Does anyone ever win at Perfect Draft?

[series1999]

Originally Posted by Erich Ingram

Funny the one I won today was due to 5 SPs rated 87 or above. My catcher wasn't a stud, but I generally try to get a pretty good one. Love getting the Marlins J.T. Realmuto card but this round was a 68 rated Bronzer.

I went perfect with Flood because his defense is insane and he is a good hitter. I try not to have any starters with a defense below 60 but that isn't always available. Hitting is important but I don't always worry about getting the top hitters if they are horrible on D, granted I will take a player that I expect to be my DH if he is stellar at hitting and has terrible D.

Relief pitching I generally will get a Silver or two and the rest is from Bronze, 1 each round and then Iron. I almost always go with 11 pitchers and try to have 2 C, 2 1b, 2 2b, 2 3b, 2 SS and 5 OF With the infielders I like to have guys that play multiple positions after the starters and the OF, I make sure to have a top D guy in CF and then I always want to have at least 2 guys that can qualify at each position.

I don't put any time into rearranging the lineup other than to make sure there are backups at all positions so noone will get tired. I don't mess with the stadium. I will change stealing sliders if a guy is like Jackie Robinson or Cool Papa Bell. I find that the NLers always seem to play better for me, not always on the teams against me but they do extremely well on my team.

I guess that sums up most of what I do, I don't spend a great deal of time on the draft, I watch Dish do his twitch and find his drafts to be too long for me, not wrong just more work than I want to put into it.

I do have players that I will generally draft every time if they are there as well.

Thanks for all of that!

Who are your “always draft” players?

[AdmiralTrey]

I've won a total of 16 PD's, most of which are the 64 team PD's because that's all I've chosen since they came out, which is actually more than the number of tournaments I've won (I guess I'm pretty bad at tourneys)... I've finished top 4 in a whole bunch more. I stick with the same overall strategy every time, which is similar to what other people have been saying: pitching, a high catcher ability starting catcher, and defense, especially up the middle.

I focus on starting pitching (a deep bullpen isn't as important if you've got great SP going deep into every game, just at least have a decent closer and setup guy) and high contact/avoid K position players with solid defense. I've had teams with almost no team-wide power that have won because everyone could hit and most of them also had solid speed. Speed seems to be a little bit overpowered because many people fail to get a decent catcher, and many more fail to get a backup catcher. I especially love Negro League position player cards because many of them can play a lot of positions (Heavy Johnson is a life-saver when you don't get any backup catcher options the last 4 rounds) and fit my profile of good contact/avoid K and good speed.

Usually with the 100 overall and the two diamond picks I'll take three SP, assuming there are good ones available. I won't waste one of those picks on a SP with yellow control rating, but otherwise I almost always take 2-3 SP in the first 3 picks. The only time I don't take 2-3 SP in the first 3 picks are when elite CF/C/SS are available and they are too much better than the SP available to justify passing up on them.

Honestly I just enjoy the drafting process more than anything else. It's fun to build a team that doesn't have any long-term consequences and to utilize cards that are too expensive or rare to ever make it on my real PT22 team.

[daves]

Originally Posted by series1999

What are any strategies to win them more often?

In general it's the luck of the draw especially in the Diamond and Gold rounds. You will generally get a great perfect, but not always a great Diamond card. The very few times I won i drew some 99 rated cards that were almost as good as Perfects and the gold cards were awesome.

But the majority of your starters are Gold and Silver.as we all know. And you have to be lucky to get the right ones.

Unfortunately in PD, you draft a position like a SS in one round and the next round there is a different SS that you prefer. If only I could go back one round and change my pick to the Catcher (or other position) I was considering instead.

[daves]

The best advice I can give you though, is to observe the rosters of the top 4 finishers in the PD after they are over. You might see a trend that will help regarding pitchers , defense and hitting.

Also check your strategies.

[series1999]

Originally Posted by daves

The best advice I can give you though, is to observe the rosters of the top 4 finishers in the PD after they are over. You might see a trend that will help regarding pitchers , defense and hitting.

Also check your strategies.

What should my “strategies” be, in general?

[Torgonius]

Originally Posted by series1999

What should my “strategies” be, in general?

Score more runs than you give up is as about as general strategy I can come up with.

There's not one good answer for this, especially for something as capricious as PD. You can have a plan about what players you want to draft, and in which rounds, but RNGeezus will wreck those 9 times out of 10.

Look at what you're dealt. If you have good SP, you want them in the game longer. If you have fast guys, run more. If your pitchers don't have good control, think about your next draft coming up in the next 45 minutes or so.

You can take the time and set sliders for every situation and every player. It may even give you some slight edge if you get it right for the players you have. And you can still get knocked out in round 1 and all that time was wasted.

It really boils down to your time commitment for that tournament and your ability to make your strengths stronger and your weaknesses less weak via sliders and lineup / BP construction. If there was an easy answer, everyone would be using it and it would no longer work.

[AdmiralTrey]

Originally Posted by daves

Unfortunately in PD, you draft a position like a SS in one round and the next round there is a different SS that you prefer. If only I could go back one round and change my pick to the Catcher (or other position) I was considering instead.

This x 100.

I'm convinced there's a conspiracy when you have a choice between a great CF, C, and SS... Whichever one you pick there will surely be several more good options to follow at the same position and you won't see another good option at the other position(s) until round 7 or later.

[frankbama]

Maybe people are tired and don't do any strategies at night but that seems the time I win - set my draft, go to bed and wake up hoping to see a notification that I won one. Only happens occasionally but it's happened a few times.


Strategies - it's baseball, it can be random. Don't overthink it. Pick your favorite global strategy, make the small tweaks. If you don't have time, submit, exit and get on with your life / main team. If you do, use the sliders (though still not knowing which ones and how severe are the most effective) and triple check the lineups. Oh, and get 2 catchers even if one is Uecker (though hopefully you've already picked a bronze).

[daves]

Originally Posted by series1999

What should my “strategies” be, in general?

Sabremetric


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Meximemer]

I’ve won some PDs here and there but never consistently. I always make sure to emphasize defence, esp. infield, catching and center field. For pitching I try to look for starters that can eat innings since I want to try and avoid having to deploy relievers that are bronze/iron level. So I usually end up taking elite players at 2B, SS, CF, C for the first three rounds if I can and take Starting Pitchers in the gold, silver, and sometimes bronze rounds. I always give myself a “freebie” slot at DH for when I find great players at a position for whom I have already selected a player for initially. For example, if I picked a RF in the diamond round but find a better (usually defensive) player at that position down the line, ill switch the initial guy to DH and have the new guy play RF. I try to take utility/tool players in the bronze/iron rounds as well as middle/long relievers. Since I’m too lazy to set my sliders every draft I always import a strategy from some of the default files that attempt to mimic historical managers like ‘leo_durocher.str’.

It’s important to not take these too seriously since it does mainly come down to luck at the end of the day

[Drivehud.com]

I won 2, but figured out the time used to pick a team and play was highly -ROI, so I stopped playing them after the first week. Just not worth the effort or time involved imho.

[Hocky201]

I usually do fine in PD. I cannot win crap in traditional.

[ncap99]

So I just won my first 64 team PD in a while, here was the roster:

[mpatt75]

Just won one with the 'new' rules and got a 99 overall Al Spalding. Speechless.

[daves]

Daily Double. 2 Perfects and 4 Diamonds.

[Quinta]

I think there is a lot of great advice in this thread and I want to agree with nearly all of it. All the important advice about getting good pitching, fielding, and also hitters is already here. I also agree that you can tweak settings but generally find you do not need to do much there besides get a general strategy setting that you are comfortable with (and then modify if you get an usual skill set with your PD team).

There are two smaller things I wanted to add. The first is pretty straightforward but you need to emphasize roster depth. That is, utility players matter (sprinkles matter!). The easiest way to state this is that a bronze 2B that can back up another position or two is going to be more valuable than a slightly better 2B that only plays 2B. This may be obvious to you but it really matters more in PD than it does in a lot of other tournament settings and definitely more than league PT. Just look at how many ABs your 13th round players get and also how much fatigue accumulates in PD (this was even more true before changes were made to fatigue settings when having lots of utility players won me several PDs). So, those 12th and 13th round picks matter but not necessarily in the way you think.

The second is harder to articulate but also somewhat obvious to experienced players--be flexible and emphasize balance. This is hard to articulate because you want to do all the things others advised in this thread--get good starting pitching, get good fielding particularly up the middle, etc., etc. The thing is you may not get the SS or C or CF with the fielding you are looking for--the tricky part is knowing when and how much to compromise. I have found with experience you can generally make good balancing decisions. Yes, you want a C with over 80 ability but when do you decide a weak hitting C with 75 ability is good enough? You want a SS with 90+ range but when is a good hitting SS with 60 range acceptable? This is the hard part and there is probably no hard and fast rules but with experience comes better decisions. I generally have found being fairly stubborn through silver is fine but once bronze comes you need to start patching your holes as best as you are able. I have won PD with low range CFs and SSs and low ability Cs (well it is harder but still possible) by making good Bronze choices late.

I hope this helps--with my 3 teams I have won over 40 PDs in infrequent play (I did play 5-10 times per team a week a few months ago but only have played half that for the last few months).

[sdw1000]

Originally Posted by series1999

What are any strategies to win them more often?

Get good pitchers. That high STUFF. Even then it's not guaranteed to win.

[ncap99]

Another winner, this team went 24-7 which surprised me.

[thegreatbrain]

I'm in my 3rd week of play and I got a 2nd place yesterday. I had actually written the team off and ignored it until the notification that I earned 5kPP. I had thought it was one of my weaker drafts. I guess sometimes the RNG sucks during the draft but then rocks during the tournament.

[TC Dale]

I finally won a PD, wasn't a big number of PP's. 1000. But, I play maybe 1 to 2 times a week, so it was a 16 team tourney.. but, I can say I finally won a Perfect Draft. :P

Please don't ask how my bronze level PT team is doing. Keep up the great stories, I know I am enjoying them.