Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft

So last night me and 9 other fantasy sports bloggers did a mock draft. It was a good experience seeing where some other people were valuing guys, and we did it so that you (the reader) could see where we (aspiring experts) are taking people. Our draft featured 23 rounds total. The lineup consisted of 1 C, 1 1B, 1 2B, 1 3B, 1 SS, 5 OF, 2 UTIL, 1 MI, 1 CI, and 9 P. I was drafting with a H2H league in mind. I will give some commentary of each round or two and say whose pick I liked, disliked, and what I was thinking when I took my guy.

So if you would click on this link —-> Mock Draft Results

You can follow my commentary on this page with the results next to it. Sorry I didn’t make this a little more user friendly. I wanted to get it up and running as soon as possible.

Round 1

My pick-Hanley Ramirez. Well it was a no brainer for me here, take the next best thing after Pujols and secure the best SS ,or at the worst 2nd best SS as my first pick. Taking Han Ram means I don’t have to look for another SS the entire draft till near the end to fill my Middle Infielder spot.

Best pick-It’s hard to pick a best and worst in the first couple of rounds but my best will go to Killboy taking Cano at 7. Cano will be the best 2B option again this year, and since Utley is looking more and more like a Giant ? mark every day. It is nice to know you won’t have to worry about a weak position the rest of the draft.

Worst pick-Mitchell’s pick of CarGo. I think that CarGo will have another good pick, but I cannot/will not justify making him a top 6 pick. I think he is better at the 8-14 range. But each has their own opinion, I don’t see him being that much better if at all better than Braun or Crawford.

Round 2

My pick-Ryan Zimmerman. I wanted to secure the last good 3B till all of the question mark guys come. Zimmerman will probably miss a couple of games, but he could end up being the #1 3B by season’s end. I know that he will probably finish top 5 at the worst, so no gamble here. Secure my hot corner and wait for my next guy.

Best pick-Killboy with A Gon. A lot of people are high on A Gon because of his new park and much better lineup, and well I’m all in with that enthusiasm too. I’ve seen him go as early as 8 in a draft, but Killboy got him at 14. Great pick here seeing that A Gon could finish atop the 1B this season.

Worst pick-Hallam’s pick of Matt Kemp. I fully expect Kemp to have a better season across the board then he did last year, but Holliday was still on the board which is a much safer value. Kemp going off at 17 is about 8-12 picks higher than I thought he would have gone. He could easily finish in the top 5 OF where he was taken, but I think he may have been there for Hallam’s next pick.

Round 3

My pick-Prince Fielder. I came in wanting my first three guys and got them. Yes Ryan Howard was still on the board, but I like Prince better this season. He offers similar HR and RBI numbers, and I’m big on Prince having a great year since he will be a FA this offseason. Not all guys perform great under the pressure of a contract year, but Prince just seems like one of those guys who will explode. I have a potential top 3 at SS, 1B, and 3B so I’m feeling pretty good right now.

Best pick-Killboy’s Howard. Killboy is 3 for 3 in best pick right now. I gave him the nod here simply because of value. He is getting a potential 40 hr and over 120 rbi with his 3rd pick and late 3rd round at that. Howard at 27 is a steal considering he is going in top 22 in most drafts. So far Killboy’s team has great power guys, and has taken an early lead in those categories at this point in the draft. He was pretty happy Howard feel to him here even with A Gon as his 1B.

Worst pick-MVPujols’ pick of Kershaw. I like Kershaw and think he will have an excellent season, but at number 30. He is at the turn which means you have to be a little more aggressive with your picks since he doesn’t have another pick until 20 picks later. But I think he could have passed on Kershaw and taken some more bat help. Just a personal opinion of course.

Round 4

My pick-Victor Martinez. I wasn’t targeting a C this early, but I figured why not take a top 3 C to join the rest of my team. He will probably have a little better season this year than last year, so he fills a hole at C and since C has a lot of potential good picks I wanted to grab a sure thing.

Best pick-Chris I’s Youk pick. I like Youk’s fantasy game a lot. He will have 1B and 3B after just a week or two into the season (in most formats) which is what Chris was doing grabbing another quality bat. He would have gone another way seeing that his first two picks were 1B and 3B, but it is hard to pass Youk at pick 33.

Worst pick-Hallam’s Posey. At pick 37 with McCann and V Mart still on the board, I didn’t like that pick from a value perspective. I think Posey will produce a nice line for the season, but I can also very easily see a little sophomore slump in the season. He probably won’t see as many days at 1B like he did last year which means more wear and tear on his body. Good player but bad pick at this spot.

Round 5

My pick-Dan Uggla. I wanted to grab the last top tier 2B while I could. I think Uggla will outperform himself this year in comparison to previous years. He has a better overall lineup around him, and doesn’t have to be the sole RBI producer anymore. Taking pressure off of guys can really elevate their game. I know have a great INF after this pick, and don’t really have to address anything with these guys except speed, but I knew I could get cheap steal guys later in the draft.

Best pick-Hallam’s CC. I think getting CC as the 7th pitcher is a great pick. CC is workhorse and has pitched great pretty much every season since he has been in the bigs. He could potentially walk away from his contract at the end of the season, so he might have a little more fuel to his fire to perform well. Easily will finish as a top 5 SP and got him as the 7th great pick in my opinion.

Worst pick-Holt’s Ubaldo. You passed CC for Ubaldo don’t like it at all. Plus he already has Felix so why take another SP in your first 5 picks. SP is deep this year if you get a top 5 guy. Then I think you should fill the holes in your offense. SP haven’t been flying off of the board in our draft so I don’t see why he grabbed Ubaldo here.

Round 6

My pick-Zack Greinke. I was planning on taking a Speed OF and a top notch SP. SP started flying off the board, and the next speed guy was Ells, so I went for the SP thinking Eric would snag another SP since so many just got taken. Greinke has won a Cy Young for an awful team, so I think he will have the run support and potential playoff motivation to play every game with focus (which he seemed to lack at times last year with KC). I can easily see him being a top 3 SP at the end of the season in a pretty weak NL Cen, he has the stuff to pull it off.

Best pick-Harris with David Price. I like this pick because he is filling a need. He doesn’t have a SP yet and took a pretty good one. I think better than Gallardo and Weaver. It always feels good when I feel like I got a better player with a later pick.

Worst pick-Jesse’s Josh Johnson. I like Johnson a lot, but he already has Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay. He has taken 3 SP with his first 6 picks. He is going all out on Pitching and has very little Offense to show for it. I think taking that many SP is really dangerous, especially since all it takes is one little pop and they are done for the year!

Round 7 & 8

My pick-Alex Rios & Chad Billingsley. Ellsbury got taken right before me so I just went with a 20/20 guy for my OF. I like Rios in the White Sox offense (is is pretty deep this year). I decided to pull the trigger on Billingsley because I was eyeing Stanton, Rasmus, and Upton for my next guys and they all got taken. Plus I  didn’t like the OF on the board at this time.

Best pick-Beltre at pick 80. I don’t like Beltre all that much, but I think Eric got some great value here. He needed a 3B and got a guy who is capable of tearing the cover off the ball. Even if Beltre declines some from last year (which he probably will) being taken in the 8th round doesn’t hurt too much.

Worst pick-Harris taking Kendry. He already has Tex at first, so he has other needs. Plus Kendry could start the season on the DL because of his ankle. He should have targeted another OF for his team or a 3B (Beltre, Young, and Alvarez) at that pick, I would think he might do this pick over if given the chance.

Round 9 & 10

My pick-Pedro Alvarez & Trevor Cahill. I took Alvarez because I like his upside. If he hits 30+ hr as my 9th pick I would be ecstatic. I don’t love either of these guys. And didn’t fill my speed hole, or secure another OF, but they are two quality players. They both offer good value as my 9th and 10th pick.

Best pick-Mitchell’s Billy Butler. He got a .300 lock in the 9th round. Butler could be a 20 HR guy, and he will get AB’s because of his consistency at the plate. I really liked this pick for Mitchell and almost grabbed Butler instead of Alvarez with my pick, but I had another backup 1B in my mind for later. Like this pick a lot in the 9th.

Worst pick-My Cahill. I didn’t really want him here. I liked the low WHIP and ERA possibility, but there were other SP I liked more. I lost track of time and just grabbed the first SP on the big list. So my first mistake in the entire draft came at pick 10. Wasn’t to bothered by it, but if I had a do over I would take it there.

Round 11 & 12

My pick-Delmon Young & Vernon Wells. This was simply me filling in my OF with two quality hitters. Both can hit over .280 and hit 25+ HR, with 10+ SB. So I am happy with both. I wasn’t going to take any closers here because I think that is silly! I had some SP late in the draft I wanted to grab so this just felt like the right thing to grab these two guys.

Best pick-Chris I’s Nick Markakis. Got him in the 12th round. Great value pick here. He had a quiet year last year and still had quality numbers. Could easily finish in the top 20 of all OF. He probably could have taken a SS since he didn’t have one, but the value of Markakis was worth the pick.

Worst pick-MVPujols taking Dan Hudson. Hudson could be this whole year what he was for the last month and a half of last year, but he could have got Hudson in the 15 or 16th round too. I like the player but not at the spot he took him. Plus Hudson as his 3rd SP is a little of a reach in my opinion.

Round 13 & 14

My pick-Juan Pierre & JJ Putz. My first closer is Putz. I like what Putz has to offer in Arizona. He is the closer and doesn’t have a lot of competition for the job. He may only get about 40 chances to save but that means he will have mid to high 30’s I can live with that. He won’t cripple me in WHIP or ERA so can’t complain. Finally took a speed guy with Pierre. My speed is lacking, but Pierre brings a good boost for me.

Best pick-Mike’s pick of Mark Reynolds. Mike got his 3B in the 13th round, and Reynolds is a guy who no one wants to touch. Even though he is two years from a 40 hr 20 sb year. We know what he is capable of, but his Avg is always an eye sore. I think new place will be good for Reynolds and in the 13th round it isn’t like he will be losing much if he doesn’t pan out.

Worst pick-Eric’s pick of Andrew Bailey. I think there was better closers on the board when Eric took Bailey, but a closer is a closer. These 2 rounds were difficult for me to say that pick was bad, so I just went with my gut pick of Bailey being the worst. Overall I think everyone did pretty good these two rounds.

Round 15 & 16 & 17

My pick-Chris Perez & Jose Tabata & Drew Storen. I decided to just grab my closers in a four pick spurt. And I grabbed Tabata for a little more speed help. I got some hate from taking Tabata because others were targeting him, and some “nice pick” comments. So felt good with this set of three. Have my OF set now, and my RP set. The rest of the draft will be about upside guys, and depth.

Best pick-Chris I’s Ian Desmond. Filled his hole at SS and got a good value in the 17th. Desmond had an quality season last year for the Nats, and many expect him to build on that. Even if he doesn’t Chris won’t complain getting him in the 17th.

Worst pick-Killboy’s Carlos Pena. Killboy already has A Gon and Ryan Howard. Why take Pena here. He should have probably gotten a player who could have backed up Mike Young at 3B. I don’t like this pick much at all. He will hurt his avg numbers more than he gets other stats. Killboy must be hoping the Windy City brings a couple more base knocks.

Round 18 & 19 & 20

My pick-Brett Myers & Javier Vazquez & Freddie Freeman. Went with two high K guys as my 4th and 5th starters. I wasn’t targeting either of these guys coming in but Jonathan Sanchez got swooped up before I picked so went with two older K guys. Both will probably get my 180 K’s without completely killing me in the other categories. Freddie Freeman was the guy I wanted coming in as my backup 1B. He is sitting behind Heyward, Chipper, McCan, and Uggla. He has no pressure to be a big bat, but will have lots of opportunities to use his huge build to drive the ball. He is lots of upside with little risk as my 20th pick.

Best pick-Hallam’s Joe Nathan. All reports say that Nathan has pitched well this Spring. He was a top 10 closer for 6 years until last season. So he offers lots of upside and he got him in the 19th round not bad. I would have taken Nathan but already had my 3 closer in place so overall good selection here.

Worst pick-Jesse’s Gavin Floyd. I personally don’t like any of the White Sox pitchers. They don’t offer you much of anything except W’s (which is never a guarantee). He had better options for his SP at the time he took Gavin Floyd, but in the 20th round no pick can kill you.

Round 21 & 22 & 23

My pick-Omar Infante & Ryan Theriot & Brian Matusz. Infante and Theriot are guys who help fill out my depth while potentially offering some good value. Infante has high avg, and decent  R in his blood. While The Riot (as I like to call him) will bat at the top of the Cards lineup most of the time. High runs and decent sb from him. I was surprised Matusz was still on the board in the 23rd but I was happy to snag him. A young hurler who has the stuff to be a stud. He pitches in the dreaded AL East, but showed some good signs at the end of last season.

Best pick-MVPujols’ taking Tsuyoshi Nishioka. It was the last pick of the draft, but he gets 2B and SS. Plus a guy who could get 20 sb while batting around .300. Not bad for the last pick in the draft. Mr. Irrelevant of this draft very well may be relevant during this fantasy season.

Worst pick-Holt’s Miguel Tejada. I just don’t really like Tejada anymore. He had some decent moments last season, but don’t think he is worth drafting unless it is a 12 team or deeper. In the last 5 rounds selecting the best and worst picks is like picking which lottery ticket has the best odds, you can’t really do it. The last 7 rounds or so you can take gambles and risks without truly effecting your team at all.

The men at 4th and Home approached me with the idea of doing a mock draft, so check out their site. They have lots of good stuff on their blog, and had 6 guys represented in the draft. Another site featured on this draft was MLBdirt.com, and the last was Fantasy Alarm. I hope you will check out their sites and see what they have to offer.

I personally think I had the best first 8 Picks of the draft. But its my team so I may be a little biased. I would like to know who you thought did the best in the draft and who did the worst. Leave a comment with your opinion please. Also, don’t forget to subscribe so you can be notified during the fantasy season when I release my weekly lineup posts. Those who are about to draft I salute you!

Fantasy Baseball Draft Strategy

For fantasy baseball players draft day is the best part of the entire baseball season. This is the day when you get to make your team. When the draft starts you have a blank sheet, and after a hour and a half or 3 hours (however long your draft takes) you have YOUR team. You may not like every single pick, but you were in control the whole time.

In this post I am going to try and give a couple of strategies for your draft. This can help you go in knowing what you want to do, and feel like you are in control the entire time your draft is happening. Before we get to the actual draft strategies you should do one thing, look over several different fantasy player rankings. It is good to use just one for the draft, but I encourage you to look over 3, 4 ,10 different player ranking lists. This will help you get a feel for what every “expert,” blogger, and paid writer thinks going into this season. If you don’t know where to find a good list, well I have a little treat for you.

The Fantasy Newsman <—-Click here for a huge list of rankings galore!

I stumbled upon this the other day, and I thought this is a great resource to have in preparation for a draft. I would suggest you look over a couple of those lists the week of your draft so you get a feel for all of the players (names, positions, teams) before going into your draft. Once you have done a little “research” print off one of those ranking lists and start highlighting, crossing off, or any other form of note making for the players that you want/like this year and players you don’t want/dislike. This way you can go into your draft knowing which guys you should be looking for. (The note-making step isn’t necessary but I feel it helps a lot for draft day.) Another thing that is pretty helpful is do a mock draft or two. You can find mock drafts on ESPN, Yahoo, CBSsports, and many more. This helps you see where the “average” fantasy player is taking certain people. This will help you enhance your note making, you can put where players you like are typically getting drafted. Let’s say you really like Cole Hamels once you do a mock draft you can see oh he went in the middle of the 8th round. Now you can put 8th next to Hamels, and when it gets to your draft you will know going into the 7th and 8th round that Hamels will be going off the board so you can pull the trigger on him so you don’t “reach” too much for him.

So enough of the preparation stuff here is a couple of H2H draft strategies that I think might be helpful for you.

Overloading a side-This strategy just means you load up on either batters or pitchers. The reason this strategy can work is because you are trying to lock down one side of the matchup categories each week. If you have 5 great SP, 4 great Closers, and 4 more High potential pitchers then you will probably beat your opponents in all of the pitching categories each week. The only weakness in this strategy is if you will have little depth on the other side and it will be hard to steal a category to win your matchup 6-4. But if you were to choose to overload pitching your staff could look like this Roy Halladay (1st), King Felix (2nd), Cliff Lee (3rd), Josh Johnson (6th), Joakim Soria (7), Carlos Marmol (9), JJ Putz (14), John Axford (16), Shaun Marcum (11), Brandon Marrow(13), Craig Kimbrel(19). Or something similar to that. It is always nice to know you don’t have to worry about positions so this strategy is best if you don’t think you will be able to check multiple times a week.

Punting categories-This strategy is commonplace among H2H leagues. It is also a gamble because you are purposely losing a category so that you can make your other categories stronger. So let’s say you decide you aren’t going to worry about batting average at all. Then during the draft you would go for guys you are known to not have good avg, but are really good at another category. A good example of this is people like Adam Dunn, Mark Reynolds, Michael Bourn, Ryan Howard, Jose Bautista, and many others. If you were to choose to punt BA then you wouldn’t go for guys like Ichiro, Prado, and Starlin Castro since they offer high BA but not great in any of the other categories. Now if you do this strategy you wouldn’t pass on guys who have a high avg if they offer you good-great stats in at least 3 other categories. So in the first 3-5 rounds don’t pass on studs because they give you a high average. Some other categories that may be easy to “punt” are Saves, SB, and Wins. This strategy has always worked really well for me in fantasy basketball, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in baseball.

Best value-This is always a good strategy no matter the league you are in. You are simply going to get the best value at your pick every time. This might mean you get 2 1B early in the draft, or an old OF in the 10th round. The reason for this is if you have the best players you will be a tough team to beat every week. Plus if you do manage to get 2 great 1B, and 6 solid OF, you can always trade during the season to those who went with position scarcity instead of taking the best player. The down side to this strategy is you don’t end up with the players you like as much. So if you want take a couple of picks either in the middle of your draft or late to take a couple of “homer” picks so you will have some names on your team you actually want to root for.

There are several other strategies that people use during fantasy baseball, but these are three that could help you be competitive in your h2h league for the entire season. Now I want to remind everyone that there is no such thing as a perfect draft…so don’t expect it. Yes you can have a really good draft and love the team you have, but the season hasn’t started so no team is beating the other. The reason I wanted to say there is “no perfect draft” is to take the pressure off of you during your draft. It is ok if you reach for a player once, or you take a guy you aren’t sure about. The draft is an exciting time so sit back, have fun, and enjoy the hours you get to build the team you will get to manage for the entire year. At the end of the season the people who win their league are the people who make moves during the season. If you aren’t willing to change the team during the season, I can almost GUARANTEE that you will not win your league. My fellow fantasy baseballers the time is upon us go and draft with confidence, for those who are about to fantasy draft…I salute you!