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Market Pulse: Fantasy Counter-Intelligence for Winners
Matt Beagle - January 25, 2008
In war strategy, the only thing more important than knowledge of your assets and strategy is counter-intelligence. Governments and businesses spend billions of dollars and sacrifice countless lives on espionage. If you know what your enemy is thinking and planning, you can develop and implement a plan based on your strengths, exploiting their weaknesses, and reacting to known contingencies.
Would you like to know which undesirable players will clear the most dollars off the table? Will it help you to know when the closer run will most likely happen in a snake draft? Would you like to better identify tiers of talent by position to know which of two seemingly equal options you should select this round? Would you like an HQ skills analysis of the players on your waiver wire during the season?
Baseball HQ is proud to announce Market Pulse – a new weekly addition to our lineup. Every Thursday, Matt Beagle will discuss current trends of the fantasy season. One consistent message we hear from our subscribers is "more ADP analysis." Not just rankings – analysis. We also hear "love the metrics, but help us apply them to my draft/auction and my league."
In the preseason, our forums multiply with discussions of Average Draft Positions, Expert Draft discussion, and positional analysis. Matt will summarize and dissect each position on the diamond. He will discuss evolving trends and theories, analyzing the competition to see what ideas are being discussed and implemented. Market Pulse will show you the largest disparities between HQ values and those of other sites or publications – and explain why. We'll dissect segments of expert drafts with commentary and analysis to find nuggets you can exploit in your own leagues.
A recent forum poster lamented that HQ draft prep help was the best, but everyone does that. "I want to be a better in-season manager. Show me how." During the season, Market Pulse will anticipate the moves you contemplate for the coming week. While Market Watch is news driven, Market Pulse will attempt to be more intuitive, anticipating which players you're looking at on the waiver wire. Is that two-start pitcher going to kill your ERA and WHIP categories? Will those stolen bases come with a hit to your batting average? By scanning the leading websites, Market Pulse will attempt to identify which players might be over or undervalued at that particular point of the season, helping you spot potential trade targets.
Market Pulse will evolve throughout the season. We'll uncover those gems jettisoned in April or May by your impatient brethren. The mid-season will focus on playing time and skills developments outside the mainstream news. You might even see some free-lance discussion of current trends, reaction to noise from a national pundit, and of course, Market Watch level analysis on key potential free agent acquisitions. As we approach August trade deadlines, Market Pulse will focus on trade targets for the pennant run, and those for 2009. With trades behind you, September will shift to squeezing out a few extra points down the stretch, with strategies and players to roster. We'll look back to see how the season evolved, what we can learn, and how to adapt our strategies for the future
Of course, we can't make assumptions that all leagues are mixed, Roto, deep or shallow. So there is no magic formula, just more methods to help you make better decisions in your league. Like Ray Murphy's Speculator column, Market Pulse should provoke thought and stimulate additional ideas as you embark on another fantasy season. Not a blueprint, Market Pulse hopes to provide new levels of analysis. At HQ we don't hand you the fish, but instead fill your mind and tackle box with a myriad of strategies and lures to make you the consummate title fisherman no matter the format.
Since this is also a column about happenings in the marketplace, more than ever Matt will scour the forums for ideas from you, the subscribers. BaseballHQ has grown these past decades not because we force feed things we like to talk about, but because we listen to you, our valued customers. The level of discussions you foster on our forum boards raises the bar for every fantasy manager. If you see something happening in your league, another website, or have specific needs for your development that we haven't already offered, let us know. You are our eyes and ears out there. We've not tied Matt down to any particular format so that Market Pulse can adapt and evolve to best serve you.
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