Sorare MLB Market Watch – 01.25.23
As we inch closer to the MLB season and rosters begin to thaw, I am seeing reasons for optimism once the first full season of Sorare MLB kicks off.
5 Quick Hits
This week in the news we saw Sorare continuing to excel in building out partnerships, as well as their product offerings. Not to be outdone, SorareData continued to add some great new features of their own. And finally, any time someone mentions supply and demand, I have to dig in a little bit.
1. Sorare Continues to Merge Fantasy & Reality - As Promised
We are still only a few short weeks into the year and continue to see Sorare make good on their promises to marge the worlds of fantasy and reality.
Can they keep it up? Will we see the same thing when baseball season rolls around?
I sure hope so.
2. SorareData at it again
SorareData continues to build on its Basketball product, now offering a handy-dandy lineup optimizer that reads your available cards and spits out the top projected lineup for you.
I know I argue against optimizers and calculators for trade purposes, but seeing this feature drop still made me happy. It is a wonderful way to help onboard new users and make the game more accessible for more people. Well done!
Needless to say, I think this is a no-brainer add for the baseball side as well, and hope it is prioritized highly on the backlog of potential features.
3. More Special Competitions
As a player’s card collection grows, having more options on how to deploy those cards is never a bad thing. It is good to keep the player engaged and keep the product offering fresh.
Baseball was rather stale in this regard through its beta half-season, but seeing more and more tournament formats rolled out to NBA and Football gives me high hopes for what is to come.
4. Training Update
I don’t play much on the Football side, yet I have amassed a startling collection of common cards. Like a good, engaged fan I would slog to the lineup builder each week and construct 20+ training lineups as fast as humanly possible to not miss out on earning experience.
Not really fun. Or engaging.
With this update, I am starting to see glimmers of making training more strategic and more a valuable part of the game, rather than a mindless chore.
5. Sorare Supply & Demand
This topic has me wanting to write a whole article with supply and demand curves moving about. Maybe soon.
For now, it seems to me Sorare is still working out some kinks with regard to card issuance rate compared to user acquisition rate.
It is clear they manage card issuance - since MLB card auctions have been a ghost town for the last few months - but that rate appears to still be finding balancing points across the three sports. Which then, in turn, affects card prices and manager sales.
Personally, I would be shocked if the supply and demand sides of the equation moved perfectly in tandem. That is simply a daunting balance to set. So then, we are left with some periods of time, like now, where we have a surplus of cards. As Sorare captures more and more of the fantasy market it is just as plausible to imagine a future where there are simply not enough cards to go around.
That’s when things could get really crazy.
Buyin’ & Sellin’
The last few weeks have focused on out-of-the-top-50 guys who might not be on your radar, but could help you from a statistical perspective. This week is all about opportunity cost. How can you best put your hard-earned ETH to use, given all the choices available to you?
Sellin’
Alex Bregman
Ltd average: .0195 | Rare average: .130
Put away the torches and pitchforks, Alex Bregman is another player I want to highlight who I think is good, but is also worth shopping.
I won’t even site stats here today, because that isn’t what this argument is about - his stats are fine and he plays on a great team.
However, his price is what gives me pause. On account of the opportunity cost. You see, for the cost of getting yourself an Alex Bregman card, you could target his teammate Kyle Tucker (50+ slots higher in my ranks) for .05 more (for a rare card).
Not convinced? Ok, let’s stay in position, you could go snag Rafael Devers for .05 less, or Jose Ramirez for only .01 more. Both these players are also 50+ slots better in my ranks and offer more long-term upside.
It isn’t that Bregman is bad, I’d simply rather take multiple other alternatives.
Buyin’
Miguel Vargas
Ltd average: .0058 | Rare average: .0097
Vargas is a top prospect that the Dodgers have done a good job keeping relatively out of the limelight.
Even still, he got a taste of major league pitching last season after destroying AAA as expected.
I would be buying cards merely on those ideas alone, but there is more.
Vargas could be a staple in lineups for years to come and ranks out just inside my top 100 players for 2023. This ranking is mostly due to his uncertainty. If he busts, we will likely wind up lower, while if he breaks out, his ceiling is much, much higher.
So acquiring a few copies of his cards for the price of more like a top 150-200 player seems like a pretty safe bet. One I will be looking to take whenever possible.