Sunday 1 April 2012

My Draft

The clock hits 10.05pm and the Draft commences. The past 2 hours have been spent looking at the ESPN draft day manifest, Googling basic draft advice and trying to find any extra information that would be useful. But eventually that research time had to come to and end and I had to go for it.

As explained in my first post I was going to join a standard 10 team rotisserie league, the most popular form of the game. I was to draft 7th. From my vast Fantasy Football experience I was pleased with this position, I have never really wanted to have a pick in the top 2 of a snake draft as I would have to wait til the end of the 2nd round for another pick. So with my 1st pick I picked up Jose Bautista, a 3rd baseman I was aware of and was happy to draft.




Matthew Berry, ESPN analyst and my main source of fantasy information, has Bautista at number 3 on his Top 250 so I was even more pleased to see him drop to 7. Especially as he felt drafting Robinson Cano in the 1st was a stretch, he went at 4. I could have drafted Ryan Braun at 7 and seeing as he went 1st in a recent Mock Draft between the ESPN experts this may have been a good pick too but having listened to PTI recently and discovering he was subject to a recently overturned drug suspension. He had high levels of testosterone in his system but his 50 game suspension was overturned on appeal as the collector of the urine kept it in his fridge for 2 days. Yes that really happened!!

Anyways, back to my draft. I took Justin Upton in the 2nd, not heard of him before. I
did say my baseball knowledge was very limited! Once again this seemed like a steal as Berry has him 7th on his top 250. That list was searched a large degree especially in the later rounds. I went outfielder again in the 3rd round, discovering I needed to start 5. I drafted Curtis Granderson, was always going to have some decent Yankee scorer within the team seeing as they are the team I have been to see and I guess my MLB team.


By the time my 4th round pick came round I had seen Verlander, Halladay, Kershaw, Cliff Lee, Lincecum, Hernandez, Weaver and Sabathia all been drafted so decided it was time I went for a starting pitcher. I selected Cole Hamels as he was the highest rated SP left on the draft board. My next 3 selections were a combination of position needs and best guys available. I've always felt drafting the best guy available at the time is a decent strategy rather than reaching for guys simply based on need. The amount of real NFL teams that use this strategy rather than filling needs is on the rise. The New Orleans Saints selected Jimmy Graham at the end of the 3rd round in 2010 not because TE was a need position, we had just won a Superbowl with Jeremy Shockey and David Thomas, but because he was the highest player on their board. What a great decision that became! So I took Eric Hosmer at 1B, Jimmy Rollins at SS and Carl Cawford as another outfielder. Crawford was a player in Berry's Love list this year and reading about h
im he had a down year last season which saw him drop down drafts but has 2nd round talent. I'll happily take that in my case as I won't remember who else I could have taken at that position if it doesn't work out. In a Fantasy Football draft I may have made a different move knowing a lot more about the league and the players from top to bottom.


Once again in the 8th I panicked that I only had 1 pitcher and there are 9 pitcher slots so I grabbed Yovani Gallrado of the Milwaukee Brewers. Rickie Weeks fills my 2B spot, Brett Gardner 'The Stealer' is the 2nd Yankee on my roster and Ubaldo Jimenez gives me another pitcher. Going into the 12th round I am beginning to really struggle with player names so in between every pick I have I am frantically looking at articles and see who is high on the Top 250 still left to be drafted. I take a catcher in the 12th rated in the 3rd tier by Matthew Berry, Alex Avila, and Brandon Beachy in the next. A pitcher he was very high on this year. The following list completes my draft;

Round 14 - JJ Putz - RP
Round 15 - Coco Crisp (What a name!!) - CF
Round 16 - Neftali Feliz - RP
Round 17 - Scott Baker - SP
Round 18 - Emilio Bonafacio - SS
Round 19 - Chris Sale - RP
Round 20 - Chris Carpenter - SP
Round 21 - Lucas Duda - 1B
Round 22 - Danny Espinosa - 2B
Round 23 - Ryan Dempster - SP
Round 24 - Jim Johnson - RP
Round 25 - Dexter Fowler - CF

So in conclusion I drafted 25 player, 5 of which I had heard of before doing this. I'm not sure if I have the right balance of starting pitchers and relief pitchers. I don't have much idea who these players play for but I did manage to avoid any Houston Astros players which should work out well for me.

Now it's all about opening day on April 5th and making sure none of my players get put on disabled list, of which Scott Baker already is.

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