Especially in fantasy baseball drafts – risers and fallers abound. But I thought we could kill two birds in one column by showing you the rosters I drafted for an NFBC style Draft & Hold league at First Pitch Arizona, which is the first weekend of November.
NOV 2012 for 2013 season – drafting from the #2 hole where I took Mike Trout
C – A.J. Ellis, Rob Brantly, Jason Castro, Ryan Hanigan
1B – Ryan Howard, Kendrys Morales, Chris McGuiness
3B – Manny Machado, Lonnie Chisenhall, Juan Francisco
2B – Jason Kipnis, Robert Andino, Eduardo Nunez
SS – Marco Scutaro, Jurickson Profar, Clint Barmes
OF – Mike Trout, Jose Bautista, Desmond Jennings, Josh Reddick, Starling Marte, Aaron Hicks, Avisail Garcia, Russ Canzler, Wil Venable
SP – Yu Darvish, David Price, Kris Medlen, Jeremy Hellickson, Hisashi Iwakuma, Rick Porcello, Danny Duffy, Patrick Corbin, Mark Rogers, Erasmo Ramirez, Bartolo Colon, Eric Stults, Robbie Erlin, Martin Perez
RP – Joe Nathan, Tom Wilhelmsen, Glen Perkins, Nate Jones, Vinnie Pestano, Santiago Casilla, Josh Fields, Franklin Morales, Nate Jones, Drew Smyly, Robbie Ross, Sean Doolittle
I started this draft with Trout, Bautista and Price but you can see that an awful lot of later picks bore fruit. I ended up with only the third/fourth best offense with 56.0 points but strangled the pitching categories with 71.5 points and won the league by four points with a total of 127.5. Only Derek Van Riper of Rotowire, who finished 2nd, was also over 100 points – in fact 3rd was 90 points.
For benchmarks, here were my totals and points in each category:
Batting Average: .2693 (11)
Runs: 987 (14, 60 behind 1st)
Home Runs: 232 (10)
Runs Batted In: 869 (8)
Stolen Bases: 177 (13)
Earned Run Average: 3.295 (15)
Wins: 101 (14, one win behind 1st)
WHIP: 1.160 (15)
Strikeouts: 1357 (15)
Saves: 96 (12.5)
Now let’s see how my team ended up this year (again drafting the first 23 players in November and the rest online in January). I drew the first spot and picked the same player.
NOV 2013 for 2014 season
C – Wilson Ramos, Evan Gattis (C/OF), Yan Gomes (C/1B), Josmil Pinto
1B – Adrian Gonzalez, Mike Napoli
3B – Chase Headley, Juan Francisco (1B/3B)
2B – Daniel Murphy, Darwin Barney, Ryan Goins
SS – Erick Aybar, Brad Miller, Mike Aviles (2B/3B/SS)
OF – Mike Trout, Carlos Gomez, Wil Myers, J.B. Shuck, Matt Joyce, A.J. Pollock, Brandon Barnes, Skip Schumaker (2B/OF), Jose Tabata, Kyle Parker
UT – Garrett Jones (1B/OF)
SP – Jose Fernandez, David Price, Alex Cobb, Travis Wood, Tyson Ross, Dan Straily, Carlos Torres, Brett Oberholtzer, Henderson Alvarez, Eric Johnson, Miguel A. Gonzalez, Jason Vargas, Ross Detwiler, Felipe Paulino, Andrew Heaney, Trevor Bauer, David Hale, Rubby De La Rosa
RP – Trevor Rosenthal, Danny Farquhar, Cody Allen, Josh Fields, Brad Ziegler, A.J. Ramos, Mike Dunn
Here is hoping for a repeat. {jcomments on}