Winning Fantasy Baseball: Secret Strategies of a Nine-Time National Champion

by Larry Schechter

Play smart. Play to win. Play like a champion.

In Winning Fantasy Baseball, Larry Schechter discloses the secrets of his proven methods. Packed with commonsense, easy-to-use strategies for beginners through experienced players, Schechter supplies readers with a toolkit to achieve the most important thing in fantasy ball--winning! Some have called Schechter one of the best fantasy baseball players in the world. He is the only two-time winner of the CDM Sports national salary-cap challenge, having defeated 7,500 competitors in 2002 and 6,000 in 2005. He is also a five-time winner of the renowned Tout Wars experts league and a member of the USA Today-sponsored League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR).

Readers will learn directly from the champ everything they need to know about:

- how to project player stats;
- how to convert those stats into a specific value;
- strategy for snake drafts, and mono-league and mixed auctions;
- selecting teams using a salary cap;
- playing in keeper leagues;
- and performing in-season management.

Although the book is primarily about fantasy baseball, many of the concepts also apply to fantasy football and other fantasy sports.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 2, 2014

Reviews

[Ryan]

How I am planning on one day winning a fantasy baseball championship.

[Jason Prugar]

The strategies of a multi-year Experts competition winner. This is told in a straightforward manner. Very valuable to even the newbie fantasy owner.

[James Bechtel]

I only read about 2/3 of this book. For my purposes, that's all I needed to read. Did I understand all of it? No. Math...oh no....!

[Edwin Lloyd]

Fun Experience!!!

This book on Fantasy Baseball is perfect because if you’re a beginner!!!! Like I’am, it’s absolutely the right book to start!!

[Bill Krieger]

OK. Larry Schechter is a fantasy baseball god. Let's get that out of the way. The number of championships that he has won in expert leagues is astounding. I am heartened by the existence of a Larry Schechter because it means that winning in fantasy baseball is not random. It's skill. Skeel.

Anywho, Schechter's book is good. I enjoyed it. He gives lots of the heuristics he uses in choosing and running his fantasy teams. Two things are most important:

1. Player projections - a prediction of what stats a player will have in the upcoming year, and

2. Value formula - the specific formula to convert player stats into a value metric

I'm reading along hoping, of course, to learn the secret of Larry's success. Larry's first advantage is time. He has done this for decades, and he invests a tremendous amount of time into each season. Second, it seems that Larry does a great job of projecting player stats. Read this.

QOTD

I compared my 2011 and 2012 player pool projections against the actual results and found that overall the hitters produced 88.6% of their projected value and the pitchers only 85%.

- Larry Schechter, Winning Fantasy Baseball

In his projections, I don't know what he's comparing to what, but if Larry can project hitters to nearly 90% of their ultimate production, then, um, Larry win. In LetsPlay3, I start with composite projections from many sources and tweak fro there. My projections aren't anywhere near that accurate. And 85% accuracy on pitchers is so outrageous that I question what he's really comparing.

Weaknesses. Much of the book isn't applicable to me because LetsPlay3 is a head-to-head league. The big weakness in Winning is that Larry never comments specifically on why he feels he is so successful. The book is a collection of his heuristics, stats, and anecdotes. So you could say that the aggregation of these things is Larry's winning formula. But there is no conclusion to the book. That's not metaphor. There's literally no conclusion. There's no summary like "Here's the straight dope on why I rule the fantasy universe". I guess that's fair, but that'll cost you a star, Larry. Ha!

Good read!

[Kyle]

Alright, I'm a HUGE fantasy baseball nerd and I was really excited to read this book thinking it would provide me with a quick way to dominate my fantasy league. Well, it pretty much provided me with the exact opposite of that. Instead, this book is a deep, in-depth look at how one may prepares for and executes his fantasy drafts and in-season management. Larry Schechter lays out his detailed strategy of preparing for the upcoming season by creating dollar values for each individual player and then searching for the ones with which he can get the best "value" out of at a draft. His process is layered and intense and is by no means meant for the "run-of-the-mill fantasy baseball player" such as myself. I'm glad I read the book because it provided me with some good tips, but the majority of the book was over my head. If I were to execute the strategy that Mr. Schechter lays out I'd have to devote much more time to a hobby that I already spend too much time on. I'm glad to know there are people out there who have such a deep rooted passion for this game, but this proves to me once and for all my hobby will never be anything more than that. I don't have the time or the patience to find, to the half-dollar, who the best values are in my fantasy draft. I may never win my league again, but this book at least taught me to put the game into perspective.

[Anand Mandapati]

It was a very illuminating book from a master of the game. He covers projections, values/rankings, and in-season management. The only issue I had with it is he doesn't really detail his projection system but rather seems to indicate he does it by intuition, some of the rules of thumb which he shares. Yet, apparently his projections are very accurate. If that's the case, then Larry really is just more talented than the rest of us and we have no chance against the likes of him. If, however, he used Sabermetric data like the rest of us likely would to create projections, then I'd have faith that I could be successful consistently.

For now, I'm using projections from various sources, averaging them out, and creating my own valuation system based on SGPs like Larry indicates. I will certainly use his advice on in-season management and keepers (we actually have a 2 keeper draft league that will redraft at the All-Star Break) and hope all that gained knowledge results in a fantasy win this year and for years to come.

[Stephen Viramontes]

This is an easy way to learn how to approach quantitative fantasy baseball. Simple "to-do" guide to win your league every single time. Fun read with complex concepts made simple. My personal recommendation is to read the book in phases, follow the steps and actually do what he says before moving on to the next section. If you read this book like a novel you'll get confused when you open your spreadsheet.

[Will G]

I play Fantasy Baseball and a good friend gave me this book as a present. It represents a detailed approach to winning, quite involved. Unfortunately I play in a game style which is not featured in the book. So while it was interesting in learning about the other styles, this did not do a lot to help me out in my league. If you play rotisserie style, I would think this book could help you out a lot.

[Jim Blessing]

Back in the 1980s & 1990s I played fantasy baseball (had my own league). I had to stop after I moved to the Chicago area. I saw this book at the library and thought it might be an interesting read. Unfortunately, it was way too involved of a read and I quickly lost interest.

[Mike]

Good book on Fantasy Baseball Strategies. Schechter proves that you don't always have to go with conventional strategies. A must read if your a Fantasy baseball player.

[Charlie]

I skimmed quite a bit of it because I'm not in auction leagues, but it's a pretty interesting read.

[Scott Swanay]

Great read for fantasy baseball lovers, but some of the conclusions he draws aren't supported by actual data, which can be frustrating.

[Dave]

My secret to finishing eighth in 2015.

[Marc]

if you're really into baseball and fantasy baseball then this book is for you. A little math helps you along your way.

[Jeremy Gibbs]

This will probably become the Bible for fantasy baseball strategies. The guy knows how to win. How does he do it? Paying for statistics, not name value.