Yesterday, I participated in Howard Bender’s Mock Draft Army for the second time. In my first go around, we had a 15-team league. I leaned heavily on my favorite targets. This time, it was a 12-team, 23-player draft with no bench spots. In the first draft, I picked first, meaning 29 picks separated my choices. This time, I picked fifth. Crazy looking position reaches like Jonathan Lucroy and Todd Frazier with picks 30 and 31 were unnecessary.

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Earlier in the week, I went over how I set up a for a draft (Part 1 and Part 2). Last night I participated in the draft set up by Howard Bender and his Mock Draft Army.  The pre-draft work I normally go through may seem a little tedious, but after the dust settled, I look to start the season in good shape.

The draft was fairly standard 5×5 league with 23 rounds and 15 teams. The draft participants consisted of nine industry experts and six non-experts. I will give some thoughts on my draft results (full results), my final roster and the projected finish.

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Well, it is finally time to move on and show how I finish setting up for a draft (Part 1). I was hoping the following article was going to be in two parts and have a little more detail and polish. Instead I am have been dealing with a fan error on my computer and a pile of oil under my car. Neither is really resolved. So with a borrowed computer, I will step through the rest of my procedure. Let me know if you have any questions.

Note: For reference, here is my spreadsheet I used to get the initial SGP values and has the rest of the sheets referenced in this article.

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The first mock draft of the season is always the most informative. The nice thing about being a fantasy writer is accessibility to expert mocks where everybody involved plays to (fake) win. Yesterday, I participated in Howard Bender’s Mock Draft Army. It was a 15-team, 23-round snake draft with no bench. The imaginary categories are standard 5×5.

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After how poorly my first mock draft went, I was more than a little excited to get back out there and try again. Howard Bender is kind enough to keep me in his Mock Draft Army and we held the first MDA mock of the year yesterday evening, with the tweets and hashtags to prove it. I outlined my “bats first, other than catchers” plan (side note: I’ve been tinkering with an acronym for this, calling it the EBEC plan: Early Bats, Except Catchers) on Wednesday and lets see how well I stuck to the plan, as well as what my team looks like.

Rather than split it up into a detailed breakdown of infield, outfield and pitchers like last time, I’ll display the mock in a different format today by highlighting certain picks and let the comment section decide which version they prefer. The full draft board can be found here with my team below.

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Our Mock Draft is complete.

Team Schwartz/rounds drafted:

C: Travis d’Arnaud/17 1B: Victor Martinez/4 2B: Arismendy Alcantara/18 3B: Josh Donaldson/3 SS: Hanley Ramirez/2 MI: Jean Segura/19 CI: Prince Fielder/6 OF: Mike Trout/1; Mookie Betts/7; Ryan Zimmerman/10; A.J. Pollock/14; Steven Souza/20; Carl Crawford/24 U: Pedro Alvarez/21

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I want to start from the top
Maybe like a do over

Just like the song Re-do from Modern Baseball — topical band name, I know — I’m looking to get a complete re-do after my first mock draft. My rocky-at-best crack at the early off season mock draft is outlined in three parts, the infield, outfield and pitchers but I went away from my normal “Bats first, pitchers second” mantra. At the risk of having Howard Bender poach my players away from me, something he is wont to do, I’ll be outlining my strategy for my mock draft as part of Bender’s Mock Draft Army.
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With my infield and outfield already covered, let us move to the final piece of the puzzle, my pitching staff. Normally in 12-team mixed league snake drafts I wait on starting pitchers, unless the league has particularly deep rosters. I feel comfortable stream 2-3 starters per week and spend early and often on my hitters. Given the way my offense shaped up, clearly I veered off of my normal plan with semi-disastrous results for my hitters. Regardless of how the team ended up looking, I enjoyed going outside of my comfort zone in this mock draft.

SP — Stephen Strasburg, 37th
I broke my traditional mold early by grabbing Stras in the fourth round. He was the seventh pitcher off the board and two more starters followed within the next four picks. Given how the draft unfolded, I was thankful to lock down an elite starter to anchor my team.
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After displaying my less-than-stellar infield in yesterday’s post, today we’ll be highlighting my outfielders and utility hitter. Given that my first two picks both went to outfielders, I like the offense my green field roaming players bring much more than the infield.

OF — Carlos Gomez, 12th
With my first round pick I took a power and speed option in Gomez. While Steamer doesn’t believe in him maintaining a .284 average — something he has done for the past two seasons — it does project him to crack 20 home runs and nab 30 steals for the third consecutive season. As Steamer projects a .261 average, both his runs and RBI projection seems light to me as well. I’d take the over on his offensive stats, easily making Gomez worth a first round pick.
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I didn’t participate in the first RotoGraphs mock draft of 2015. (Check out the full results at Couch Managers.) But I will share my thoughts on it here and there, like now. Other writers did Round 1 and Round 2, and then I posted Round 3. Guess what comes next.

You’re half correct. Unless you’d already deduced the answer from the title. Either way, you’re probably eager to consume what’s coming – at least the tables. I’ll try to give you something else to chew on, though.

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