This article is part of our The Z Files series.
There's starting pitcher tiers, position tiers and category tiers. Depending on how your season goes, there could be alligator tears. Fantasy baseball drafting and tiers go together like ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong. Sometimes I think the Internet was invented for me.
Admittedly, I'm a Tier Drafter. Be it an auction or a draft, all I have are four pieces of paper with the player pool divided by position into color-coded tiers. My laptop or phone is nearby to check on news, but that's it. No draft software. Old school.
The key to tiered drafting is it's really just bookkeeping. Yeah, players are listed in order of perceived production, but the tiers are more a means of tracking than ranking.
There are different ways to define a tier. Those more spreadsheet-oriented look for natural breaks in whatever is being used to differentiate the players. Each cluster is a tier, then there's a gap and the ensuing cluster encompasses the next tier. Others employ a Zen approach, listing players until one of these is not like the other. It's more sense than objective.
My tiers are broken into tiers by $5 increments. The same tiers are used for a draft or auction.
One of the tenets of tiers is the players within each are all considered to be similar in fantasy potential. Yes, the names are listed in order of projected dollar value, but the inaccuracy of player projection and the flaws associated with valuation are such that