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March 4, 2008, 3:57 PM

Mass: Confessions of a speed addict

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By AJ Mass
ESPN.com
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"Hello. My name is AJ and I am addicted to speed."

Now before you go slapping me in a wheelchair next to Jeff Conaway in Dr. Drew's group therapy session, let me be clear -- I'm not talking about amphetamines. And no, I don't need a 12-step program to help me admit that I am powerless to resist the magnetic acting chops of Keanu Reeves. That's not the speed I'm talking about either. Put down that phone, Eric Karabell! There's no need for an intervention here. I am addicted to drafting speed, speed and then more speed on my fantasy team, and it's not going to do me one bit of harm.

We've had three expert mock drafts so far this season at ESPN.com and each of my rosters is chock-full of guys who can get me stolen bases: Brandon Phillips, Juan Pierre, Eric Byrnes, Chris Young, Brian Roberts, Johnny Damon, Joey Gathright, Ryan Theriot, Julio Lugo, Rajai Davis. While many owners would be content to stop after getting one or two of the players on this list, I continued to stockpile the speed. Many of my fellow experts started to question my sanity. "You're already going to win steals by 200! Why are you taking Shane Victorino? Are you crazy?" Perhaps. Though this be madness, there is method in it. Allow me to defend myself. (For the purposes of the examples that will follow, I will refer to the 13-team NL-only draft that was held on Feb. 28.)

Assumption No. 1: Speed is the easiest commodity to hoard.

The following table shows how much easier it is to gain a monopoly on speed versus power in your fantasy baseball league.

Over each of the past four seasons, you can see there have consistently been far fewer players who significantly help you in stolen bases compared to those who can make a huge impact in home runs. If you assumed that everybody in your league was going to try to draft a fairly balanced team, with equal attention paid to every category, then these players would likely end up at or near an even distribution amongst their rosters. In a 13-team league, that would mean six or seven home run hitters and two or three speedsters per team. (There is some overlap between the two lists, as 14 players were members of the 20-20 club in 2007. However, the majority of these players likely will go in the first few rounds, and should also end up distributed evenly.)

Now let's make it our goal to draft at least 10 players who we think will get 20 or more steals in 2008. Assuming we are successful, we will have an incredible edge over every team in our league in that category. We'll have around seven more stolen base specialists than every other team. (See the "Minus 10 Distribution" column in the table above.) We'll be all but guaranteed to win the category outright. That wouldn't be true if we went for home run hitters. Even if we had the same 10-player goal, that would give us only a three- to four-player advantage. In addition, there is a much greater pool outside of these "specialists" who can end up contributing decent numbers to these categories. If we were to look deeper and add players who had 15 or more home runs, we'd have to add 45 more names to the list, whereas there would be only 14 more players to add if we lowered the threshold on steals similarly.

In short, while you're not going to be able to completely corner the market on any category, you can do a pretty good job of it with stolen bases. It's easy to identify the players who will allow you to reach your goal, and unlike wins, saves or RBIs, steals are far less dependent on the performance of others.

Assumption No. 2: The other owners in your league will be willing to make deals to improve their chances of winning.

Now that your draft is over, you're likely going to be falling a little short in certain categories. In addition to steals, you're probably doing fine in runs scored and batting average, since the type of player you've focused on is one who should be getting on base with considerable frequency, and since these players make frequent visits to second base, they're prime candidates to score with regularity. What about home runs and RBIs? That's not likely to be very pretty. If you played this season out with your drafted team, the results would not be to your liking, I fear. Let's take a look at what the standings would be in our draft, if we used each player's final 2007 stats. Obviously, it's not a perfect snapshot of how 2008 will go, especially since many teams drafted rookies or other players who will see different amounts of playing time this season in newly defined roles. But for a general picture of how the season might play out, it serves our purpose.

On first glance, it appears my strategy has failed miserably. I finished in a tie for eighth place in the offensive categories, and only a single point kept me from 10th. Surprisingly, my team's margin of victory in stolen bases was not as great as expected, but Brendan Roberts' strong showing was largely the result of only two players, Jose Reyes (taken with the first overall pick) and Eric Byrnes (his second-round selection). If either player gets significantly hurt in 2008, or if Byrnes can't match last season's output, Brendan will end up back in the pack with everybody else, and I'll end up with a 60-steal advantage to play with.

Now, if you're in a league where nobody makes trades, or people are veto-happy, then I wouldn't attempt this strategy. If you do, you'll be lucky to finish as well as my team, which as we've said, was not very well at all. But our assumption is that the owners in our league are reasonable, rational folks who are willing to wheel and deal in an effort to improve their teams' chances of winning. So we're not going to stand pat all year. No, we worked hard to build this cartel, and when the time comes, we're going to exploit it. I'm going to assume I have that 60-steal cushion or thereabouts to play with over the course of the season. Let me show you the impact that two very simple trades would have had on the final results.

Let's say around July 31, I was looking at the standings and realized I needed a boost in my home run totals to have any shot at a higher finish. Because I've manipulated the stolen base category so that most teams will be within striking distance of each other, it shouldn't be hard to convince an owner to trade with me. Why wouldn't an owner who is doing well in home runs give up a little power in order to gain several points in stolen bases? So after some shopping around, I decide to trade Juan Pierre to Tristan Cockcroft for Jeremy Hermida, whose first-half batting average of .227 was dragging his team down. Pierre, with zero home runs to date, is easy for me to part with, and could easily help Tristan pass several teams in stolen bases. Let's look at the two players' output from Aug. 1 on.

This ends up being a very fair deal, in my opinion. I get a little boost in the power categories, without losing too much in runs scored or average, while Tristan gets a huge boost in steals. The impact on the standings isn't earth-shattering, but you can see how both teams improved their lot:

Yes, I've fallen behind Brendan in steals, but I more than made up for it in other categories. In addition, I still have 40 steals to play with before I would lose another point in that category. And I'm not making only the one trade. Let's add in one more deal, consummated sometime during the All-Star break. I send Ryan Theriot, who had stolen 14 bases at this point, to James Quintong, who can't wait to get rid of Austin Kearns, who has disappointed with only five home runs. The post-trade numbers:

Certainly, it's easy to pick out trades in retrospect that benefit me, such as this one. But the point is, because you've built up such a lead in steals, you can shop around for the best offer and pick and choose when you'll make your move. Because there aren't usually a lot of steals to be found on the waiver wire, people will have to come to you to get them, because nobody else will have any steals to spare. After you sell steals to Team A, you can then place a call to Team B so that it can keep team A from passing it by, and then you can call Team C and do the same. You're holding all the cards. And after this seemingly innocent swap of Theriot for Kearns, look at the standings:

The deal didn't end up working well for James, but he still finishes second in offense, while we were able to move all the way up to fourth place. More importantly, we still have 28 steals to spare before we lose another point. More steals means more deals.

Assumption No. 3: We'll still be able to field a decent pitching staff.

Our analysis doesn't include pitching, but suffice it to say that you still have to draft a couple of decent pitchers. You don't need to get an ace like Johan Santana or Jake Peavy, but if you sprinkle in a starter every couple of rounds, you should be competitive in each category. In this draft, I ended up with Matt Cain, Jeff Francis, Noah Lowry and Jair Jurrjens. I missed out on Brandon Lyon (whom I was all set to select) by just one pick, so I ended up with Carlos Marmol as my closer. I later took David Riske and Tyler Walker in the hopes that at least one of the three would end up with the full-time job at some point during the season. It isn't the greatest staff in the world, but again, I have steals to spare, and there's no reason I can't swing a deal with someone who is way out in front in saves if things don't pan out. Wins and saves aren't guarantees anyway and are hard to predict from season to season, so at least I tried to select pitchers who may put up a solid ERA and WHIP, and I'll go from there.

In the end, this is only one way to go about drafting a team. Because it is a little unorthodox, you're unlikely to have another owner in your league attempt it. In fact, if you're lucky, you may not have any other owners even realize what you are doing until it is too late. And even if they do, so what? If it makes them change their draft strategy, you've gotten inside their heads and that's a victory in and of itself. Even if they start poaching a few of your players, you're still going to be able to draft your 10 guys, so you can always take a round or two and draft someone they've let slip through the cracks who can give you some help in a category you're short on.

So don't worry. I'm fine. I don't need any help. They're trying to make me go to rehab and I say, "No, no, no!"

AJ Mass is a fantasy football, baseball and college basketball analyst for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him here.