Ray’s Rundown 3/9: What is Tiering & Why Does it Matter?

What is the best way to rank players? Is it on a top overall list? Do you lean heavily on the ADP charts? Is it based on stats alone? Ray Flowers discusses what the Tiering Model is, and why it’s a vitally important tool on draft day – even if you’ve never used it or even heard of it before. And yes, focusing on a player pool might be better idea than focusing on a specific player.

Tiering is a fairly standard procedure in fantasy sports, or at least it should be. Here’s a quick refresher on what it is and why you should be employing it at the draft. 

As discussed in How To Use ADP Properly, having a list with rankings on it is merely a piece of the draft day puzzle as you attempt to put together a dynamite squad. There is more to it than merely the list however, there’s the needed mindset and understanding of draft day dynamics. Let’s dig into it.

The first thing you need to absolve yourself of is that specific players are all that matters. By that I mean some folks are convinced that they have to have Player X. They plan for weeks to draft Player X. They construct their entire roster around the belief that Player X is the right player to take them to fantasy greatness in the coming season. They sit down at the draft, super confident in their plan, only to have Player X taking one pick before they had planned to take him. With that, the fantasy player is crestfallen, feels terrible about their plan, and thinks that all they can do is to battle for a second-place finish. 

Nonsense.

You need to understand one main salient point, and I know it’s going to be very difficult for some of you to grasp what I’m about to say.

You should be drafting the production, not the name on the back of the jersey. 

Whether you prefer Xander Bogaerts over Carlo Correa, it’s not like all hope is lost if I end up with Correa. I know it’s hard to hear, that getting your favorite player or bust isn’t the right way to draft a team, but it’s really not. We all have a list of players that we would prefer to roster. I’m not going to stupidly sit here and say that players don’t matter, there would be no reason to do rankings if I thought all players were the same, so I hope you understand my intent here. The path to proper roster building should go like this, if we’re using our shortstop situation as a guide.

I don’t want a space holder at shortstop.
I want a top-10 shortstop.
I want a shortstop with average/power.
Identify those players that fit the need. 
Draft one of them.

Basically, the tiering model says that you do not need Player A, Player B or Player C.
The tiering model says you need either Player A, B or C.

So instead of focusing on a specific player, you focus in on a group of similarly skilled players and make sure you get one those fellas. 

You can tier players in a multitude of ways. 

By position.

By skills.

By health.

By playing time. 

The ideal way to use the model would be to incorporate all of those elements at a single position (you will find the rankings in this Guide tiered by color for each position). Remember, the goal is not to get Player A, the goal should be to get Player A, B or C etc. 

Let’s put this line of thought into practice.

Let’s use this hypothetical setup for the shortstop position (this is merely an illustrative model, and will not match the rankings). 

NOTE: There is no set number of players to place on each tier. 

Let’s say that in your model, for your 12-team league, there are 12 shortstops that you consider to be in Tiers 1-3. Pretty obvious that you will want to make sure you get one of those 12 then, right? Ok, let’s move into a more direct application of the model.

Let’s say we’re down to Tier 3 and we don’t have a shortstop yet. We obviously want to make sure we grab one of the four names left. In the next round we see two of those shortstops go off the board, so there are only two left. It’s imperative that we get one. When it comes to our pick, we look at our handy rankings list and we notice that there are five outfielders left that we project to be more productive than the two shortstops. If we are employing the – take the best player available strategy, or following an overall rankings list – we would be forced to take the outfielder. However, this is likely to be a mistake. Question. Let’s say we follow the rankings list and take the “higher rated” outfielder. What are the odds that two shortstops go off the board before our next pick? Wouldn’t it be riskier to hope that both shortstops are still there are the next pick, versus taking a shortstop to make sure you get one, and then waiting for one of those five outfielders to be there with the next pick? Pretty obvious answer, is it not?

We need to take a holistic approach when building a team. We all want to have a team of stars, I get it, but it’s more complicated than that. We need to fill categories and positions in fantasy baseball. That dictates that drafting the better player may not always be the right thing to do. Yes, I said it. Drafting the “better” outfielder over the more “needed” shortstop, might be a mistake. In fact, I would argue that, in the above example, it would be a mistake. Remember, we’re putting together a team. We need to minimize, when all possible, holes on our team. If we determine that hole at shortstop is immanent, we must act before we reach the edge of the cliff. The basic premise is that we want a solid player at every spot on our team, versus ending up with dead zones that we know we have to work on the minute the draft is over. We want our starting lineup to consist of player, at ever spot, that we feel we can trust to at least break even, versus the situation we are often left in saying to ourselves, ‘I really like my team, but boy, is my shortstop and middle infield position a mess.’ I know it’s not always possible to have a team full of trustable pieces, I know it’s often impossible to avoid some level of weakness at some spot on the roster. 

The goal is to avoid the manifestation of that situation of weakness, and the best way to avoid that us to use the tiering model. The model keeps you aware of the potential downside if you fail to act when the resources at each position start to dry up. It’s also an easy shorthand to use at the draft. When those bullets start flying, quickly, you can only benefit from a shorthand model that tells you when those resources are dwindling. You don’t want to get caught reacting after something happens. You want to be proactive with dealing with the situation. The tiering model will help you to delineate when is the right time to act to avoid needing to drown your draft day sorrows with a tall cold one. 

For more talk about baseball, don’t forget to get Lunch Money on the Bettor Sports Network. The show is on Monday through Friday from 12-3 PM EST, with Ray and Kyle Elfrink talking sports. To listen in, for FREE, all you need to do is download the app and you’re off and running. 

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