Mastersball

Early drafts are underway and while it is human nature, I see examples of personal bias altering people’s drafting. Certainly we all view players differently and maybe got burned too badly by Adam Dunn or Vernon Wells to even think about drafting them again.

But what are our draft picks? Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle we all hope get us first place in each of our league’s categories. So shouldn’t they be more about the numbers than about the face on those numbers?

Let’s look at Player X and Player Y and tell me which one you want to draft

Yeah I know you could run over to Baseball-Reference.com and look them up – hell you might even remember X if you had him last year. And like any set I pulled out you could say I fudged this or that – hey it’s just an exercise. One is drafted half the time in the first round while the other people always say…well you can’t draft him in the first round. Pick yours

And then let’s look at closers. They are a unique brand of pitchers for sure. Ron Shandler's rule of TOG in full force, [that is Talent, Opportunity, and Guile if you haven’t heard it before – the reasons that pitchers get/keep the closer role].

But are we drafting a name or a face or are we drafting the projected number of the revered Saves we need from “our” closers? You may have seen Todd’s comments on this and I am pretty much in the same camp – save are saves. Ugly or clean they count the same in that category. Sure we would like our guy to have a nice ERA and WHIP, but that is not the reason we added them to our roster and if you drafted them late then presumably (hopefully?) your starting pitchers much better innings heavy ERA and WHIP can absorb a poor closer’s numbers pretty easily.

So take a look at these four pitching lines:

Okay if I follow my own arguments above, I want Closer B – more saves, MORE ratios. Well Closers A & B are from last year – one cost you a much higher draft pick or considerably more auction dollars. Now which would you choose for 2012? Two saves difference plus nine more strikeouts versus better ERA and WHIP. Pretty much the same guy, right? So why does Closer C get drafted several rounds ahead of Closer D?

Which MI would you draft? X or Y?

Which Closer would you draft? C or D?

I’ll hang up and listed now……………..I have to go draft one of the closers.

Okay just finished a fifty….yes 50 round draft in just over four hours. So here is the first round

And Player X, Ian Kinsler went at 2.02 – four spots higher than Player Y, Hanley Ramirez…..someone must have read the article.

Pitcher A/C, Heath Bell went at 9.01. The Marlins won’t win as many games as the Tampa Bay Rays so pitcher B/D, Kyle Farnsworth should have more chances this year….but Farnsworth went at 12.05

The bottom line of course is you should draft the players on what you think they will do this year – last year’s numbers are gone. Still sometimes we need to look at the numbers and not the face.

It seems like a simple question – which spot would you like to draft from?

But how many leagues offer you at least the chance to answer that question?

My mother said always best to start at the beginning, so let’s make sure we are at the same starting line.

Q: What is the NFBC?

A: The National Fantasy Baseball Championship ($$$$ entry to try and win the $100,000 grand prize and likely some league prizes as well; 15 team, 5X5, mixed league leagues with serpentine draft format)

Q: So what is KDS

 A: Named after Kentucky Derby where when your entry is drawn you get your choice of remaining pole (draft) positions.   So they get a randomized list of your league. Pull the first player at random, check his list and he gets his first choice; pull next drafter, check his list and give him the first on his list that is available (okay easy for instance they both list 1-15 then first player is #1 and second is #2).

Q : Don’t I want the best player I can get?

 A: Well ….yes …..BUT not everyone agrees on who the first pick should be: Albert Pujols?  Miguel Cabrera?  Matt Kemp?  They have all gone #1 in some early leagues) and of course the answers get more disparate after that. Plus if you draft at the end of round one you have a much earlier pick in round two, so maybe you think that taking the last pick in round one and getting Dustin Pedroia and either Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw is better than Pujols and Matt Holiday.

Or maybe you have a particular player you want to get either late in the first round or early in the second round – then you would prefer to be at the end of the first round. Or maybe you like to draft in the middle – guaranteed a nice player in round one and a better choice in round two than drafting from the top of the first round. There are hundreds of permutations. But the point is you have some input. Yeah you might still get drawn last and settle for the empty chair but that might have happened anyway and with everyone else getting their choice you might have improved.

So I had this dilemma a few days ago and after looking at the following table you decide before you see my answer what would YOU pick

Okay FIRST write down where you want to draft ______

Now before you say I massaged our rankings, sure there are ties on projected dollar earnings and I have to break them somehow. So you could flip the order on CarGo, Longoria and Upton – all projected to earn $32; just as you could do with the next four players. I likely did it off which I would draft first or which I know will be available later (nobody is drafting Napoli in the first round – he probably goes in the third or fourth round so even if you loved him (:wave: yeah I was the guy who said he would be worth $30 last year and I wasn’t far off) you know you could get him with your second if not third pick…..depending on where you are.

And that is the point – some drafters will try and plot that out. I admit I think that is the result of over mocksturbation but here is my thought process:

• I wanted the best pick I could get in the second round without sacrificing value in the first round
• I think there is an advantage from drafting at the end of the first round this year – for the first reason as well as draft picks later
• I generally like to draft from the middle of the draft as I believe those on either end tend to reach for a player with their second pick at several points in the draft and the value falls to the middle.
• I thought that a couple of the strongest players in this league would want to be at the end of the draft, so I am happy to be just ahead of them in the odd rounds

So what I looked at was where the point was that I just really didn’t like my choice if the other drafters took the other players. Look at any of those three lists and see how far down you are comfortable with taking a player as your first round pick – the player who is the foundation of your team. Who will be consistent and give you solid production. I stopped at the eleventh spot. Below that I thought I had given up on a better player. Slightly above that I liked several players. (Of course all of this assumes that you don’t absolutely have to or want to start the draft with Pujols….or Miggy…..or Kemp.

But don’t forget that the only draft position that guarantees you that you can get THAT first round player is #1. And then you will wait almost two rounds before you get your next pick.

That however is the point you have some influence in where you draft. In my case my first choice was #11 and I was the eleventh draft picked but still got my first choice. Let’s look at how everyone did – on the left will be the order in which the players were drawn, followed by the pick they got, what choice that was for them, and then the beginning of their wish list for spots.

In my last column we looked at the first round of two different real money leagues that were drafted in December and January to see the differences in early rankings/projections versus actual draft spots.

There was a thread started in the Strategy & Theory Discussion Forum of the message board about the drafting of pitchers.

My contention was that in NFBC drafts where your team is not only competing at the league level but also measured against the entire field in the overall ranking that the better drafters were taking the better pitchers fairly early – not in the first round and only the occasional stud in the second round but starting in earnest in the third round or bunching several picks later than that to likely have three pitchers – either two starters and a closer or three starters – in the first ten rounds. ).  So let’s take a look at the two drafts I referenced last week and see how and when pitchers were drafted.

What the draft results tell us is that most teams drafted either three or four pitchers among their first ten picks. The actual draft for the two drafts is

December Draft                                                               January Draft

1 team took two pitchers                             3 teams took two pitchers

8 teams took three pitchers                        5 teams took three pitchers

4 teams took four pitchers                           6 teams took four pitchers

2 teams took five pitchers                            1 team took five pitchers

Throw out the two and five pitcher teams and you see how most drafters started out.

We can also get good information by looking at the pitchers drafted each round:

December                           January

Note the similarities in the two drafts:

No pitchers taken in the first round.

Two to four pitchers taken (for the most part) in round two through four.

Then an increase to roughly four or five on the low end to seven or eight on the high end from round five through round eight and then a huge explosion with most teams drafting a pitcher in round nine. And no, that was not a round of closer runs in either draft.

Both drafts were very similar in the amount of pitchers drafted in the first five rounds – one had 16 while the other had 18 and in the next five rounds – the first having 37 and the other drafting 33. So both drafts saw 50 or 51 pitchers taken in the first ten rounds – slightly more than three per team.

Having looked at all the positions for the projected top performers, let’s now take a look at round one of real money drafts to see where players actually put them on their rosters.

The two drafts are from fifteen team, 5X5, mixed leagues. One drafted in December and one this month.

Here is the earlier one

A few observations

• Heavy on the STUD first basemen as you would expect
• Pujols was a free agent at the time drafted, obviously signing with the Angels since
• Sorry, I know this is popular with my brethren in the FB writing community, but Tulowitzki is not a top five pick – barely a top ten player for me
• Correctly, there are NO pitchers in this first round
• Hanley Ramirez does not belong in the first round, but…..

Now let’s see the differences a month later with almost the same group:

Thoughts here and comparisons:

• Bottom three spots are the only changes and the three from first one were first three off the board in this later second round
• Upton certainly has the upside but you are paying for all of it in the first round
• Personally, I don’t really think Reyes is a first rounder (but yes, it does take care of SB at a weak position)

Questions?

Actually, for fantasy players the question only begets more questions – How good is he? How good is the team he pitches for? And perhaps more importantly than those two, how secure is his job?

So even IF we found someone we thought was better than Mo, will they still be getting their team’s saves in August or September? That has to be factored in with some choices, not so much with others. So let’s look at the rankings for drafting a closer this year.

Top 12 Closers for 2012 (as of mid-January)

1. Mariano Rivera, New York Yankees
2. Craig Kimbrel, Atlanta Braves
3. Jonathan Papelbon, Philadelphia Phillies
4. Ryan Madson, Cincinnati Reds
5. Brian Wilson, San Francisco Giants
6. Huston Street, San Diego Padres
7. Joel Hanrahan, Pittsburgh Pirates
8. John Axford, Milwaukee Brewers
9. J.J. Putz, Arizona Diamondbacks
10. Drew Storen, Washington Nationals
11. Rafael Betancourt, Colorado Rockies
12. Jason Motte, St. Louis Cardinals

Well, we have covered all the positions so next week we will start to take a look at Round 1 of a current draft.

Last in our preliminary look at position rankings for 2012 fantasy baseball drafts are the pitchers.

So a month before pitchers and catchers report to their respective spring training complexes, here is my view of the top-24 starting pitchers for the 2012 season.

1. Roy Halladay, Philadelphia
2. Justin Verlander, Detroit
3. Clayton Kershaw, LA Dodgers
4. Jered Weaver, LA Angels
5. Dan Haren, LA Angels
6. Felix Hernandez, Seattle
7. Cliff Lee, Philadelphia
8. Tim Lincecum, San Francisco
9. Cole Hamels, Philadelphia
10. Michael Pineda, Seattle
11. C.C. Sabathia, NY Yankees
12. David Price, Tampa Bay
13. Chris Carpenter, St. Louis
14. Zack Greinke, Milwaukee
15. Matt Cain, San Francisco
16. Ricky Romero, Toronto
17. Stephen Strasburg, Washington
18. James Shields, Tampa Bay
19. Ian Kennedy, Arizona
20. Matt Moore, Tampa Bay
21. Adam Wainwright, St. Louis
22. Jeremy Hellickson, Tampa Bay
23. Madison Bumgarner, San Francisco
24. Jon Lester, Boston

Next week we will look at our last preliminary list – the closers.

Looking ahead at who I project to be the top outfielders in the 2012 season is somewhat obscured by Ryan Braun’s pending PED suspension and some health issues. But while I am not going to put Braun on the list below he would have been my number one outfielder over Matt Kemp and the Cardinal’s Allen Craig would have made the Top 25 if he were healthy.

So here is December’s view

1. Matt Kemp, LAD
2. Jacoby Ellsbury, BOS
3. Carlos Gonzalez, COL
4. Justin Upton, AZ
5. Curtis Granderson, NYY
6. Andrew McCutchen, PIT
7. Mike Stanton, MIA
8. Carl Crawford, BOS
9. Nelson Cruz, TEX
10. Matt Holliday, STL
11. Hunter Pence, PHL
12. Josh Hamilton, TEX
13. Jay Bruce, CIN
14. Adam Jones, BAL
15. Shane Victorino, PHL
16. Alex Gordon, KC
17. Corey Hart, MLW
18. Andre Ethier, LAD
19. Brett Gardner, NYY
20. Michael Bourn, ATL
21. Jayson Werth, WAS
22. Drew Stubbs, CIN
23. Peter Bourjos, LAA
24. Shin-Soo Choo, CLE
25. Jeff Francoeur, KC

Once you get to this spot there are several who could go a spot higher or lower. The one who could easily be listed in the twenties but just off my list would be Desmond Jennings of Tampa Bay. I would like to see the power show up again for him this year and then he will move up.

By means of a quick review, here are the top shortstops in 2011

Who are my top shortstop candidates for 2012? Well Tulo is still at the top of the list but the old and the new in Miami may have to switch places.

While I still think Hanley Ramirez is more likely to put up better fantasy stats than Jose Reyes, I am listing a mental reservation here…..my reservation about Hanley’s mental outlook that is – IF he is still in Miami to start the season will his move to third base hinder his approach and cost you stats if you draft him?

Okay, here are my Top 12 shortstops for 2012 as of December 26

Note that all of them have some question marks on playing time, injury reliability, or just matching last year’s numbers (which Cabrera won’t likely do, but I don’t see as much of a drop in home runs as many do). Because of that by my standards it is weaker than second base heading into 2012.

Now we want to pick out the next twelve from either second base or shortstop to populate our MI list.

Okay let’s look at your choices at second base for 2012 – the good news is that it looks a little better than it did a year ago.

Here were the top second basemen in 2011:

1. Dustin Pedroia, Boston
2. Robinson Cano, NY Yankees
3. Ian Kinsler, Texas
4. Brandon Phillips, Cincinnati
5. Ben Zobrist, Tampa Bay
6. Howie Kendrick, LA Angels
7. Dan Uggla, Atlanta
8. Neil Walker, Pittsburgh
9. Danny Espinosa, Washington
10. Rickie Weeks, Milwaukee

Hopefully that list doesn’t surprise you much – I suggested Espinosa last year as a good shot at second with his blend of power and speed – hopefully the average goes up next year. Ugly was Dan’s start last year but he made up for it later and as long as you didn’t get disillusioned and sell low you were fine.

Okay now let’s look at my rankings for the Top Twelve second sackers as we draft in December

1. Robinson Cano – more power than the others
2. Dustin Pedroia – power and speed with more average than
3. Ian Kinsler – but more likely chance to go 30-30
4. Ben Zobrist – I also like the position eligibility so you can take a shot and not get killed
5. Brandon Phillips – consistent if not exciting anymore
6. Rickie Weeks – may be the last year he is ranked higher than his brother
7. Chase Utley – may be too low here
8. Howie Kendrick – hitting in front of Albert, sign me up
9. Neil Walker – don’t write him off as a one year wonder – he can hit
10. Jemile Weeks – if he can maintain a .300 average this  is too low; 30+ steals
11. Dustin Ackley – will continue to move up the ranks
12. Danny Espinosa

Let’s look back at shortstops to end this column and next week I will give you my choices for 2012 as well as look at the next group of middle infielders.

Top shortstops in 2011

1. Jose Reyes, NY Mets
2. Troy Tulowitzki, Colorado
3. Asdrubal Cabrera, Cleveland
4. Starlin Castro, Chicago Cubs
5. Elvis Andrus, Texas
6. Jimmy Rollins, Philadelphia
7. Emilio Bonifacio, Florida>Miami
8. Erick Aybar, LA Angels
9. Jhonny Peralta, Detroit
10. J.J. Hardy, Baltimore

Continuing on with draft prep for 2012, let’s look at how the third basemen fared last year and which I project to be the top twelve for next season.

Here were the Top Ten in 2011

1. Jose Bautista, Toronto
2. Michael Young, Texas
3. Adrian Beltre, Texas
4. Aramis Ramirez, Chicago Cubs
5. Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay
6. Mark Reynolds, Baltimore
7. Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco
8. Ryan Roberts, Arizona
9. Edwin Encarnacion, Toronto
10. Kevin Youkilis, Boston

Odd that two teams both had two “third basemen” in the top performers last year. “Tatman” – aka Ryan Roberts came out of nowhere last year – he wasn’t even projected as a starter by the Diamondbacks heading into the 2011 year.

Okay, so what do my 2012 third base rankings look like?

1. Jose Bautista – no reason he won’t repeat
2. Adrian Beltre – room for more contributions in his second year in Arlington
3. Evan Longoria – expecting a rebound here assuming he can stay healthy
4. Brett Lawrie – he will easily be a 20-20 guy and could be 30-30
5. David Wright – assuming he stays in New York with shorter fences
6. Kevin Youkilis – just needs his health to allow full at bats
7. Ryan Zimmerman – he will have more RBI chances next year if he can stay in the lineup
8. Michael Young – will just keep on hitting
9. Alex Rodriguez – assuming the hip is better he should have a rebound
10. Pablo Sandoval – even on a bad offense
11. Mike Moustakas – I like his potential – note he started slow at every level
12. Aramis Ramirez – where he signs could change this slightly

Pedro Alvarez is a possibility but I need to see it (after being burned last year). But I think the talent is there despite Pittsburgh mismanaging him.

Lonnie Chisenhall will continue to develop in 2012 but not sure his stats will be good enough to crash this list.

First basemen and third basemen who didn’t make the top twelve in their respective categories (in no particular order) are Martin Prado, Mark Reynolds (good power, terrible average), Freddie Freeman, Gaby Sanchez, Chipper Jones, Ike Davis, Derrek Lee, Carlos Lee, Scott Rolen, Mark Trumbo, Carlos Pena, and James Loney (assuming that was a blip on his behavior resume).

Next week we will look at middle infielders.