Mock draft season is starting to draw to a close and real drafts are starting to fill our calendars, but we here at Fangraphs — with the help of a few friends — put together another staff mock for reference’s sake. It was a 12-team, 23-round mixed mock with 2 SP, 2 RP, and 5 P slots, with the vast majority of those general pitching slots filled by starters.

My personal NL SP ranks will be up next week, but in the meantime, here’s how they fell in our latest mock. As always, the parenthetical note is listed as (round.pick). Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll let you in on a secret – I actually play in one non-ottoneu league. I know, I know…crazy, right? But this did give me an insight into a format that I know many of you use, but that I have never done before: the rookie draft.

In this 12-team, 25-man roster, 13-keeper league, the only way to add prospects to your roster is via trade or a two-round rookie draft, held just prior to the annual auction. We just completed that draft and some analysis could offer insight to those of you doing similar drafts in your leagues, or even to those of you trying to figure out who to bid on in an ottoneu league.

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Last season as an employee of Baseball Prospectus, I was invited to join a Scoresheet league called “Kings.” It was an AL/NL league comprised of 24 teams owned by some of the brightest baseball minds going today – your Jaffes, Passans, Swydans, and Laurilas of the world. As a relative newcomer to the ranks of elite baseball websites, I was permitted to join a team with John Erhardt, whom at the time had previously worked at BP.

Year one was a learning experience for me. We accidentally nabbed Danny Valencia in the second round of the dispersal draft — fortunately we’d pulled Jason Heyward in the first — and we ended up floundering to a 68-94 record, good for last in our division.

Come keeper time, I was faced with some tough decisions. For one, Erhardt would be departing our team, leaving me as the sole proprietor. To his credit, he was just blessed with his first child, so he certainly had more pressing issues at hand. Congratulations again, John. Nonetheless, we had decided last season was a bust pretty early on and sold off some good pieces — namely, J.J. Hardy — to make sure that we’d have some extra youth we could keep and maybe an extra pick or two.

The way keepers work in our Scoresheet league is this: anyone deemed a ‘prospect’ costs you a pick at the back of your draft. If you keep five prospects, you forfeit your last five picks. If you keep 10 big leaguers — the limit in this league — you will start drafting in round 11.

Coming off a bad season, I decided to only keep two big league players: Chris Sale and Heyward. This meant keeping prospects Drew Pomeranz, Deck McGuire, Joe Benson, Michael Choice, and Dellin Betances. It also meant cutting loose big leaguers Jhoulys Chacin, Derek Holland, Orlando Hudson, Andrew Bailey, Chris Perez, Coco Crisp, and a few others. Ideally I’d have kept Holland, but I was taking a chance that I’d be among the lowest in terms of keepers, and could lock in an early draft pick or two.

The strategy prevailed. As the draft kicked off last Friday evening, I was the only one picking in round three, and was able to nab Yu Darvish. Additionally, I had the first to pick in round four, and was able to pull Yoenis Cespedes. Quite a coup, at least in my view. Geoff Young of BP grabbed Nelson Cruz at pick three (second pick, round four), and I rounded out my third of the first four picks with Jose Altuve at the top of round five.

In round six, I grabbed Alexei Ramirez, and in subsequent rounds, I was able to pull Salvador Perez, Carlos Pena, Adam Dunn, Jordan Lyles, Crisp, and Valencia. (RE: Crisp and Valencia? Apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.)

So here’s how my roster currently sits:

C – Salvador Perez
1B – Carlos Pena
2B – Jose Altuve
3B – Danny Valencia
SS – Alexei Ramirez
LF – Coco Crisp
CF – Yoenis Cespedes
RF – Jason Heyward
DH – Adam Dunn

SP – Yu Darvish
SP – Chris Sale
SP – Drew Pomeranz
SP – Jordan Lyles

Prospects – Joe Benson, Michael Choice, Dellin Betances, Anthony Rendon, Josh Vitters, Deck McGuire

At the risk of giving away my strategy, I think I’m going to focus on a couple innings eaters — especially considering the relative youth and unpredictability of my rotation– a dynamic defender in the infield and outfield, and then start looking at bullpen and prospects.

It could just be the Kool-Aid talking, but I really like the lineup. I think I’ll probably go as follows:

1. Heyward RF
2. Crisp LF
3. Pena 1B
4. Dunn DH
5. Ramirez SS
6. Cespedes CF
7. Valencia 3B
8. Perez C
9. Altuve 2B

Obviously the lack of a true leadoff hitter hurts, so I’ll be counting on either Heyward, Crisp, or Altuve to fill that role for me. I like the power potential at 3-4, and I also tried to find at least passable defenders at most every position. As for the pitching staff, we’ll be very young, but there’s some good upside, and like I noted, if I add a couple innings-eaters, it could be pretty well rounded.

There are a veritable plethora of relievers in the pool right now, so I don’t think I’m going to wade into that group just yet.

Anyone else in a Scoresheet league? Have any tips or criticisms? Blast away!

Ryan Braun will not have to serve a 50 day suspension for performance enhancing drugs. While many ramifications may come from this ruling, I will get to the meat of the matter. How does the ruling affect his and his teammates fantasy value?

Ryan Braun

Ryan now jumps up from a late 2nd to 5th round pick with the suspension, to being one of the first players taken. Before the news was released, many people considered him the top pick in the draft. This high ranking should not change, but it may just a bit.

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After part one of the auction for the Second FanGraphs Staff League, I took some time to look back at the strategy I set up going into the auction, and to re-strategize for day two, based on where I was.

And looking back, I’d have to say I executed pretty well, although not always in the ways I expected.

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Yesterday, my colleague and fantasy competitor, Steve Slowinski, broke down day one of the inaugural auction for the Second FanGraphs Staff League, with an eye towards how his strategy played out. Today we reconvene to finish our bidding marathon, but before we do so, I wanted to take a more general look at part one.

First and foremost, despite Mr. Slowinski’s kind words, I am not sure I am as well positioned as he thinks, nor am I sure my attempt at patience was as smart as it seemed. And that is due to what I would consider some oddities in the bidding.

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I was invited to Fantasy411’s industry slow mock to open the mocking season. Now, what feels like a month later, only two picks remain. Because I love my team, I thought I’d brag about it.

The mock has some serious competitors involved. Jason Collette, Paul Sporer, Derek VanRiper, Will Carroll, Joe Sheehan, Todd Zola, Steve Gardner, Ray Flowers, Cory Schwartz, Lawr Michaels, Zach Steinhorn and Jeff Erickson were the 12 other managers, listed from last to first pick. A good gaggle of go-getters.

I had the last pick of the first round — which was fine with me. I love this team. Here are the overall results so far, but after the jump I’ll take you through my picks round by round. It’s mocking season!

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This week, we’ll be giving away one FG+ membership per day by playing the FG+ Over/Under Game. The wrinkle on this game is that it’s subjective: we’ll provide a player and a number, and you use the comments section to make your best argument for the over or the under. The RotoGraphs staff will pick a winner every day, and that person will get a free subscription to FG+, which includes 11 full-length fantasy strategy articles, 1100 player caps on the player pages, and ongoing access to the FG+ blog, which features the writing the FanGraphs team provides to ESPN Insider on a weekly basis all year.

For our third over/under game, let’s take a look at Mike Trout and Bryce Harper.

The over/under for today’s game is an either/or: Trout or Harper. As in, which player would you want if you were starting a new keeper league today and had the first pick? First, kudos for rigging the game in your favor. Second, I hope it’s an ottoneu league. Third — which one are you taking?

One’s got wheels of steal and surprising pop. The other has light-tower power and the eye blacks of a champion. One is in a crowded outfield but has the ability to contribute in every category. The other has no roadblocks but may be more of your traditional slugger. If you had a subscription to FG+ right now, you could consult David Golebiewski’s excellent piece polling the major prospecters about their preference between the two players, or read Jason Catania on Keeper League Strategies. Zach Sanders’ piece on Valuing Upside Graphically might also come into play.

But since you don’t — and yes, I’m suggesting that current FG + subscribers take a back seat and allow those without your knowledge to compete for this — you’ll have to do the best you can to suss out the difference between these two super studs. If your answer changes depending on league settings, feel free to include that in your answer.

Have at it!

So you take your Prince Fielder or Adrian Gonzalez, you select Evan Longoria or Jose Bautista and breathe a sigh of relief that you have first base and third base covered, now let’s see about building something of a respectable pitching staff. And then around the 15th round it occurs to you that you have that pesky corner infield situation to tend to (not to mention middle infield, and for those of you in such leagues – one or more utility slots — but that’s for another post).

I have fallen into a false sense of security before during drafts where I select a player and feel a little like Ed Norton in Fight Club regarding his couch – that is, “I’ve got that sofa issue handled.” We know there’s more work to be done on the offense side of the dish, yet we might fail to plan as diligently as we did for the respective positions.

This post is a little strategy that might be quite “101” to some, but it was born out of comments about the need to plan for the flex positions in our leagues. The context is standard 5×5, 12 team, non-keeper roto leagues.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week, we’ll be giving away one FG+ membership per day by playing the FG+ Over/Under Game. The wrinkle on this game is that it’s subjective: we’ll provide a player and a number, and you use the comments section to make your best argument for the over or the under. The RotoGraphs staff will pick a winner every day, and that person will get a free subscription to FG+, which includes 11 full-length fantasy strategy articles, 1100 player caps on the player pages, and ongoing access to the FG+ blog, which features the writing the FanGraphs team provides to ESPN Insider on a weekly basis all year.

For our second over/under game, let’s take a look at Jonathan Papelbon.

The over/under number for Papelbon is $12. As in, would you spend more than $12 on Papelbon in ottoneu? What sort of settings would make Papelbon worth that scratch?

The 31-year-old famously switched home parks over the offseason, but he’s still on a good team and still the owner of a great strikeout rate and a miniscule walk rate. His velocity came back and his closer face was in mid-season form all year long. If you had paid for FanGraphs+, you’d have Chad Young’s excellent breakdown of different strategies for each ottoneu setting, and you’d know even more about the relative value of relievers in a game that has five reliever slots, linear weights scoring, and a $400 overall budget.

But since you don’t — and yes, I’m suggesting that current FG + subscribers take a back seat and allow those without your knowledge to compete for this — you’ll have to do the best you can to suss out Papelbon’s value this season in ottoneu. His average price last year was near $8 — but that was leagues of all settings and that was before his resurgent year. If you think you’d more likely pay $12 (or more) for him in one of the three ottoneu settings than any of the others, include that in your answer. To make sure everyone is eligible — feel free to describe the settings that would make Papelbon worth every bit of a hefty price tag.

Have at it!