injury risks. I talked about this a bit last offseason, but I'd like to expand on it a little today.

The basic premise

Late in a draft, you'll likely see an owner select a player like Rickie Weeks or Gary Sheffield. Both are far from locks to play even 120 games, but both also have good underlying skills. If either manages to reach 150 games or more, they could provide significant value to their owners. This is the allure of players like these: if they get injured in May, they'll be easy to drop because the cost was maybe an 18th-round pick. If they stay healthy though, an owner can continue riding them out and collecting those stats.

This is a pretty simple concept, and seeing as how you're reading The Hardball Times Fantasy, you are probably already familiar with it. Today's discussion is more of a theoretical one, discussing which category of high upside player is preferable. Before we get into it, what's your initial impression? Late in a draft, would you rather select a player with significant injury risk or a healthy player with skills upside?

Injury risk or skills risk?

Take a look at these two lines. They represent the (hypothetical) absolute true talent levels of two players. Ask yourself which is better:

+----------+------+-----------+-----------+
| PLAYER   | BA   | HR/500 AB | SB/500 AB |
+----------+------+-----------+-----------+
| Player A | .300 |        25 |        20 |
| Player B | .265 |        13 |        10 |
+----------+------+-----------+-----------+

For simplicity's sake, we'll say both are corner outfielders. Obviously, Player A is superior to Player B. However, it is not inconceivable that both players would be drafted in the same round of your fantasy draft. If we imagine that Player A has a reputation for being fragile and injury-prone, and that Player B is young and has a lot of perceived upside, the draft day value of these two could be very similar.

What we need to ask ourselves, though, is which would make the better draft choice. Is there a difference? Both will have marginal value—at best—if nothing changes. Player A will only reach 300 at-bats and Player B will reach 550 at-bats with sub-par skills. If either is to have value, therefore, it will be because he reaches (or comes close to reaching) his upside.

How far away is the upside?

The question then becomes, what's more likely, that Player A reaches 550 at-bats, or that Player B's true talent level rises enough to match the value of 300 Player A at-bats?

To put things in perspective, by plugging these numbers into my player value calculator (for a traditional 12-team mixed league), we get the following results:

Over 300 at-bats, Player A would be worth almost exactly $0 (assuming 90 RBI and 90 runs per 500 at-bats).
Over 550 at-bats (and no skill change), Player A's value rises to $31.
Over 550-bats, Player B's value would be roughly $0 (assuming 70 RBI and 70 runs per 500 at-bats).
To be worth $31, Player B would need something like .300/25/25/100/100 (or .275/30/30/100/100)

In other words, to reach his upside, Player A would need a 183 percent increase in at-bats. Player B would need a 192 percent increase in home runs, a 250 percent increase in steals, and a 113 percent increase in batting average (plus the associated RBI and run gains).

Deciding which of these two things is more likely to happen can be a somewhat subjective exercise (and is dependent on circumstances not mentioned in our hypothetical example). Holding all else constant, though, personally (and keep in mind that I have not done any detailed studies on this subject), I'd bet on the injury risk player. To me, it seems that one player is more likely to stay healthy than another player is to see his true talent level rise so drastically.

Even if you disagree, though, there is one consideration that I haven't yet mentioned that really pushes the tide in favor of the injury risk player. There is a hidden value to injury risk players—and a very big one at that. Unfortunately, you're going to have to wait until Wednesday to read about it.

Derek Carty, 23, has also been published by NBC's Rotoworld, Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, and USA Today. This season, he'll be contributing to FanDuel and will be linking to all of his work at DerekCarty.com. In his three years competing in expert leagues, he has won 2 titles with 4 top three finishes, including a LABR NL title in 2009, making him the youngest person to ever win a major expert league title. Derek is a proud graduate of the MLB Scouting Bureau's Scout Development Program and is a firm believer in the importance of combining stats and scouting. He welcomes questions via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.

<< Return to Article