One of the most interesting things to me that happened in Sunday’s mock draft came in the fifth round. As I was writing Tuesday’s breakdown of the round, I kept coming back to two picks: Rickie Weeks and Joe Mauer. Here’s a quick reminder of how that round went in total:
In the (very, very early) Rotographs mockdraft on Sunday night, Bryce Harper went in the third round. Dustin Ackley went in the fourth. Neither of these players has a Major League track record – Harper doesn’t even have a strong track record in Double-A – yet they went before Matt Holliday or Ben Zobrist, both of whom have solid track records and seem quite likely to outperform the youngsters this year.
Now, this is a dynasty league draft, and clearly having that youth on your roster will pay off in future seasons. But the focus on youth in these drafts leaves some great values on the board much later than you’d expect.
When Mat Gamel started making his way through the Milwaukee Brewers system beginning in 2006, the team envisioned him as their third baseman of the future. While he continued to work on some defensive shortcomings, he was exhibiting exceptional power, good plate discipline and a knack for getting on base at a rate well above average. When he finally got the call in May of 2009, he struggled at the plate. Flashes of power, yes. Solid walk rate, yes. But far too many strikeouts. He landed back in Triple-A and it all started to go downhill from there as injuries began to derail his career and the door opened up for other players like Casey McGehee to step in.
I am going to take a break from reviewing my old and limping team to focus on the American League starting pitchers taken in the draft. It is always interesting to see how certain players rise or fall as we head into draft season, even when there is no news out that should affect that player’s value. So let’s see if I could dig up anything interesting. Remember, this was a mock dynasty league, although some of us (me) didn’t realize it was a dynasty until after the fact.
Last Sunday night a few of the Fangraph writers participated in a Mock Dynasty Draft. Today, I am going to give my thoughts on the 2B taken in the draft.
R1 P7 – Robinson Cano
R1 P12 – Dustin Pedroia
R2 P11 – Ian Kinsler
These 3 are the top 2B in the league. Personally, I would take Pedroia and Kinsler over Cano based on the SB potential.
R4 P5 – Dustin Ackley
The pick of Ackley was too high IMO for a few reasons. First, I think there were better established players still on the board from other positions like Mark Teixeira and Adrian Beltre. If, a person wanted to go the prospect/youth route Hosmer, Strasburg and Posey were still available. Also, Ackley seems to have limited potential and some 2B picked below him are probably producing at or above his peak.
A few people have asked to see the breakdown of certain positions in our recent staff mock draft, and since I am loathe to turn down good suggestions for content this time of year, here are your National League starting pitchers in the order in which they were picked. Remember that this is a keeper draft, so age played a big role in some of these picks. Picks are labeled with (Round.Pick)
Clayton Kershaw (2.8)
Roy Halladay (2.10)
Cliff Lee (3.3)
Tim Lincecum (3.10)
Cole Hamels (3.11)
While there seems to be a bit of a lull on fantasy relevant player movement right now — Eno jumped on the Twins/Willingham potential deal and sorry, but .180-hitting Kelly Shoppach to the BoSox is barely relevant in my eyes — we can continue to focus on the mock drafts that we’ve all been covering lately. As I was going over the catcher ADP, one of the more noticeable oversights found in the FanGraphs dynasty league mock draft was Royals catcher Salvador Perez. Granted, it was just a 12-team, one catcher league, but with so many youngsters going so early, it’s hard to imagine that out of 27 rounds and 324 players selected, there was no love for the Royals 21-year old backstop.
Whether he’s a Willing Ham, a Compliant Pig, or just The Pork, outfielder Josh Willingham will be making his bacon in the Twins outfield for the the foreseeable future.*
Jeff Zimmerman has already looked into batted ball profile and found that he became more pull-happy in 2011. That could bode well for his power in the coming year, but let’s look at the contextual clues in order to determine what else we can say about Willingham’s 2012.
Oops. I messed up. Although I was aware that the FanGraphs mock draft on Sunday night used a keeper format, I missed the dynasty aspect. That’s what happens when you arrive just before your first round pick and can’t see the pre-draft banter. That makes quite a difference and would have dramatically changed my strategy. But hey, I still think my team would win in 2012! They would just collapse due to old age soon after. Here is a refresher of my (now flawed) strategy and my first three picks. Now let’s get to my remaining picks from the first ten rounds…
Monday, Chris Cwik introduced a series of columns we’ll be doing on Sunday’s RotoGraphs mock keeper draft by looking at rounds 1-3. I’ll be analyzing rounds 4-6 today; this is the point where strategies started to diverge a little bit with respect to how much risk teams were willing to take on and how much to focus on youth over the need to win in 2012. Read the rest of this entry »