Don’t Win Your Mock: Industry Mock Draft Review

On Thursday I participated in my first ever industry mock draft, organized by Nick Mariano of RotoBaller (who reviewed it here) and which included our own Brad Johnson (who reviewed it here) and Justin Mason filling in for the ever-busy Paul Sporer.

Per FantasyPros’ playbook, which taps the site’s player projections, I — with a thousand air quotes — “came out on top.” Of course, a good draft is but one part of a championship season — thus, the many air quotes.

I never expected to do so well and had all sorts of excuses lined up for when I would rank dead last.

• I didn’t have my cheat sheet. (True, although I have my first six-or-so rounds memorized at this point.)
• I’m terrible at snake drafts. (Also true, at least in my obviously glowing opinion of myself. I adhere pretty strongly to the Studs and Duds strategy, and snake drafts, by their nature, tend to prevent it.)
• It’s my first industry mock draft. (Still true. My heart was racing, which made me feel pretty embarrassed as I sat in my office, alone, eating microwavable pad thai out of a pouch, waiting for the draft to start.)

But, shoot. I pulled it off.

Except… I didn’t actually want to.

Funny how things work. Prior to the draft, I had planned all along to write a post about not winning mock drafts. To talk about how, although it’s great to win a fantasy baseball league, to win a mock draft implies you simply picked from the top of the pile with every pick. It implies that you didn’t reach (enough) or gamble (enough) — two things that make or break fantasy teams year in and year out.

It’s not like you want to finish last — that looks bad, too — but maybe you want to finish, I don’t know, third? Fourth? Someplace where the rankings respect the early rounds of your draft but underestimate your late rounds. Given there’s no cut-and-dried “best way” to construct the optimal draft without the benefit of hindsight come October, I think that’s the ideal mix.

To elaborate on my Studs and Duds strategy: in snakes, I tend to wait on middle infielders and all pitchers. Granted, I’ll anchor my rotation with a couple of elite starters, but then I’ll wait an abnormally long time to fill out the last three or four (or five) slots. With starting pitching running so deep, it’s imperative to grab at least a third solid pitcher in order to safely contend; Brad reflected on this (among many other helpful tidbits) on Friday.

With that said, I’m here to fulfill my obligation as an alleged “analyst” or “expert” or “doctor of love” to review, round by round, a mock draft in which I participated. Twelve teams, standard 5×5 roto, two catchers, nine general-use pitchers, no bench.

Here goes.

1.02: Paul Goldschmidt, 1B (NFBC ADP: 2.17)
Right. Second pick, so it’ll all circle back to me in 20 picks — a nightmare of a wait for someone who never knows when to reach. Anyway, Goldy at #2 was automatic.

2.23: Chris Davis, CI (23.55)
Two picks in and I’m already rattled. Not knowing what the heck I’m doing on FleaFlicker, I draft Davis as a first baseman rather than a third baseman, clogging my versatile corner infield spot. Still, I’m happy with the selection. I think he has top-5 potential.

3.26: Nelson Cruz, OF (45.89)
Super, super un-thrilled with this pick. Still rattled from the Davis blunder, and not knowing when to reach, I further confounded my situation and settled on Cruz. I like him, but in the third round? Yikes. Worse, all hell broke loose afterward: I missed out on Joey Votto and Charlie Blackmon, the two guys I very mistakenly thought might still be around in 20 picks. Nope. Dumb. Duuuuuuumb.

On the other hand, I didn’t feel like I missed out on too much else. I missed the beginning of the run of elite starting pitchers — a position on which I’ve elected to wait — and some outfielders I think are overrated (Carlos Gomez, Starling Marte, Lorenzo Cain, Yoenis Cespedes). It’s not a wash, but reframing the situation makes me feel a little better.

4.47: Jason Heyward, OF (68.48)
Still landing guys a little too early, but with a savvy group of drafters and some wonky rankings from FleaFlicker (that also flustered me quite a bit (oh, good, another excuse, Alex)), I jumped the gun a bit. He’s well-rounded, has alleged power upside, and plays for the Cubs. It could be worse.

5.50: Corey Kluber, SP (40.49)
MAN CRUSH. By no means worse than any of the dozen-or-so starters who flew off the board before him, he’s the perfect pick at the back of the top tier. (And, frankly, calling him the back of the top tier is a bit of an insult.)

6.71: Matt Kemp, OF (83.13)
I buried the lede a bit, but: I don’t really abide by positional scarcity. I’ll pass on catchers, middle infielders and relievers all day, especially in shallower leagues such as this one. With that said, I’ll happily take Kemp a little early before Anthony Rendon or Craig Kimbrel.

* * *

Thus far, 21 starting pitchers have been drafted. It sounds like a lot (does it? I don’t know, it does to me), but it almost exactly mirrors NFBC ADP. Even for closers, Wade Davis, at 70th, reflects NFBC ADP almost perfectly. However, the run of elite relievers that started with Kenley Jansen and ended with Trevor Rosenthal (depending upon your definition of elite), in its entirety, shifted back about a full round.

* * *

7.74: Johnny Cueto, SP (73.48)
Flustered. Am I allowed to always be flustered? Are mock drafts simply a concentrated microcosm of everyday life?

I’m a fan of Cueto and his ERA-suppressing ways, but I felt like this was a missed opportunity for reasons I couldn’t articulate at the time. It became clear afterward, however, when I missed Freddie Freeman and Maikel Franco, and the remaining reliable and/or promising corner infield crop further thinned out.

8.95: David Ortiz, DH (110.99)
Dude, yes. I will happily clog my UTIL slot with Big Papi. You can accommodate his lack of figurative and literal mobility by making an effort to draft other multipositional guys. Perhaps he experiences a sudden decline in his final year, and maybe he takes a few extra breathers, but, incredibly, at 40, he hasn’t shown any signs of slowing.

9.98: Danny Salazar, SP (78.99)
Dude, yes. I would have drafted Carlos Carrasco, too, if you let me, with zero regard for how what a Cleveland stack might mean for my team. And, per NFBC’s numbers, I got him about as late as possible; his max ADP so far this preseason is 104th.

Actually — and I apologize for pointing you to NFBC so much, because it’s helpful, but — if you look at starting pitcher ADP, SPs are drafted, on average, every three to four spots, and every consistently, too. That is, until you reach Salazar, after whom Tyson Ross falls a full 14 picks behind. The rift between them symbolically represents the end of the top tier(s) and the beginning of the middle tiers. You may value Ross differently, and that’s fair. Just know that your draft could play out similarly, and I consider myself lucky to have had Salazar stick around. (He actually went about 10 picks after Ross and Sonny Gray.)

10.119: Delino DeShields, OF (179.78)
I was so self-conscious about reaching, just reaching for the sake of reaching, that I did it, and I pulled out a Delino DeShields. I really like him — more than Billy Burns, who happened to go 10 picks later, helping me feel less crazy. But it kind of felt like the Cueto pick — I was at a crossroads, where I didn’t like any of the mid-tier starters or outfielders that were being selected at the time.

11.122: Daniel Murphy, 2B (165.48)
And then I reached again. I didn’t feel so bad — following picks of Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia and Ken Giles, I felt like this wasn’t too horribly timed. I had some catchers sitting in my queue — specifically, Yasmani Grandal and Salvador Perez — and both were drafted within the next four picks. At this point, I’m 11 rounds deep in a two-catcher leagues with nary a catcher to speak of.

12.143: Shawn Tolleson, RP (164.97)
I also have no closers at this point, either, so I elect to “anchor” my “bullpen” with “Shawn Tolleson.” He was pretty underrated last year, and I’ll happily accept him as a consolation prize following someone like Hector Rondon.

Speaking of things of which I have zero, I’m also shortstop-less and catcher-less at this point, and wouldn’t you know it — the two players atop my queue, Jung-ho Kang and Devin Mesoraco, get swiped as we come back around the snake. What are the odds? I was frantic.

13.146: Matt Wieters, C (157.66)
He’s underwhelming, but I simply couldn’t wait any longer to grab a catcher who will see regular playing time. It doesn’t sting too badly, except OH MY GOD Justin grabbed Marcus Semien at 158th and I’m in shambles.

14.167: Yan Gomes, C (173.96)
15.170: Glen Perkins, RP (188.82)

16.191: Michael Pineda, SP (168.35)
I don’t totally understand the aversion here; for a guy with a near-50% ground ball rate (GB%) and a 7.43 K/BB, he deserves more love. Sure, he gave up a lot of home runs, and sure, he gave up a lot of hits. But batting average on balls in play (BABIP) can be cruel, and the hard-hit rate (Hard%) allowed, while slightly worse than average, didn’t warrant an exceptional BABIP or rate of home runs to fly balls (HR/FB).

17.194: Howie Kendrick, 2B (253.90)
So consistent, but such an empty batting average. A low-variance, no-upside pick.

18.215: Patrick Corbin, SP (195.55)
Getting into slim-pickings territory, which is where I think I can excel in terms of finding my starting pitcher lottery tickets. This is cheating a little bit, but among 160 pitchers who have thrown at least 250 innings total in the last three years (2013-15), Corbin’s FIP and xFIP rank 40th and 32nd, respectively. Just because it looks pretty:

FIP / xFIP / ERA
3.41 / 3.42 / 3.47

Best of all, he looked better in 2015 (albeit in a small-ish sample) than he did in 2013, pitching especially sharply despite coming off Tommy John surgery — an always welcome sign.

19.218: Cesar Hernandez, SS (339.85)
Least favorite pick of the draft. Could’ve waited, like, 10 more rounds for this one. But the gaping holes in the middle of my infield were screaming in my face. Should have just taken Devon Travis. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

20.239: Roberto Osuna, RP (209.59)

21.242: Kyle Hendricks, SP (219.04)
Let’s talk Clay Buchholz, who was swiped in the pick directly before mine (241st) and, like Kang and Mesoraco earlier, totally flustered me when he was picked. Paul is pretty adamantly anti-Buchholz. I’m pretty adamantly pro-Buchholz. We haven’t really hashed out our personal rationales yet, although Paul cited Buchholz’s injury-prone ways and the glut of late-round lottery tickets every year.

To me, Buchholz isn’t a lottery pick. Lottery picks are mostly unproven. They catch you by surprise, fulfilling their promise on the basis of nothing but faith and that one time he flashed something brilliant. I’m oversimplifying a bit, but you take a flier on Tyler Glasnow or Daniel Norris because, dang, they have upside and a prospect pedigree. If they suck, they’re an easy cut. No big deal.

Same for Buchholz in the late rounds of the draft: he’s an easy cut. Except we’ve seen that upside: a 2.68 FIP through 113.1 innings. And that was last year. That’s very recent. And that was the 4th-best FIP in baseball for anyone who threw at least 110 innings.

So yeah, I have no problem with taking a chance on Buchholz in the late rounds. Except I didn’t get to, and I settled for Hendricks in a depressed haze because Jose Berrios already went in the 19th round and I didn’t know what to do. About as far from a lottery pick as possible with this one.

22.263: Domingo Santana, OF (308.64)
There still were some decent OFs on the board, including, if I’m not mistaken, Steven Souza and Michael Taylor. Outfield runs pretty deep this year, so this is kind of a “eh, why the hell not” kind of pick.

23.266: Justin Turner, 3B (265.71)

Some metrics

My second mock draft of the year unfolded as expected: turbulent as all else, with tons of goofs and the occasional good pick. I was, however, somewhat happy to know that FantasyPros validated my approach:

(HA! Cesar Hernandez. Ugh. Spare me.)

Per value-based rank (VBR), things are looking up. Heyward and Kemp appear to be frugal picks, even if NFBC deems them reaches. My catchers’ VBRs certainly remind me that the “wait on catchers” part of my draft strategy went as planned; whether it would pay off is another store entirely. For pitchers, all my relievers rate poorly in VBR — again, per my “wait on relievers” strategy, it went precisely as planned. As long as you’re diligent about scouting the waiver wire, the cheap bullpen approach can pay off.

I act like I’m upset with how it turned out. And I’m not lying when I say I’m not totally thrilled with the result. But I’ll also admit it felt good for FantasyPros, an independent third party, to think highly of my team. I credit my early-round strategy of outright ignoring positional premiums and strictly drafting who I perceived to be the best player on the board. I did it with Kluber, with Kemp, with Ortiz, with Salazar. My ADP research has informed me that the 9th round in a 1o-team league — so, the 7th and 8th rounds in a 12-team league like this one — is the appropriate time to start reaching, because that’s when rounds start to become indistinguishable from the next, in terms of reliability.

My ADP research also informs me that likely more than a third of my roster will turn over during the 2016 season. That’s eight or nine players on my team of 24. Who’s most likely to go? Perhaps Hernandez, Kendrick, any of my relievers… That’s five. Hendricks is the weakest link in my rotation, and given how new talent crops up every year, I’m sure he and perhaps Corbin will hit the curb at some point. And that’s seven. But that’s before injuries, and no team escape the injury bug — although I’d wager the ones that finish the season least-scathed by said bug likely fare better than the ones that don’t, regardless of talent.

So that’s it.

What do you think? Is there merit to not wanting to outright “win” your mock drafts?

Feel free to ask questions, voice concerns, make fun of me, whatever. Thanks for humoring me and reading this far.