2019 Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy: POSB

Senior Fantasy Baseball Expert Shawn Childs discusses the BALC draft strategy, focusing on acquiring power and speed.

Maybe the easiest draft strategy to execute is POSB. This theory is built on drafting power and speed with batting average being a secondary consideration. The goal is to dominate home runs and stolen bases which will hopefully lead to high scores in runs and RBI.

In most drafts, Fantasy owners shy away from players with batting average risk. It’s a minefield out there with low-average power littering the player pool after round ten in 15-team leagues. With this draft style, it’s a gold mine.

By buying weaker pieces to the puzzle, a Fantasy owner can open up some early rounds to make sure they build the base of their pitching staff. In the ideal situation, an owner would like to finesse this plan, so they don’t finish last in batting average. In any given year, a high K rate hitter can still post a respectable batting average. In a season with deep starting pitching inventory, batting average could be depressed helping this draft plan.

What is a negative batting average? Over the recent Fantasy baseball seasons, a Fantasy team’s batting average needs to finish over .270 to rank in the upper levels of the standings. Any baseball player who hits .250 or below would be a drain on your overall team’s batting average. In any given season, it’s possible that three or four low average hitters breakout in batting average in the same year helping this type of drafter to finish higher than expected in batting average. In a trading league, you can flip a weak asset if he gets off to a hot start. In a 12 or 15 team league, you can still win by punting one category.


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An owner with this thought process has to avoid too much flash and dash. He can accept weaker pieces, but he has to be careful not to own too many players that offer just pure speed. In seasons with lower expected offensive stats, a Judy type hitter should have more value as a Fantasy owner can commit more roster slots to power hitters.

For this theory to win, a Fantasy owner must establish an edge in three areas – power, speed, and starting pitching. The key to the plan is identifying the falling pieces in the draft that offer the skill set to execute your plan. Once a Fantasy owner has some ideas about how he wants to backfill their roster, he can start looking at the starting pitching trade-offs to decide which rounds you want to use to build your pitching staff.

This drafting style will overlap the PAPS style many times, so a Fantasy owner needs to be careful that those owners don’t steal their key players.

A Fantasy owner looking to execute this draft plan will be looking for proven players with longer resumes. When some owners are looking for young players with upside late, this owner is squirreling away older veteran players. You may shake your head at the draft table, but this Fantasy owner has a chance to win if many of his late veteran options produce expected stats.


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About Shawn Childs 970 Articles
Shawn Childs has been a high stakes Fantasy baseball and football player since 2004 where he had success in his first season (three titles and $25,000 in winnings). In early years of the high stakes market in Fantasy baseball, he was ahead of the curve in player evaluation, draft value, and free agent bidding setting up four top-five finishes in the National Fantasy Baseball Championship. He has four AL-only Auction titles, one NL-only title, and five Main Event titles plus an overall title in 2012 at RTFBC (netted $10,000). This success led to an induction into the NFBC Baseball Hall of Fame. His success in the high stakes market led to a career in providing Fantasy Baseball and Fantasy Football content. On the football side, he’s competed and won in all different formats – auctions, draft championship, main events, and high-dollar leagues. He won 2nd place overall in the 2014 Most Accurate Salary Cap Expert contest at FantasyPros. As a dual-sport player, it was natural to transition to the daily games where he is a “swing for the fences type of guy.” Childs has appeared in one FanDuel NFL Live Final and one DraftKings NFL Live Final, a season-ending tournament which led to a couple of chances to win over $1,000,000.