2023 LABR Mixed Draft Recap

Last Tuesday night, the competitors of the LABR Mixed draft virtually congregated for our annual mid-February 15-team draft. Drafts this early are challenging. On the one hand, the early timing benefits the prepared and the more highly skilled. On the other hand, there remains a great many unknowns that we need to make educated guesses on at best, and complete shots in the dark on at worst. In addition, the time between the draft and opening day (versus leagues that draft a week to three before the seasons begins) means more opportunity for injuries to decimate your roster before the season even begins!

If you recall last year’s draft, it was the ultimate high risk, high reward roster. Although I didn’t win, it ended up working out pretty darn well, as I finished in fourth place, only two points out of second.

This was a historic draft for me. Incredibly, I’ve developed my own player projections ever since I joined my first roto league, back in like 2000 or 2001. So it’s been over 20 years that I’ve been manually forecasting players, a system I dubbed the Pod Projections. Unfortunately, the projections are seriously time consuming, taking about six to seven minutes per player. Assuming around 600 projections, that’s 60 to 70 hours sitting in Excel making player forecasts! If only I had a “Run” button like the computer projection systems have, it would be a whole lot easier!

So, I finally decided to take a break. I’m not saying I have retired from the projection game, but for 2023 at least, I am using another projection system. It’s something I never imagined myself doing, and it felt very weird.

With the background out of the way, let’s get back to last week’s draft. The full results can be found here.

Before sharing my team, I’ll quickly remind you once again of my “strategy”. I put that word in quotes because even after 20 years of playing fantasy baseball, I’m still not sure I understand what it means to have a draft or auction strategy. Isn’t everyone trying to maximize the value of their team? The only way to do that is to buy as many players at a discount to their projected value, at as large a discount to that projected value, as possible, while keeping categorical balance in mind (you probably shouldn’t buy 300 steals and only 150 home runs, even if you think you can easily make trades). Of course, trying to maximize the projected value of your drafted roster wouldn’t work if everyone valued players exactly the same way (or used the same projections…which is very possible since I no longer used my own!). However, the good news is that we are unlikely to all use the same projections, and even if we did, we still wouldn’t calculate the same values given the same projections. It’s rare that everyone agrees on the value of a player, so those disagreements will allow you to buy the players you project as undervalued. Then you just need to be right and the championship is all yours!

So that’s how I approach snake drafts (and auctions too). Now let’s get to the results. I’ll present my roster two ways — in pick order and then by position.

Note that I simply slotted the earliest picks into each starting spot and that my Util won’t be Mondesi to open the year, obviously, while it’s possible any of my three bench starters open the first week of the season on my active roster.

I’m never sure how to share my draft in the most interesting manner possible. It’s even more difficult when my dollar values were calculated using another system’s projections! So I had nearly zero personal opinion of the players I selected influencing my thought process. That’s probably for the best, as it prevents me from grabbing a guy my projections are higher on that I end up being wrong about. So let’s run down the early picks, as I actually took notes this time. Then I’ll just meander along from there.

I drew the 10th pick of the draft. Though mathematically, the first pick is the best, the second pick is second best, etc etc, if the rest of the league owners draft optimally (they never do!), I hate those back-to-back pick spots. It’s sometimes challenging enough settling on my next pick, so I don’t like that burden of having to come up with two choices. Therefore, picking in the middle is totally cool with me.

I figured for my first rounder, I would have my choice between Freddie Freeman and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. I had them valued just $0.30 apart at seventh and eighth most valuable, respectively, with a gap until the next player. I opted for the upside of the younger Vladdy, and also preferred to bank the home runs, rather than pay for the higher projected batting average and steal total from Freeman. It’s hard for me to believe double digit steals is sustainable for Freeman, so if the gap in the category between the two disappears, then Vlad is clearly more valuable. Given the variability of batting average, I always want to opt for the counting stats over the ratio. So for the first time in my fantasy career, I rostered Vlad. It felt good. I wanted to root for him in the past, but felt like I was always ruining the party and calling him overvalued each year. I guess his more human 2022 now makes him a fair value for a change.

In the second round, I was already unsure who to draft. What happens often is I have to decide between the most valuable player on my board, but with an ADP that’s later, so I would feel like I’m drafting him too early, or a lesser valued player that generally does get drafted around that time. This happens a lot, where there’s no obvious pick for me, which is why I noted above
that drafting two players back-to-back is often hard.

Austin Riley was not the top player on my board, though if I recall correctly, probably pretty close. I was also pretty surprised to find him worth a second round pick, as I probably didn’t realize how good he was in 2022, and thought he was overvalued heading into the season, coming off that .368 BABIP. I was between him and Gerrit Cole, but if you know me, you know I rarely draft starting pitchers this early. I was actually pretty surprised he hadn’t been drafted yet, and of course, he ended up going right after my pick. But I just couldn’t bring myself to take a starter in round 2. It’s just against how I play fantasy baseball and that’s unlikely to ever change.

What nailed the decision for me was just scrolling through the third basemen. Man is that a boring crop! Once you get past Riley, veterans Nolan Arenado and Alex Bregman, and the exciting Gunnar Henderson, who I figured I’d have no shot at drafting, the rest are just blah. Not a whole lot of perceived upside or young guys I would care to speculate on, so I felt filling my third base slot with a top tier choice was the right decision.

So in round three, yes, I took a starting pitcher in Carlos Rodón. I do draft good starting pitchers every once in a while! My values actually ranked him as the third most valuable starting pitcher, so I was pretty shocked to get him as the eighth starter off the board, if you exclude Shohei Ohtani, who qualifies as a hitter and pitcher in this league. I hadn’t really been a believer in Rodón, but doing it twice in a row, and even increasing his velocity a notch higher last year after 2021’s initial velo spike, has converted me. Hopefully his health cooperates, though I’d imagine the Yankees did their due diligence and wouldn’t have signed him to a huge six-year contract if they had any health concerns.

Round four was another in which there was no clear-cut pick and I simply didn’t have enough time to determine my best choice. I strongly considered going back-to-back starters by taking Jacob deGrom for the second straight season (who surprisingly lasted until the end of the fourth round), but drafting two starters in four picks is never going to be my idea of a good start to a draft! Besides, deGrom is already dealing with soreness in his left side, so the last thing I needed was to give up a strong hitter for another injury prone starter.

I ended up with Tim Anderson. His pick number matched where I had him valued, so I didn’t feel like I overpaid in that sense. However, his ADP was round seven as an early 90ish overall pick. Getting him 51st was pretty dumb. I went with the top available shortstop, as there were clusters of players at other positions that I didn’t feel like I needed to draft yet either. I think he’s proven he’s certainly capable of earning this value and the recent news that he visited Driveline Baseball this offseason to restore his swing mechanics is promising. Of course, I could have very well gotten him a round, or even two rounds, later, but who knows.

Moving along to the fifth round, I was all set to draft George Springer, who was naturally picked right before me. That sniping happened often enough that I thought someone must have hacked my computer and was looking at my values, and watching me either add players to my queue or look them up on FanGraphs. Seriously, every time I looked up a player, he was immediately drafted, it was crazy. That’s probably the result of using another projection system that many others probably use!

Anyway, this was a pick totally unlike me and it’s hard to believe I would have made it using my Pod Projections, but I could be wrong. I’m not really a Max Fried fan with his underwhelming strikeout rate and significant SIERA outperformance, but his downside is pretty limited given his strong ground ball rate and solid control. Furthermore, we project the Braves to both win the most games and score the most runs this year, so that should help his win total.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there were no standout/obvious picks in round six either, so I finally caved and decided to pivot to drafting my first closer. I will never draft a top closer as early as the top closers get drafted, usually just opting for at least one mid-valued closer with good skills. Then speculating later on, either with closer favorites in an unsettled bullpen, or picking a guy with the best skills in an unsettled bullpen with no current clear-cut favorite. Though control problems can get him into trouble, Devin Williams is elite, with strikeout rates around 40% for two years running. He could easily be part of next season’s top five closer picks.

Heading into my seventh round pick, it suddenly became snipe city. Over the five picks before me, three of them I had identified as potential choices. So I had to go to Plan D real quick. I wasn’t thrilled about Wander Franco, who might do a little of everything, without standing out anywhere. He’s the type who quietly contributes value, but you’re always looking to upgrade. However, Franco isn’t your typical small contributor across the board. He’s going to be a 22-year-old, former mega prospect with elite contact skills already. An offensive explosion might never come, but if it does, it’ll happen at any time without any prior notice. I think the upside to his projections are far greater than the downside is.

And that was the end of my note taking, so I’ll continue on with just random thoughts on players.

I think you could figure out by now that I love gambling on players returning from injury. A 130th overall Kris Bryant, who might finally get a chance to play his first full season calling Coors Field home?! He’s seemingly healthy now, so this is the type of pick I’ll make all day.

Last year taught me that gambling on starting pitchers coming off injury could sometimes yield huge rewards. So I was excited to welcome Chris Sale in the 11th round and 160th overall to my team. Remember, last year it was rib and hand injuries that killed his season, not arm/elbow issues. Plus, his fastball velocity was actually up after a two season dip, so I’m all in at this price this year.

I keep waiting every year for that big Andrew Benintendi and he keeps disappointing. He now gets a chance to play his home games at the third best park for left-handed home runs, which should be his best opportunity to get his HR/FB rate back into double digits. Like Franco above, he should contribute a bit everywhere, but is still young enough to experience the real breakout we’ve all been waiting for.

My apologies for taking this long to address the pick of the draft. I tried really hard and thought for sure this was finally the year I could avoid temptation. Sadly, it wasn’t to be. Welcome Adalberto Mondesi to my team yet again. You will always have a home on the Pod Squad. Seriously, at pick 220, I couldn’t pass him up. Forget the projections and the fact he might miss the first couple of weeks. Even if he barely plays again, it was late enough that there was little risk. But if he does remain healthy, there’s opportunity in the middle infield to play close to regularly and remind us what a healthy year can deliver for his loyal fantasy owners.

I continued to look for upside when we got into the late teen rounds and was thrilled to add Esteury Ruiz and his fantasy potential at 250 overall. He should have a secure everyday job in the Athletics outfield and could become an elite source of steals, with a touch of home run power mixed in.

In rounds 18 and 19, I went back-to-back with my closer speculations. Kyle Finnegan actually owns the Nationals closer role so I was surprised he lasted that long, while Daniel Hudson is part of a group of relievers who could close games for the Dodgers, and owns elite skills that earned my bet.

I have no idea how I ended up with bottom level catchers as my tandem this year, as I always draft a top five guy, believing the whole position is always undervalued. When you believe a position is undervalued, the top tier is usually the most profitable. But I just kept getting sniped and always then preferred someone from another position, so I ended up with a pair I’ll probably be constantly trying to upgrade all season! But hey, at least Elias Díaz calls Coors home and Joey Bart was a one-time top prospect and has the upside to make this pick look good.

My last three picks were starting pitcher dart throws, the type I love to make. I always prefer making such picks rather than picking the Kyle Gibson types, or the veterans projected for weak ratios and skills with no genuine upside. I could find those types every week on free agency, so I prefer to speculate on pitchers who have a realistic shot at posting a sub-4.00 ERA.

So that’s the team, and despite the projections coming from another source, I actually kind of like the mix of power and speed, plethora of youngsters with ample upside, and the injury rebound speculations. Here’s to hoping it’s enough to capture my first LABR Mixed league win!