Draft strategies pay off

A S THE 2017 MLB season nears its end, advice on how to win your fantasy baseball championship has been reduced to that scene in Adam Sandler’s “The Waterboy” when commentator Dan Fouts repeatedly says, “Last game of the season, can’t hold anything back.”

There is no need for Captain Obvious here. You do what you can to make that final push.

What you can do here in late September is look back to spring training and assess whether some of the advice given to you in March was accurate enough to steer you in the right direction, strategy-wise.

Three of the biggest statements made were: 1. You can wait on starting pitching in your draft; 2. Stolen bases are at a premium, so you need to stock up; 3. Power can be found all over the place. If you bought into any of these, your draft strategy adjustments should have worked if they were, in fact, true.

The pitching statement is an easy place to start. With the rash of injuries to high-end starters such as

Noah Syndergaard and Madison Bumgarner, those who opted not to invest early dodged several bullets. Those who waited and settled in on

Lance McCullers and Robbie Ray stockpiled their offense early and still maintained strong pitching totals.

The availability of power is another easy one, as we saw a 17-year home run record for the league broken earlier in the week. In 2000, four years before baseball began penalizing for steroids, the league hit a total of 5,693 home runs. When Royals outfielder

Alex Gordon went yard Tuesday, he broke the record with 12 days to spare.

As for stolen bases, there were a total of 2,505 in 2015. In 2016 there were 2,537. Heading into Friday, there have been 2,388. We should fall somewhere in between the past two seasons. Given the abundance of steals prior to 2015, it does appear that steals remain at a premium.

This business of predicting the future is one tough nut to crack. In the end, the decisions are yours, but there is nothing wrong with getting a little numbers-crunching help.