5 Lessons From Sorare MLB Week 1

We did it! Not only did the marketplace launch, but game week 1 is in the books. What are my 5 main takeaways from the first 7 days of Sorare MLB action?

Jul 26, 2022

Sorare MLB has launched, and we saw a major influx of ETH to buy up the initial offerings of digital trading cards.

I personally spent multiple days scrolling through auctions and trying to spot values on some of my watchlist players. In doing so, I learned a lot about the Sorare Marketplace, the market dynamics, and even my own patience levels.

Let’s how that applies to you and your roster!

Lesson 1: Be Patient

Another train will come. Why rush? Why worry? Why go crazy? Another train will come. - Esmeralda Santiago

Sorare auctions are like trains, there is always another one coming.

I say this because it is easy to get caught up in “winning” an auction. It’s a rush, and it can sweep you away. I’ve been guilty of this on numerous occasions.

However, it is better to know your price and time your bids. If you do, you will find not only for players you want, but players you want at prices you find reasonable.

This process is just as much art as it is science so it will take some practice. I would encourage you to utilize SorareData and your own personal rankings or analysis to look at card pricing trends and forward-looking value projections.

I’ll be sure to publish regular articles as well, to help you spot value in the coming weeks. Later, premium subscribers will be able to access my full rankings and value sheets.

Lesson 2: Use the Market to your Advantage

"The contrary investor is every human when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself" - Archibald MacLeish

I wanted to lead with a quote here because, oddly enough, this one speaks to the core of what we have seen in the Sorare MLB market conditions thus far. This could, and should, take up a whole post at a later date, but keep three things in mind when you tackle this card market.

Don’t be a sheep. The quote above says it better than I could, but do your own research, build your own ranks, and buy the players you like. Be contrarian. Often you will find yourself searching for values, rather than buying the most expensive cards at auction.

This will help you understand your own thinking better, stretch your budget further, and ultimately have more fun.
Check the “Manager Sales” section of the market. This is good to do whether you are buying or selling. Sometimes the player you have been bidding on is cheaper over in the buy-it-now section, and vice versa. Use this to your advantage and get the players you want at the best price possible.
Don’t be afraid to sell. Sometimes the market really values a player. Maybe more than you do. You might have a copy that you got at auction, or - soon - won in a tournament. Don’t be afraid to put that card up for sale and see what happens. Selling one card that you aren’t attached to can help you fill gaps elsewhere with the players your research has uncovered.

Lesson 3: Earn Experience

I am always looking for edges. And by edges, I mean things I can be doing right now to give me slight advantages for the competitions I’ll face.

With SorareMLB, one potential edge is the player score bonus, which is derived from your card level.

Limited competitions open up later this week, but sometimes you will still find yourself with more players than you can start in a week. That is what the training field is for.

If your training team page looks like this, you are missing out!

I’ll save you the trouble of crawling through the Sorare documentation (found here). What you need to know right now is two-fold:

You can make as many training lineups as you have players to fill.
Players in those lineups will earn experience, just like they would in a regular tournament, which will level them up and provide larger score bonuses in future competitions.

The different card scarcities start at different levels and therefore earn you different amounts of bonus EXP right off the bat. You can improve your collection over time to give yourself a slight edge in your next tournament.

Think of it this way, if you enter the exact same lineup as someone else, and you happen to tie, even a tiny extra percentage boost could be what brings home that top prize.

Get trainin’!

Lesson 4: Roster Building can Vary

Sorare MLB’s game week length will alternate between 3 and 4 games. Week 1 was a 3 game week that demonstrated some very strong performances on both the hitting and pitching sides.

Being a 3 game week, I expected starting pitcher to be a strong play for the “super” flex - any position - roster spot. While this was the case for my common all-star team (pictured below), it was not the case in terms of top scorers.

In the graphic above, 2 of my top 3 scorers were starting pitchers. That's great, and I made the “right” decision starting a second pitcher in my Superflex, but this was mostly because I had no other common players that came close to matching Detmers.

More broadly, however, Starting Pitcher was still the second-weakest positional group in terms of big outings. To quickly prove this, I went to the historical entries page to view my roster and checked the top scorers by roster group. Below is the breakdown of top scores by position for Week 1.

Outfield and Corner Infield provided the largest positional boost over the rest of the field.

Data is great and all, but what does this mean for your team? Well, if your common roster is like mine and you are strong at pitcher, by all means, start a second pitcher in your Flex spot.

However, the moment you begin to build out a more robust arsenal of hitters, you can begin thinking about loading your weekly rosters with strong bats to maximize your upside, similar to the training lineup I shared at the start of this section. The Sorare scoring format simply rewards hitting more than it does pitching, which is quickly demonstrated above as all 3 hitting positional groups outperformed the pitchers on a total points basis.

A caveat to the above argument would be using good pitching as a downside hedge. Pitchers seem to present a higher floor, especially on weekend game slates where your hitters are only playing in 3 games and will see fewer plate appearances. You can use this to your advantage in cases where you are choosing between a hitter with few (or poor) opportunities for the weekend and a pitcher with a solid chance at a quality start.

Lesson 5: This is FUN

Friends Tv Reaction GIF by Nick At Nite — We are here to have fun!

I’m going to be honest, before the last couple of months, I was pretty burned out on Fantasy Baseball. The season always felt like it dragged on forever, and I was never particularly attached to most of my roster.

But now, having actual ownership of my player cards, I am excited to build my lineups each and every week! I once again had fun monitoring my team’s scoring and highlights. Suffice to say, my passion for the game is back.

Shoot, I am literally dreaming of building the perfect lineup and knocking down a tournament or two.

I share this because I want you to know that it is ok to have fun playing this game. Sure there is winning, sure there is real money - ETH - to be had, but above all this is a new, innovative and fun way to interact with America’s pastime.

Enjoy it, and enjoy being part of something that could change how we think of, and interact with, the sport of Baseball.

This is supposed to be fun after all!

Those are my top takeaways after one game-week of Sorare action! Did I miss anything? Do you have a burning question that you would like answered? Hit me up in the comments!

Ethersport

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