The Balancing Act: Sorare MLB & NBA
MLB wraps up the postseason soon and NBA just launched. How to balance all this?
Recently, I had the honor of joining the boys from the Sorare in the States Podcast to talk postseason baseball, the agony of defeat, and some off-season buys and sells. It was an awesome time and a real learning experience for me, considering it was my first-ever podcast appearance.
The thing that struck me as I thought about the discussion was that none of us truly know what is to come for the Sorare MLB offseason. Or NBA adoption for that matter - despite some promising early volume - but we do have some past experience to fall back on to help tell the future. We will talk about that below.
As MLB winds down and NBA ramps up, this is also perhaps one of the best times to buy into some of your favorite MLB cards. Provided you have the patience. We will talk a little buy-low later in this article as well.
Let’s dig in.
The Major League Baseball Offseason Looms
What is to come?
The short answer is we simply do not know. There is a distinct possibility that between the end of the world series and the start of the 2023 season… nothing happens.
Well, nothing except a slow drip of auctions.
This is what I would deem the “base-case” of how the offseason will go. It is also a great expectation to set. If you assume there will be nothing to do with your cards, except buy (or sell, but maybe don’t do that), then anything in excess of that will be a welcome gift.
Conversely, if we assume that there will be offseason “replay” tournaments or some other way to drive utility, real or perceived, to the cards while there are no games to be played, then we might end up being sorely disappointed.
I’d rather be stoked if those things happen, so I am treating the next few months as prime buying time and ignoring all the rest of the noise.
Did you say Buy?
Indeed I did! From historical stories to the trend in prices, everything points to the next few months being the most depressed we might see the baseball market for a good while.
Once again, we are presented with a choice on how to feel here. This could be a time of panic, and some folks will inevitably treat it as such. Instead, this could easily be a time of overwhelming opportunity.
If you believe at all in the long-term viability of the Sorare product, the second road is the one that should draw your attention. Basically, buy while the market is trash. This is one of the most tried and true strategies in Sorare to date, and it simply relies on patience. We know the cards will be useful next season (sans retirees), and we know the market will be painfully low in the next few months. All we need to do is fight the panic-sell instinct and instead buy. This will set the patient owner up with a great shot at both additional rewards and significant appreciation over the next season.
Don’t be the owner who panic-sold, just to buy high on Basketball cards. Instead, lurk in the auctions as they expand to the larger player pool (off of playoff teams), and pounce on your guy. Or one of the many guys I can help guide you toward.
Great - buy who though?
Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way first - I treat this as a fantasy sports platform, and am evaluating “buys” and “sells” through the lens of future performance compared to the current cost. While in Sorare current cost is real money, I do not intend this as financial advice. Please take my research as simply a small piece of your greater research puzzle, and be sure to do your own research and not spend more than you can afford to.
Cool, legal disclaimer aside, there are some great deals out there on the market right now, should you want to bolster your squad. I wrote about this over on Twitter in the tweet below to help guide your playoff push but consider this the more long-term follow-up list.
My Top 10 Offseason Buy-Low Targets
Ronald Acuna Jr. - ATL - OF/DH
Rafael Devers - BOS - 3B
Luis Robert - CWS - OF
Brandon Woodruff - MIL - SP
Tim Anderson - CWS - SS/DH
Brandon Lowe - TB - 2B/DH
Pablo Lopez - MIA - SP
Frankie Montas - NYY - SP
Whit Merrifield - TOR - 2B/OF
Ke’Bryan Hayes - PIT - 3B
There they are! Isn’t it beautiful? What a motley crew of underperformers, injury dips, and down years.
Does reading this list give you a little indigestion the further down you go? That’s fair. Heck, it is probably normal.
What each of these guys has in common though, is that their future value in my ranks is being overlooked to a significant degree. Each of these players falls within my top 100 overall. This means you can get plus performance at a significant discount while everyone else focuses on the guys that had huge seasons.
Feel free to take to the comments section if you have questions about any of these players, or if you want to see where someone you have your eye on falls in my model!
I update my ranks regularly, and prices change all the time, so consider this list a good snapshot for right now, but feel free to check back in with me on changes as the offseason progresses.
Baseball’s Final Review
Sorare launched the MLB product midway through the season, and it still managed to gain significant traction with fans/users.
From what I have seen thus far, all signs point to a platform that is fun, mainstream ready, and not too expensive to enter (limited cards remain pretty affordable).
All of this also gives me comfort that buying into the market now is a solid strategy for next season and beyond.
But what of the NBA?
Ah yes, the other half of the article today. Similar to how baseball launched, we received a veritable cascade of info on Sorare NBA this last week. For the full video breakdown, check out the link below.
If reading deep into the docs is more your thing, you can go piece by piece right here.
While the main points have been well documented on Twitter and elsewhere, I plan to dive into what the implications are of the NBA game from a strategic perspective.
It’s Points Cap Time
The biggest takeaway from the announcement was the points cap system.
Long story short, there will be no stud stacking in basketball like there was in baseball.
This is actually a good thing from an accessibility and playability perspective, as many have already pointed out. It balances out the roster construction so that there are many more viable ways to construct a lineup.
By doing this, I believe that more people will be able to play, win, and have fun right from the start with the basketball product. That’s awesome for the game over a long time horizon.
For you as a strategic manager, this change also brings new wrinkles in how to set your lineup. There are two major ways I could see going about this, with secondary implications beyond that.
Lineup Construction Theme 1: Balanced
I see this being the most likely way the average user sets their lineup. DFS players will have seen this concept before, but I’ll reiterate for the newbies.
You have a budget of 100+ points each Game Week (GW), depending on tournament selection.
A balanced approach would see you devote at or near the slot average for each player you play:
Contender. 110/5 = 22 points per player
Champion. 120/4 = 30 points per player
This approach feels good. It feels like you are starting a roster of solid players who should return solid results and earn you solid prizes. Not flashy, but solid.
I am worried this approach is a trap.
By subscribing to this strategy, you are effectively removing the studs from the game alongside the scrubs. You are walking down the middle of the road and courting middle of the road results.
I honestly don’t see this much differently from deck-building in common card games. If your deck is stacked with good but not great cards, then you will be outperformed by people who can get more out of their lower-tier cards, and sweep your legs out from under you (metaphorically) with their finishing cards.
The same could very well play out here on Sorare NBA.
Of course, there are competition size considerations, as well as time for everyone to figure this out, but on first pass I feel this strategy isn’t the optimal one.
Lineup Construction Theme 2: Studs and Duds
aka Stars and Scrubs
This strategy is the polar opposite of the balanced approach. Whether you are setting your Contender or Champion Lineup, a Studs and Duds approach will mean cramming in as much top-tier (Jokic, Giannis, Doncic, etc.) talent into one roster as possible, then filling in the blanks with the cheapest guys you have left that still maximize your cap.
This strategy will shine for managers who are able to find players who don’t play often, and therefore have low trending average scores, but are expected to start or fill in more during a single game week.
These are high-variance lottery tickets that get a chance at a single day of glory due to, typically, an amazing matchup or an injury to a teammate.
When filling your roster here, you will want to focus your energy on a few big studs, and then a bunch of cheap fill-in options to help play the matchup and variance game to the fullest extent. It makes me want to start a 0-Player watchlist of guys that are essentially free to your lineup but could see meaningful playing time in an upcoming game week.
Other Notes
Scoring System
The scoring system differs from baseball in another key way. Only a player’s best score counts. No accumulation scoring over a game week. Shout out to SorareMLB Moneyball as the first person I saw call out this nugget.
This means that players with multiple games have more chances to put up a good score, but it doesn’t immediately rule out good players with a lesser number of appearances.
This was another shrewd choice by the Sorare scoring team, and should again make for a more even playing field.
Return of the Stack
We saw stacks in Football and Baseball, they are a great way to magnify your roster’s exposure to variance.
Put another way, if one player has a great game, he can help drive up points and opportunities for those around him, since scoring overlaps. In baseball, this happens with RBI and Runs. In basketball, we will see this with things like assists, steals, blocks, etc.
I do think stacks will remain viable, but the best score format will limit the upside here. Stacks might become more situational, just another way for you to try and build a unique lineup, rather than a must-have like in other formats.
Last but not least - Pricing
As we come to a close for the newsletter today, I want to hammer home one final point.
Be patient.
Do not let FOMO win here at the start of the basketball season.
The market is hot right now, with players going for insane prices. If you are a collector, more power to you for getting an early mint number. For the rest of us, just wait. The season is long, and we saw significant price spikes not just with the baseball launch, but with each player dropped later into the season.
There is a spike, dip, and rebuild pattern that seems to happen for the market at large and for individual players.
If you can wait out the spike, then come in and build your team, your wallet and long-term roster viability will thank you.
For now, the prices in the market are so volatile that I don’t yet have a good picture of some early bargains for you, but will certainly have that up and running soon!
That’s all for today folks! If you got value out of this newsletter, please consider sharing with a friend using the link below.
And if you’d like to add my regular insights to your mental model for building a great Sorare dynasty, please check out my Twitter and consider subscribing to this newsletter.