I had mentioned last week that I would look at ADP this week but thought later that was putting the cart in front of the horse – that before we looked at draft positions and thus roster construction, we should spell out what you are trying to draft.

The generally accepted “target” level would be to try and finish in the top 20 percent of each category. Last year, there were 420 teams in the main event, so 84th in each category would get you 337 points or a total of 3370. That total would have finished in 11th place (10th was just a point more). You will obviously do better in many of the categories, so hopefully you have some upside, but it does validate our top 20 percentile aim.

Here is a comparison of those targets followed by the top mark in each category.

Cat 20% 1st
AVG 0.2674 0.2819
Runs 989 1115
HR 237 292
RBI 956 1121
SB 155 216
ERA 3.321 2.913
Wins 99 139
WHIP 1.191 1.067
K 1416 1588
Saves 90 163

The Main Event winners last year were Mastersball columnist Greg Morgan and his father Dale. Their total points were a very healthy 3643, more than 100 points better than the 2nd and 3rd place teams who had nice 3500+ totals.

But let’s look at the Morgans’ “Sons of Thunder” team and see how they did by category.

AVG 0.2776 416
Runs 1107 419
HR 247 376.5
RBI 1033 411
SB 186 410.5
ERA 3.278 358
Wins 106 383
WHIP 1.174 368
K 1503 401
Saves 50 100

They were so strong, especially in the offensive categories and with strikeouts, that they easily made up for the low saves total.

The reason you need to have the category targets in mind is so that you need to have a more balanced team because there is no trading and thus you can’t turn a surplus in stolen bases into points in any other category during the season. So you need to draft enough to try and finish strong in each category and then let your good and bad categories cancel out but still reach a competitive total score.

I will present current ADP next week but first, take this quiz – here is the first round from a 2014 league – Look at it and write down which players won’t be in the first round this spring and some other players you do expect to find in the first round.

1.01  Mike Trout

1.02  Miguel Cabrera

1.03  Paul Goldschmidt

1.04  Andrew McCutchen

1.05  Ryan Braun

1.06  Chris Davis

1.07  Carlos Gonzalez

1.08  Hanley Ramirez

1.09  Adam Jones

1.10  Clayton Kershaw

1.11  Bryce Harper

1.12  Carlos Gomez

1.13  Robinson Cano

1.14  Prince Fielder

1.15  Joey Votto

Teams could have won with several of those picks and clearly had an uphill battle with others. The winner in this league avoided Braun, Davis or Gonzalez because he picked tenth and Kershaw was still there for him. {jcomments on}