VANCOUVER, BC – Guess the third time’s the charm.
After finishing second in the Vancouver Whitecaps FC MLS Fantasy League the last two years, Derrick Freedman claimed the top spot in 2014 out of more than 1,300 users.
Freedman, a Whitecaps FC Season Ticket Holder, finished with 2,509 points, which topped the ‘Caps group and was good enough for 26th in the league (more than 32,000 total users).
We recently caught up with Freedman to chat about the season that was in MLS Fantasy.
How does it feel to finally claim that top spot in the Whitecaps FC league?
Obviously finishing second the last two years, I was really pushing for first this year hoping to get it. I never really knew until the end that it was going to happen. It was really close, so it was pretty exciting.
It can’t be a coincidence finishing this high three years in a row. What’s the secret?
There are a few things. A lot of it is putting some time in and doing some research into trends and watching games, but I had a lot of help this year. There’s a little bit of an online community with a chat group. Some of the top guys, like the guy that won the whole thing, are on there. So we all kind of sit around, watch the games, and chat about picks and stuff leading up to the games. It helps a lot to just bounce those ideas off people who know what they’re talking about.
Did you have a plan coming into the year in terms of how you’d run your team?
I tended a little more towards spending more money in midfield. At the beginning of the year, I didn’t spend too much on forwards because I find they’re really hit or miss at the start of the year and you never know who’s going to get hot. I had some bigger budget defenders at the beginning but as the season went on it seemed they just weren’t producing this year so I started leaning towards budget cheap defenders and not spending too much money there. I ended up spending almost everything on the front seven guys.
Who were some of your go-to players this season?
Well, whenever we had a home game I was going for Pedro [Morales]. He was pretty much dynamite at home and it’s always fun having a home team guy that you can watch. Another big guy that I typically had was Javier Morales from Salt Lake. And at different times of the year, I obviously had the big guys from LA like Landon Donovan and Robbie Keane.
Kendall Waston came up big for you in that final week didn’t he?
Yeah, he was huge. But I think most of the top guys, including the guy that was chasing me in the Whitecaps FC group, had him towards the end of the season. That was one thing I noticed. As time went on, people had really similar rosters so it became hard to move up in the standings unless you gambled with a player that most people didn’t have. So you had to look for what you call a “differential,” somebody with low ownership that you think is going to do well. I think that was one of the keys to getting ahead.
You ended up finishing seven points up on the guy behind you. Were you near the top of the standings throughout the year or did you make a late surge?
It was totally a late surge. I started out well enough, but I went to Brazil for the World Cup and I didn’t really have much time to pay attention to this stuff. So I dropped way back – there were four or five weeks in June and July when I was just red arrows, negative every week. When I came back, I picked it up and had a jump from about 200th to 25th.
At the end of that little run, one of the things that worked out quite well was playing my wildcard, which allows you to make a complete roster overhaul without getting any points deducted. You’re only allowed to play one wildcard per season and I ended up using mine in Round 27 (week of September 10). When I did that, I ended up with the second highest score for that week across the entire league.
I think I played that perfectly. I waited, waited, waited and then when I did it, I picked the right guys to make a huge jump. In that week, I beat the guy who was leading the Whitecaps FC group by 40 points and completely leapfrogged him into the top spot. From there, it was just a back and forth battle with the guy that finished second.
What’s your best advice for future MLS Fantasy players?
The best thing really is to have other people you know who are playing and use them to bounce ideas off. Just have fun with it and be a part of a community playing it. That’s the best thing. It just makes it so much more fun.
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