I had participated in a too-early industry mock draft that ended a couple of weeks ago. Then I attended First Pitch Arizona (FPAZ), which I reviewed and at which I participated in another arguably too-early draft. This post is about that latter draft. Sorry for all the reviews lately.

The draft, which took place live at FPAZ, is hosted by the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC). It’s a 15-team league, but instead of being a standard 30-round draft (seven bench players) with in-season transactions, it’s a 50-round draft-and-hold with no transactions (don’t worry, this only covers the first 23 rounds). I won’t say it completely changes the dynamic, but it does, or at least should, dramatically alter the plans of owners who take a lot of risks and plan to hedge them using their free agent acquisition budgets (FAABs).

What’s worse is I had, and still have, done virtually zero planning for the 2018 season. Accordingly, I relied on a strategy I outlined in the previously hyperlinked too-early mock draft review. I’m a risk-averse guy, so I typically draft player who are boring — boring because they’re old and/or you know what you’re getting. Low variance, things of that nature. This strategy inadvertently exacerbated this tendency of mine in these drafts, and the draft-and-hold nature of this league further compounded it. Without looking, the average age of my team must be, like, 33 years old.

But I like it. It’s so unsexy, so unapologetically (actually, very apologetically) boring that it’s almost not worth review. Except when I talk about boring, unsexy teams, I hear from guys like Jeff Zimmerman, Mike Gianella and so on — guys in the industry expert leagues such as Tout Wars and LABR — who say this is their jam, and that’s reassuring.

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The Auction Calculator is now loaded with the 2017 end-of-season data along with some 2018 projections. I’m sure the preceding comment will be sufficient to keep many readers busy for a while. I’m glad some came back. While its output can lead down several different discussion paths, I’m going to analyze what I consider to be the third starting pitcher tier. I feel many 2018 leagues will be won or lost by navigating this minefield.

So far this offseason, fantasy owners have placed four starters (Kluber, Kershaw, Sale, and Scherzer) in the top tier, After those four, I believe there are a dozen or so pitchers who would make acceptable aces, especially if they can be doubled up with another pitcher from this tier.

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This past weekend, I was in Phoenix for Baseball HQ’s First Pitch forum. It’s an intensive few days of catching up with old friends and focusing on the upcoming fantasy baseball season. There was an underlying theme of the weekend, the fantasy baseball game is being forced to change. Some game facets have experienced some massive adjustments. The following are some of the meta-trends which have quickly popped up over the past few seasons.

Home runs are way up

A few days ago I wrote the following incorrect statement about Carlos Martinez for a 2018 player preview.

His 1.19 HR/9 will likely drop back below the league average.

It was pointed out to me, his home run rate was below league average. I was for sure it was not near 1.20 but I was wrong. Here are the recent league-wide HR/9 values.

2014: 0.86
2015: 1.02
2016: 1.17
2017: 1.27

I remember when the HR/9 hovered around 1.0. Not anymore. Some other pitching stats are feeling the effects of the jump like ERA, but the root cause is more home runs.

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Yesterday, the Justin Mason posted the ADP from four of the slowest drafts containing industry experts and myself. One thought I had after a handful of rounds was the lack pitching available and how the good were the available hitters. I decided to go back and examine draft results from last year and these draft to see if pitching was being taken early. While it wasn’t, some other information could be extracted.

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Last year I interviewed Brent Daily, winner of the 2016 Ottoneu Champions league.  This year I’ve done the same by  interviewing Keith Smith, who led his Harrisburg Mayflies to a dominant victory in 2017.

Q: Well done on a big victory in 2017.  How long have you been playing fantasy baseball?

I started playing in the late 80’s. I forget the exact year but I remember Carney Lansford dominating. Stepped away for a number of years but got hooked again when a friend introduced me to Ottoneu.

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Justin Vibber has released his final 2017 dollar values by player.  I’ve captured Ottoneu average player salaries as of the end of the season (prior to inflation and arbitration).  Let’s combine the two to determine which hitters were the best bargains of 2017, and take a quick look at what might be in the crystal ball for 2018.

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Recently I reviewed the results of the first few rounds of a new dynasty league prospect draft.  The review continues today with a quick look at some key selections in rounds 7 – 9.

Dynasty Prospect Draft Review: Rounds 1 – 3

Dynasty Prospect Draft Review: Rounds 4 – 6

This draft should help you “discover” a few names to keep an eye on going forward.  If you have specific questions about players or the thought process of why they were selected, fire away in the comments section, as I’ve asked each owner in the league to be on standby to provide feedback as we review the rounds.

Before I review my own thoughts on the draft, you should know this Ottoneu league uses the “FanGraphs Points” scoring system based on linear weights, so offense is heavily slanted towards wOBA skills (and speed is almost a non-factor).  We also somewhat arbitrarily removed the Top 12 overall offensive prospects to save them for the standard 40-man auction next spring.  Otherwise, any minor league player without one (1) MLB PA or IP is eligible to be drafted.  You can read more about the custom rules of this dynasty league here, and follow along with the draft here.

Many of the prospects below are also featured on the 2018 Top 100 Fantasy Prospects list.

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Recently I created a new dynasty baseball league customized around the basic game of Ottoneu.  The more you play Ottoneu the more you come to appreciate how deep the player pool really is, and the longer I play fantasy baseball the more interested I become in the minor league development process.  While there is still plenty of luck involved, the satisfaction of “discovering” the next Rhys Hoskins before everyone else is a feeling that keeps me coming back to the game over and over.

In addition to the standard economics of Ottoneu where each league consists of twelve owners and 480 rostered players (minors and majors), our league will roster an additional 180 minor leaguers (15 extra per team) in an attempt to “develop” successful franchises for years to come.  Since the regular MLB season is wrapping up soon and many fantasy owners are starting to look towards 2018, I thought it might be helpful to review our prospect draft over the next several posts to give you some insight into the valuation of these minor league lottery tickets.  If nothing else, this draft should help you “discover” a few names to keep an eye on going forward.  If you have specific questions about players or the thought process of why they were selected, fire away in the comments section, as I’ve asked each owner in the league to be on standby to provide feedback as we review the rounds.  

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It’s a little crazy how deep third base is this year. Perusing the NFBC average draft position list, there are nearly twenty players whom, in most years, I’d be happy to roll with in standard leagues. Most surprising though was seeing Nick Castellanos languishing all the way at 19^th off the board in NFBC drafts (Note: I had originally considered anointing him just The Greek God of Contact but unfortunately that moniker implies a certain frequency of contact that the 25-year old simply cannot be bothered with). Castellanos won’t win any OBP-titles but in 2016 he did one thing well. And that’s hit a baseball really, really hard.

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This past weekend, a collection of fantasy baseball veteran nerds gathered in New York City for our annual Tout Wars auction and after-party fun. It’s always one of the best weekends of the year, and this year I got to hang out with fellow RotoGraphers Paul Sporer, Jeff Zimmerman, Al Melchior, and Justin Mason. We represented! Oh, and dare I forget my AL-Only league competitor and representer of every fantasy baseball site on the Internet, Jason Collette.

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