Dynasty Strategy: The Myth of the Rebuild

by Nathan Dokken

You don't need to blow up your team. No really, you don't. Don't go all Astros on your baseball league, because this is fantasy, not reality. You don't need to worry about how to price your burgers, if your seats are going to sell in September, when to bring up your prospects or who's going to sing the national anthem in three weeks. No matter how we try to mirror the real game of baseball, there's going to be a stark difference between what controls the outcomes of your fantasy squad and what factors into the Braves record finishing over .500. No matter how far your team seems to be from contention, you need to build your team for the very near future – not five years down the road.

Whether you've drafted your own team or taken over an abandoned one, the scenario here is the same: your team stinks. The exact strategy is going to vary wildly depending on your league size and depth, as well as the severity of your teams' TSP (Team Suck Percentage, a Dokkenmetric). In head to head leagues you should be especially optimistic considering the flukiness of some outcomes. As far as I'm concerned, any team can win any week in head to head points formats, whether points or categories. Roto leagues may take a little longer to bring yourself into contention, but again, there's no reason to consider blowing up your team for a run at dominance in five years. I'll tell you why.

First, who knows how long your league will exist. This may sound trite, but it is indeed one of the main factors to take into consideration. Is this a group of personal friends, or a bunch of strangers that happened upon the same public league? Is this a money league? Has there been a high rate of owner turnover? There are many factors to consider, and if you have questions as to the longevity of the league, you will want to build for the near future even more.

Secondly, anything can happen in a given year. Last year I could have asked you before the season whether you thought Ryan Braun had a better shot to win NL MVP or to miss most of the season due to injury and suspension. What would you have said? Especially with pitchers, you really don't know when an injury is going to occur, when a pitcher will get historically lucky or unlucky, when a surprise prospect will be plucked from A-ball and win Rookie of the Year or when your crummy second baseman decides to steal 20 more bases than he ever has before, for no apparent reason. Injuries, fluke seasons and career high or low seasons can happen at any time for any player, and cumulatively they can either cripple a strong team in your league, or bring a team from the cellar suddenly bursting into a spot in the money.

To enforce this point by example, in a 20-team league I play in has little parity. Horrendously little parity, in fact. It's a head to head points league, and the team that had won the title the previous year is supremely stacked. We're talking first and second round talent at just about every position. Then there are teams with scrubs up and down the roster. This is pretty normal in a dynasty league that has been around for a long time and gone through its fair share of owners, good and bad. Anyway, the team that won the title in 2012 still scored the second most points in the league in 2013, and with 8 of 20 teams making the playoffs, he missed the playoffs entirely. Had he not lost Ryan Braun and Carlos Gonzalez in the second half, there's a strong chance he would have made the playoffs and quite possibly won the league a second year running. Conversely, a team who finished third from last in the league in 2012 made some smart trades and wound up losing in the championship round in '13. As much as trading and roster management is a skill, a certain amount of the outcomes in our leagues is just plain luck.

So how, in a vacuum, does one approach a rebuild? For starters, grab a tasty beverage and plunge into the bowels of your league. Scour your waiver wire or free agent pool for upside players. Look for guys that are in preseason position battles or are an injury away from inheriting a key role, such as setup men that could turn into closers should anything happen to their teams' closer. Who could win the final rotation spot for an MLB team? Is there a prospect who could be called up at some point in the year? If you have a spot, cut a scrub and pick him up. If a rookie gets called up and gets off to a blistering start, chances are you can find someone to trade said rookie to and get a substantial return. Whether it be a legitimate performance from the rookie or if he's clearly performing over his head, someone in your league wants this hot new bat and will overpay to get him.

Which leads us to potentially the most important part of rebuilding your squad: trading. Get to know your league mates' rosters, their preferences, the direction they are trying to take their teams. Check into the league trade block frequently and send trade offers with even more frequency. Now, the art of trading is a subject worthy of an entire blog, so I won't get too deep into it here. What you really want to do is find a market inefficiency in your league. Follow that up with a flurry of trade offers, as appropriate for each team. Allow me to digress.

The assumption for this blog is that your league is beyond year one, as hopefully you aren't already rebuilding in the first year of your league. After a few years, there will be three tiers of teams in your league: contenders, rebuilders, and middling teams treading water. If you are a contender, there is no need to rebuild. Stop reading now and go enjoy some trail mix or something. However, if you have a rebuilding or middling team, this is where you can really gain some ground in a hurry.

Everyone wants to acquire young talent to build around. So give the people what they want, and look to get strong returns for your young studs (assuming you have any). Target rebuilding teams and gladly take any veteran studs off their hands in exchange for some youth. Also target some of the top teams who may have depth and can afford to trade you players who could be starting on your squad. While you may not want to get rid of superstars like Xander Bogaerts or Addison Russell, if you can trade Prospect X for Currently Producing Star A, B and C, it doesn't take many of those trades before you are in playoff contention in any league. While these young stars are likely to produce strong numbers in their prime, they may be mediocre for several years before blossoming into top round picks – not to mention the less elite prospects and young players that never pan out at all.

If your team is super awful and absolutely no one wants to trade for anyone on your team, or maybe your league just isn't big on trading (which is especially terrible), that will sure throw a wrench into things. Amass as many top draft picks as you can and when people fall in love with the ceiling of the prospects on your roster you should be able to flip them for major league talent, once again shortening the timeframe of your rebuild.

If you really want to take the slow route, hoarding top prospects and young talent and waiting for them to hit their primes and run at the title, power to you. I have nothing against that strategy, but I most certainly lack the patience for it. I want to win, and win now. Hopefully these strategies can help you do the same.