The FanGraphs slow mock is complete – huzzah! While I did not participate, I did occasionally peek in to observe. The 22nd round struck me as curious. Four non-closing relievers were drafted in the round including three names that could have been picked ahead of David Robertson (late seventh round) if they had a closers gig. Let’s take at the value to be had late in the draft.

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In case you may have missed it, I really like fantasy baseball. While it might not be exactly 10 more, I fully intend on getting into as many mock drafts as my free time allows. For now, let’s examine my roster from our draft. I’ll leave the comment section to grade me, though I’ll try to set the context of each pick. I picked at the turn, probably my favorite spot in snake draft formats so if someone is a fifth rounder but you see them as a sixth, it’s basically the same thing for me with back-to-back picks. Rather than bombard you with thousands of words at once, today we’ll look at my infield, with the outfield and pitchers coming in separate posts.

Catcher — Brian McCann, 133rd
I went against my normal trend of waiting on a catcher, especially in single catcher leagues, and grabbed McCann in the 12th round, 133rd overall. Devin Mesoraco went four picks later and given serviceable guys like Evan Gattis and Wilin Rosario went as late at the 16th and 17th round respectively, this pick looks even worse.
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I’m not participating in the first RotoGraphs mock draft of 2015 (which, as you can see, is almost over). Thus, it’s easier for me to critique (read: take jabs at Mike Podhorzer), because, without a team to criticize, I don’t have to worry about retribution. Yeah, that’s right, I’m an impartial observer, and the Pod Squad is in the crosshairs.

Round 3 is on the docket. In case you missed them: other writers’ looks at Round 1 and Round 2.

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We are currently in the middle of round 12 in our early 12 team, standard 5×5, 1 catcher mock draft.

Devin Mesoraco was just taken at pick 137. I have him ranked almost 100 slots lower at 231 overall, and that is with a catcher position scarcity adjustment, so either way, I am considering this very early.

Up until this pick, only three other catchers were taken: Brian McCann (12.133), Yan Gomes (8.91), Jonathan Lucroy (8.88) and Buster Posey (3.35)

Below are my catcher rankings using Steamer’s projections (with a few manual adjustments) and Zach Sander’s FVARz approach to fantasy valuation (z-scoring each 5×5 category). Column 2 (zSUM) is the sum of the 5 categorical z-scores. Column 3 (PosAdj) is the zSUM adjusted for position scarcity.

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Mock. Yeah. Ing. Yeah. Draft. Yeah.

You can follow our 12 team, standard 5×5 roto mock draft. Else, here is a summary of the first two rounds and our first outfield battle.

My first battle is my self-battle on Zack Greinke. After 63 picks in, I tweeted an image of my rankings, which had Zack Greinke literally all alone at #23 overall. Everyone else in the top 40 were gone by pick 63 except for Greinke and Prince Fielder whom I wound up drafting once pick 6.72 came around.

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We’ve already unveiled round one, and talked about Michael Brantley vs Ryan Braun, and there’s more analysis about specific picks coming.

But now it’s time to look at the second round as a thing. Because maybe in the early decade, it seemed like the sure things bled into the second round. Now it seems you can’t get out of the top ten without questions.

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You can follow along as we mock, but you’ll see us highlighting specific picks and rounds over the next couple of weeks too. Multiple times in the draft, I found that there were back-to-back outfield picks that were interesting. Matt Kemp and George Springer. Michael Brantley and Justin Upton. Yasiel Puig and Carlos Gomez.

In the third round, after picking up Miguel Cabrera and Anthony Rizzo with my first two picks, I found myself in just such a predicament. I wanted an outfielder, and Michael Brantley and Ryan Braun were clearly the best of the remaining. Given their respective ages, histories, name values, and draft positions, I found that juxtaposition interesting and worth investigating.

Would you rather have Brantley or Braun?

Full disclosure. I have not yet done my own rankings, since I’m deep into editing FanGraphs Plus, so I’m winging this mock. Once I investigate, I may decide I made the wrong decision. So it goes.

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Damn you, social media. I’ve tweeted and Facebook’d this league so much in the last two weeks, that I can’t even write the name of it without the stupid hashtag.

While the name of the league would probably have you thinking that Cameron Maybin was the first overall selection (too soon, Ray?) the word BAD is simply an acronym for Baseball Analysis Draft. The league, brought to you by the folks over at KFFL, is a 15-team (just expanded from 12 for this season) standard 5×5 roto league that has some of the finest fantasy baseball minds competing for the title and some serious bragging rights. It’s a two-catcher league with a middle and corner infielder, one utility player, five outfielders and nine pitchers. We do a slow snake-draft where every pick has a two hour limit and the clock shuts down during the late evening hours and over the weekend. After every pick we submit a small write-up detailing our thought process behind each selection, hence the BAD acronym.

It is not a mock draft. We play this one out. To use a phrase that always makes you want to slam Bud Selig upside the head with a tire iron, this time it counts. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve perhaps seen it mentioned on Twitter, but I’m representing FanGraphs in The Dynasty Guru Experts League and we’ve been participating in a slow draft over the past five days. Check out the specifics here. The highlights: 20 teams, 40 players, major-league and minor-league players, standard snake draft, and owners will keep 35 players of their choosing from year-to-year with no contract or time restrictions.

Awesome.

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I stunk up the joint last year in AL LABR, one of the longest-going super leagues in the business. I combined terrible draft choices with terrible free agent auction decisions and even a bad trade in order to end up tenth of twelve. I showed poor restraint and discipline at the draft, I lacked the context necessary for making good decisions, and I panicked a bit late in the season. I’m not so proud of that season.

At least this year I feel a lot better about the draft. As Razzball’s Grey Albright said at the after-party, there’s a long way from feeling good to doing good in the final tally. Admitted. But since I actually didn’t even feel great about my draft results last year, I’ll take this as a positive sign.

Let’s take a look at the team and the better decision-making process that went into it.

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