Our 2nd “Ask the Experts” question comes from Rob in Boston. He has a question regarding our DraftMVP tool, specifically the Advanced Search functionality:
“How do I use the Advanced Search to help me find players to draft?”
We’ve gotten this question a number of times, and I’d like to give an example of how I personally like to use Advanced Search. When used properly, it helps me decide on players that I’m on the fence about and occasionally, even helps me uncover some hidden gems.
Let’s set the stage:
Say that you’re in one of the earlier rounds of your draft and you know you need some RBIs. The obvious answer is to configure your Advanced Search for “RBI”. So, take a few moments and do that and you’ll get the following list back:
You can see that you get pretty much the same list that everyone else has been targeting as well. Sure… Pujols, Ryan Howard, Miguel Cabrera, David Wright, Manny Ramirez… those are obvious answers but they’re not available later in the draft. That’s not the “gem” we’re looking for.
RBIs are very influential in how fantasy baseball sites default rank players. So if you’re looking to fill that stat, you need to analyze players in a different way from everyone else. RBIs can be unpredictable and very dependent on a player’s situation, lineup spot, team, etc. When I look to fill that stat category after the first couple of rounds, I have to find someone that’s not on the “obvious” list. So, I’m looking for power in general. And to me, the best indicator for power is HRs and Doubles.
The power of Advanced Search is really in the ability to sort across more than one category. So, go back to Advanced Search and configure it to return players who do well in both HRs and Doubles:
When I do an Advanced Search and rank by HRs and Doubles, I get a list of players that hit for power. Some of the players on that list are not quite who you expected because their actual RBI totals weren’t quite as high as some more high-profile stars last year. But hitting for power indicates that they have RBI potential. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for. A player that hits for power has the potential to get a lot of RBIs, and if the cards fall right, his RBI numbers should catch up. So let’s take a look at what kind of results we get from Advanced Search when we rank by HRs and Doubles:
…and that’s just for the first 10 results. If we’d configured it to return the top 20 or 30 results, we’d have an even more interesting list of players with just as much RBI potential as the big names.
HOWEVER, these are guys who should these are guys who should be available long after Pujols and Miggy Cabrera are off the draft board. Now you’re talking about a meaningful in-draft advantage; identifying hidden gems that fill the needs of your evolving team. I encourage everyone to play around with the Advanced Search and to experiment with things like identifying speedsters through combinations of stats like Runs and Triples, instead of just straight up SBs. You might uncover some of your own hidden gems….
Be sure to send us a note if you have more questions about how to use Advanced Search and thanks for this week’s question Rob!
