One (1) Acme Draft Kit: NFBC Slow Draft, Part the First

Most normal citizens, we’re pretty sure, can imagine few things more tedious than reading a round-by-round account of a Fantasy Baseball draft. Indeed, many such citizens, some related to us by consanguinity or wedlock (though not by both), have told us as much. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably the kind of person who can imagine no more diverting pastime than speculating about who might be the Phillies’ closer this season. (No, we don’t know either, except we bet it’s not David Hernandez.) And if you are, you may want to join us, over the course of this and next week’s installments, as we review our just-completed, 3-week-long National Fantasy Baseball Championship slow (indeed, glacial) draft.

First, the mise-en-scene: 15 teams, 50 rounds, snake draft, 8 hours to make a pick or else rely on Autopick, standard-issue 23-man active rosters, semi-weekly (Monday and Friday) lineup changes, and—this is the important part—no post-draft transactions. If you’re dumb enough, as we were last year, to draft Shae Simmons the very day he has Tommy John surgery, you’ve got a dead roster spot.

Despite the Simmons mishap, we did okay with our slow draft last season—second place in our league, one point out of first—so we approached this year’s iteration with even more than our usual optimism and brio. Our strategy, if you can call it that, was simple: take the best available guys for a while, and then fill the holes as best we can. This was a reaction to last year’s results, where our misguided beliefs that (1) we needed to take two elite closers early, and (2) we had mapped the starting-pitcher topography accurately enough to wait ten rounds before exploring it, caused us significant dismay. We wouldn’t make the same mistakes this year, no sir.

As it developed, we may have made a different, opposite mistake. We were drafting seventh. If you’re drafting in the middle of a 15-team draft, you’re always going to have at least 12 picks between your turns. That’s enough (as we will see below) to change your options radically from pick to pick, and prompt agonizing readjustments and reappraisals. If, however, you’ve got a contrarian strategy—get stolen bases and closers early, wait to get starting pitchers, whatever—you’re essentially playing a different game than everyone else, and you can pursue your strategy unimpaired. Of course, to paraphrase Nigel Tufnel, there’s a fine line between contrarian and stupid.

Anyway, we weren’t contrarian this time around. We went into our draft as you will probably go into yours: with a bunch of guys we liked more than other people did, and a bunch of guys we liked less. We somehow suspected we’d wind up with the guys we liked more. Herewith, the first half of the results, organized by each pick’s position in our overall draft, with NFBC Average Draft Position in parentheses.

7. Josh Donaldson (ADP 5). The first four choices in this draft were the same as the first four in everyone else’s draft: Goldschmidt, Trout, Harper, Kershaw. We expected Donaldson to go fifth, but five and six were a trifle out of the ordinary: Altuve and Rizzo. We were happy to get Donaldson.

24. Jose Abreu (ADP 22). Not a stretch, but now, we thought, we’ll have to look for something besides power for a while. It didn’t exactly happen that way.

37. Carlos Carrasco (ADP 49). A perfect illustration of the impossibility of being proactive with a mid-round pick. Scherzer went 15th, Arrieta went 16th, Sale went 20th, Fernandez went 22nd. No big deal. We kind of thought we might wait until the fourth or fifth round to take a starter. But then, picks 29 through 36–the eight picks immediately before ours—all went to starting pitchers (Harvey, Kluber, Strasburg, de Grom, Bumgarner, Cole, Greinke, Price). We had no idea how long this run would last, but we couldn’t wait until the 54th pick to find out.

Why Carrasco, you ask? Hernandez, Syndergaard, Keuchel, and Archer were also still around (and indeed were gone by our next pick). But before the draft, we divided starting pitchers into tiers, using an arcane formula that factored in cFIP; k/9; “command,” as measured by the ratios of k/9 to bb/9 and k% to bb%; “easy outs” (ground balls plus infield flies plus strikeouts per plate appearance); exit velocity of fly balls and line drives; the number of Twitter followers the pitcher had; and the astrological sign of his birth. We divided the results into tiers. Tier 1 (Kershaw and Sale) was long gone. All of Tier 2 except Carrasco, Keuchel, Hernandez, and Archer was gone, and we might have taken any of the four, but Carrasco was at the top of the tier, so he’s the guy we got.

54. Miguel Sano (ADP 60). All right, so we couldn’t resist—more power. We had Sano last year, and were awed. We think the 37 home runs and 113 RBIs Bill James envisions for him are closer to reality than Steamer’s 32 and 91. At the moment, he qualifies strictly as a DH, which probably depresses his value a bit, but the Twins are going to try him in left field. If he can actually play there, great; he’ll qualify as an outfielder by mid-April. If not, that’s what Ben Zobrist or Michael Taylor (see below) is for.

67. Cole Hamels (ADP 74). Pitchers just kept going in this league—not just the rest of our Tier 2, but also most of our Tier 3, including Lester, Syndergaard, and Greinke. Remaining in Tier 3: Salazar and Hamels. The first of those, you will have noted, pitches for the selfsame Cleveland Indians that employ Carrasco. One of us has patiently explained to the other that, statistically, the fact that you think Starting Pitcher A on a given team will outperform the consensus prediction doesn’t mean that Starting Pitcher B on the same team will fall short of it. But the other of us doesn’t believe him. That left Hamels, unless there was a closer we wanted to draft this early (there wasn’t), or a stolen base guy ditto (ditto). The multidimensional fast guys (Gordon, Altuve, Blackmon, Marte, Pollock, Betts) were gone, the one-dimensional fast guys (Burns, Revere, Dyson) were one-dimensional, we wanted no part of Hamilton, and we thought we could wait a round for Polanco (wrong).

84. Christian Yelich (ADP 105). We’re down with Bill James, Alex Chamberlain, and Steamer about this one: great contact skills, picturesque swing, unprecedented power, 20 or so SBs, .300 BA—in other words, about the season that a rational forecaster would predict for Lorenzo Cain, who went 20 picks earlier.

97. Cody Allen (ADP 103). As with starters in Round 3, so with closers in Round 7. Chapman, Kimbrel, Davis, Melancon, and Jansen had gone earlier, and four of the five picks before us went Familia-Rosenthal-Giles-Britton. We used a Tier approach similar to the one we used for starters, and liked a lot of other relief pitchers besides the ones who’d been taken. But a closer is a guy whose manager says he’s a closer, and most of the guys we liked weren’t closers. Among the closers we did like, we saw a big drop-off between Allen and the next group (Ramos, Casilla, Rodriguez). We hadn’t planned on taking a closer quite this early, but we took Allen here and felt lucky to get him. We prefer him to Robertson, Rondon, and Boxberger, who went shortly afterwards.

114. Elvis Andrus (ADP 151) and 127. Delino DeShields (ADP 175). We didn’t have a fast team, but these picks, at this time, are still a bit difficult to explain. Andrus wasn’t completely outlandish: we had him as the 6th-best shortstop (he’s 8th in ADP, but that puts him behind Desmond and Reyes, which we think is an error), the top five were long gone, he’s indestructible, and, as indicated, we needed speed, which Andrus displayed in abundance in the second half of 2015. Moreover, he has upside across the board. He makes contact, takes walks, had good power and hard-hit metrics, and is in the prime of his baseball life.

DeShields is harder to explain, but let us try. We started with the top quintile of players in Extra Base Taken Percentage, which, we assumed, betokens overall baserunning ability. From those guys, we took the ones in the top two quintiles of Stolen Base Opportunity Percentage—how often they tried to steal as a percentage of how often they could have tried—as an indication of their and/or their manager’s willingness to let them run. We also required that they have succeeded on 75% or more of their attempts, thus avoiding players whose numbers are inflated by foolishly run-happy managers. And among the players who remained, we looked for guys with below-average SBOs per plate appearance, on the theory that, if they get more opportunities in 2016, they’ll steal more bases. Andrus makes this list, but doesn’t figure to get more opportunities than last year. DeShields, however, if he gets a full season as the Rangers’ leadoff hitter (he was there for fewer than 100 games last year), could steal a whole lot of bases—more, even, than what Steamer (35) and Bill James (45) project for him. Indeed, when we look at DeShields we see DeShields—Delino DeShields pere, who stole 55 bases one season and 56 another in the 90s. (And—what you really want us to tell you—the other guys on the list are Altherr, Melvin Upton, Segura, Desmond, Marisnick, Wong, and Domingo Santana, though that’s not to say we recommend them all.)

144. Hisashi Iwakuma (ADP 141). We wrote about him two blogs ago, identifying him as one of the pitchers who figures to benefit from a strengthened bullpen.

157. Randal Grichuk (ADP 181). How do we love him? Let us count the ways, though we don’t have space or time to do much more than that. When he makes contact, it’s great contact: high exit velocity, high average fly ball distance, few lucky home runs. While his contact rate was atrocious in his rookie season last year, it was (as Paul Sporer has noted in Fangraphs) much better in the minors, and figures to improve. His Extra Bases Taken percentage was above league average, and he stole plenty of bases in the minors, tried to steal barely at all last season, and should try a bit more often this year. We envision a .260 batting average, 25 home runs, 80 runs and RBIs, and perhaps 10 stolen bases—Kyle Schwarber plus a few steals or George Springer minus a few.

174. Steve Cishek (ADP 244). We hope you don’t know how it is, but you probably do: you’re acutely aware that life’s passing you by, you even notice the small details of its passing, you’re not crazy about what you see, but you’re somehow powerless to do anything about it. So it was with us and closers in this draft. By this time, in addition to the closers we mentioned above, Ramos, Papelbon, Street, Tolleson, Perkins, Storen, and Rodriguez were gone. Of the guys who appeared reasonably likely to be closers, it came down to McGee (an injury risk, and you never know how Coors will mess with a pitcher’s head), Doolittle (likewise an injury risk, and part of a bullpen full of guys who are as good as he is and thus could easily supplant him), and Cishek (who, but for Ramos, would have derailed our 2015 season by the end of April, but who redeemed himself late in the season with the Cardinals and has already been designated Seattle’s closer). So we took him, a mere four rounds before his ADP.

187. Yasmani Grandal (ADP 192). We loved him last year, got a great first half from him, and gather that he’s recovered from surgery for the strength-sapping shoulder injury that torpedoed his second half.

204. J.T. Realmuto (ADP 171).

217. Mike Fiers (ADP 211). As always, we put our money where our opinions are. We wrote about Fiers along with Iwakuma, as a good starter who has trouble going six innings and will be helped by a beefed-up bullpen.

234. Ben Zobrist (ADP 199). We like him, though we had him behind Neil Walker and Jonathan Schoop, both of whom got taken just before Zobrist did.

247. Nathan Eovaldi (ADP 329). We touted him in the Iwakuma/Fiers article, and we do indeed like him, but what on earth led us to take him 5 or 6 rounds before we could have? It was a panic pick, though don’t ask us how it’s possible to panic when you’ve got 8 hours to make such a decision. Actually, do ask us. First, you get nonplussed when the pitcher you’d been planning to take—Kevin Gausman—gets taken immediately before your turn comes. Then, you consult your lovingly-crafted starting pitcher tier rankings and realize that every pitcher in the first six tiers is taken. Then, you ignore the still-available pitchers in the 7th and 8th tiers and reach into the 9th tier for Eovaldi.

Actually, there are plenty of reasons to want him. Beloved Fangraphs editor Eno Sarris has noted that, about halfway through last season, Eovaldi started using his splitter more often, and the result was a 3.67 ERA, with 8 strikeouts per 9 IP, only 0.3 homers per 9, and a bump in first-pitch strikes and ground balls to levels equaling or exceeding his career highs. If the second half numbers hold up, he will have been worth drafting in the 14th round or even earlier.

264. Jhonny Peralta (ADP 240).

277. Aaron Altherr (ADP 329). We worship him, and are enchanted to have gotten him three or so rounds earlier than the mob. The speed aspect we commented on above. Given his speed, his BABIP should improve. He’s a doubles machine, and some of those doubles will become home runs in Citizens Park. His manager has already said he’s going to start, and he can play all three outfield positions. And there’s yet another reason for our infatuation, and never let it be said that we aren’t the types to fall in love with our own esoterica. Eovaldi’s one example, but how about this for Altherr: He was superb against right handed pitching, with a .936 OPS. And he figures to face more of it this season, because whereas the Phillies overall faced righthanders 73% of the time, Altherr (presumably because he was a midseason callup) did so only 64% of the time. Bringing him up to the overall Phillies average will happen, because he’s going to play full-time all year, and it should make him a top-50 outfielder, even without the extra stolen bases we envision.

294. Trea Turner (ADP 278). A high-risk, high-reward pick, of course. He’s Fantasy-eligible at second base, where he played last year, though he figures to play shortstop this season. The risk: New manager Dusty Baker, who has the reputation of being as partial to veterans as Bernie Sanders, and his paymasters, who may want to prolong Turner’s forced tenure with the organization, keep Turner in the minors all year. The reward: Turner starts all season for the Nationals, hits .280, and steals 30 bases. We have no idea what will happen, but we evaluated the risk-reward ratio about the same way the market did, and were able to hedge our bet later on, as we’ll explain next week.

307. Jake Lamb (ADP 349). We know that the Diamondbacks, given the chance, could screw up a two-car funeral or a bowl of cornflakes, but we don’t quite get why Lamb isn’t a somewhat less tepid commodity. With the Yasmany Tomas experiment over and Aaron Hill gone, he figures to play every day at third base, where he’s excellent. He was hurt last year, but he’s not especially injury-prone. He’s a lefthanded hitter in a ballpark that privileges the species. And everyone says he has “projectible” power, but no one actually projects it, except Bill James: .291/.363/.460 with 14 home runs, which has s him, ultra-conservatively, keeping company (“lying down,” as it were) with Nick Castellanos (ADP 259).

324. Domingo Santana (ADP 316). Other siblings talk about their families, their shared history, their hopes and dreads for the future. We talk about the preposterousness of the idea, reflected in the Brewers’ depth chart, that Kirk Nieuwenhuis will be the starting center fielder for that storied franchise. We accordingly resolved to draft Domingo Santana, even though he has an atrocious strike-zone contact rate. He’s got big-time power in a ballpark that rewards it, he’s a .280+ hitter in the minors, and, as noted above, he’s got speed if they let him run. And we may have gotten lucky here. When we picked him, Santana looked like a strikeout-prone right-handed power hitter who’d struggle to get playing time in the Brewers’ outfield. His upside made him a reasonable 5th-Roto-outfielder type. A day or two later, the Brewers traded Khris Davis. Santana still looked like a strikeout-prone right-handed power hitter, but now he has a full-time job. Think (somewhat optimistically) Josh Reddick.

337. Tyler Duffey (ADP 371). We don’t know much about Duffey beyond his stats, and our casual search for the explanation of how a so-so prospect suddenly becomes a dynamite groundball/strikeout/control pitcher over three levels in 2015 when he wasn’t before has led us nowhere. We did notice that the swinging-strike rate on his curveball is an otherworldly 17.5%. He got rocked by the Blue Jays in his MLB debut, then had 8 QS out of 9 starts with about a strikeout an inning. We evidently believe in him more than the market does. As we see it, he’s got two really good pitches. If he develops a third, he will be a solid number 2 or 3 starter, and if he doesn’t, he’s still a good Fantasy SP6.

354. Michael Taylor (ADP 298). At worst, he’s a fourth outfielder with 10 home runs, 10 steals, and a poisonous batting average. Ahead of him, though, is Jayson Werth—36 years old and coming off a rough, injury-blighted season—so 10/10 could well be 20/20, though the batting average will still be poisonous. He probably starts the season on our bench; if he plays for the Nats, he likely plays for us, too.

367. Kyle Gibson (ADP 344). That’s right—we eschewed Carrasco/Salazar but embraced Duffey/Gibson. But we’d been planning to grab Gibson all along. His swinging-strike rate has risen each season he’s been in the majors, and in the second half of last season he struck out almost 8 per 9 with good control. His 53% groundball percentage plays anywhere. Moreover, with JR Murphy getting some starts instead of Kurt Suzuki, the Twins’ catching defense should improve. We envision 175 strikeouts and an ERA of 3.50 or less. But don’t believe us, believe August Fagerstrom. (That’s good advice in general.) And anyway, it was late—though not as late as it is right now. See you next week with an account of the second half of the draft.