Often, when an analyst reviews his or her draft, it is typically ahead of the season about to be played. That makes sense! We are planning for 2021, not 2020. It might behoove us, however, to review how drafts actually went. I’m guilty of doing the former and not the latter! With the dawn of the second annual Razzball RazzSlam best ball tournament upon us, I figured now is as good a time as any to rectify this.

Last year, I entered the inaugural RazzSlam having played, and subsequently bombed, in a couple of best ball drafts on Fantrax. I wanted to dip my toe in, get my feet wet, and other joint-aquatic/podiatric idioms, so I entered a couple of low-stakes leagues, figuring I could wing it. As foreshadowed, I fared poorly. I, in fact, could not wing it.

Having failed somewhat spectacularly for a guy who fancies himself at least somewhat knowledgeable and/or adept at fantasy baseball, I wanted to right my wrong by taking my preparation for RazzSlam seriously. I finished 15th out of 216 participants (18 leagues of 12 teams each), somehow not winning my league but ending up one of the highest 2nd-place finishers above some league winners. I’m proud! Because I expected another unmitigated disaster.

Hence, I figure it might be worth reviewing, with hindsight, one of my rare successful drafts. We played out the season already, so instead of trying to outline tips and tricks up front, it might be easiest to simply show you the draft results, each player’s stats, and the clear takeaways from my strategy — some intentional, some not.

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Yesterday, I posted the first 15 out of 30 of My Dudes who I have been drafting at each “round” of 12-team drafts, per National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP) between March 16 and April 8. Here are the last 15! Plus! As a bonus, I’ll briefly chronicle 10 players I’ve been targeting for my bench depth in 15-team leagues as well. Enjoy!

Thirty of My Dudes (One for Every Round), Part 2

Round 16: Christian Vázquez, BOS C (ADP 192.11)

I came away from my deep dive on Vázquez surprised by how impressed I was with his profile. He’s not an elite hitter or anything, but I’ll take a catcher who can hit 20 homers with an average that won’t kill you. (All of the projection systems have taken the hard under on his power this year, by the way. I’ll smash the over, but I don’t expect another 25-homer pace or anything.)

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Last week, I highlighted my 20 favorite mortal locks for 2020. Effectively, I compiled a list of 20 hitters and pitchers (primarily hitters) who have historically out-performed their current average draft position (ADP), such that, barring injury or unforeseen decline, they should do so again with ease.

Here, I will highlight one, and only one, player in each round (assuming a 12-team format) who (1) is not a mortal lock and (2) I found myself targeting frequently in drafts this year. Again, given draft season has mostly come and gone — and given that this season may never play out — I figure I could do this this one time. Granted, I still have two home leagues to draft, so it’s possible this could backfire. Oh well!

This doesn’t need a substantial prologue. Here are the first 15 of 30 players I have found myself strongly considering at their National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP) data from March 16 through April 9 (130 drafts).

Thirty of My Dudes (One for Every Round), Part 1

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The season may not happen, and nearly all of my industry and high-stakes drafts are complete (not my home leagues, though), so I feel like it’s as good a time as any to publish My Guys — or, not My Guys, exactly, but The Guys I Absolutely Can’t Ignore at Their Prices. I’ll call this latter group, for short, my mortal locks. Incidentally and hardly coincidentally, the overlapping portion of the Venn Diagram of My Guys and my mortal locks is quite large.

My mortal locks (a term my uncle uses that I absolutely love): the guys who I can nearly guarantee will turn a profit at their National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP). The average draft produces a 65% return on investment (ROI). In other words, that’s a 35% loss, or roughly $90 of a $260 auction budget poorly spent. If you can at least break even, let alone turn a profit, on every player on your roster, you are already setting yourself up for success. It’s nearly impossible, but it doesn’t make it a bad goal.

If you Google “mortal lock,” the first result is a website called waywordradio.org, in which it defines mortal lock as “a cinch, an odds-on favorite, a guaranteed thing or event.” The next result, though, is Urban Dictionary — far more reputable — which defines mortal lock as “a bet that is virtually guaranteed winner, but in reality it is just a coin flip.”

This post embraces both definitions. My mortal locks are mortal locks precisely because they have proven to be as close to guaranteed as anything or anyone else. In reality, nothing is guaranteed. But I’ll convince myself something must be.

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It’s draft season, which means it’s also draft recap season. Last year, I partook and subsequently recapped a few of my drafts. Folks seemed to enjoy them and/or find them beneficial. That’s good!

Incidentally, and unfortunately, all the drafts I recapped turned out terribly, and all my good teams (my league-winning National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) Online Championship team, my 3rd-place Tout Wars team, etc.) I let slumber. One of those terrible teams was my Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (TGFBI) squad. I’ve returned to fight off my demons.

I will say: I feel much more well-prepared than I did last year. I feel more cogent, more lucid. Last year, I barely prepped. I was overconfident because of my 2018 success, in part, but primarily I was overwhelmed and burned out. I held firm convictions about hardly any player, which goes against every fiber of my fantasy baseball being.

This year, the opposite. I’m eager to correct my flaws from last year, starting, first and foremost, with actually preparing. Doesn’t mean I won’t totally botch this draft. I don’t fancy myself particularly good at 15-team leagues, excelling instead at 12-teamers, especially auctions. But, hey, no excuses. At least this time, someone else, instead of my own damn self, will have beaten me.

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Oftentimes, I write out of inspiration. This time, I write simply to write, because the subject happened to creep up into my thick ol’ skull without provocation, which I guess is a type of inspiration in and of itself but not wholly what I had in mind. No one specifically needs this post right now, or maybe everyone does. I don’t know.

Something I do see and have seen before, however, with frequency, are mentions of such-and-such player rising or falling in the ranks, usually by virtue of average draft position (ADP). ADP is a measure of a player’s rank by aggregating data for a whole boatload of snake drafts. It’s a good way of assessing a player’s market value.

The problem with ADP is, unless you have completed research nearly identical to this, you can’t possibly be expected to know how a player’s ADP rank might equate to a dollar value at auction. Having this knowledge, this intuition, is arguably helpful in understanding how much you’re staking on any particular player. Moreover, changes in ADP become easier to digest. Possibly. For me, it does. If you’ve never participated in an auction draft before, maybe it doesn’t.

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Jake Bauers entered the 2019 season a kind of wide-awake sleeper to many fantasy analysts looking to target cheap value at first base or in the outfield. Per National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP) data, Bauers was drafted, on average, 230th overall, 24th among first basemen, and 66th among outfielders — effectively your last corner infielder or outfielder, or your first bench bat. You weren’t depending on him too gravely for production; the cost to acquire Bauers was typically low, making any sunk costs a bit easier to swallow.

Still, it has been disappointing to see Bauers follow up 2018’s 11-homer, 6-steal half-season with mediocrity. Yes, his rookie campaign featured a miserable .201/.316/.384 line, but it was marred by a meager .252 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and a 26.8% strikeout rate (K%) that seemed far out of whack relative to his roughly league-average 11.0% swinging strike rate (SwStr%). It stood to reason, at first glance, Bauers would cash in on some positive regression to post a fairly solid slash line while posting double-digit home runs and stolen bases — and it didn’t seem altogether far-fetched to hope so.

Ultimately, it never came to fruition. In almost an identical number of plate appearances, Bauers replicated his home run tally but with a lower isolated power (.146 ISO to .183 ISO), a feeble stolen base rate (two steals on five attempts, versus six on 12 last year), and worse plate discipline despite a better whiff rate. Cleveland had enough and eventually optioned Bauers with his career line standing at 22 homers, eight steals, and a .218/.312/.381 line in 771 plate appearances.

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Another year, another set of bold predictions, and another introduction to The Process^TM. I did well last year, hitting on Matt Chapman and Miles Mikolas out-earning their teammates Matt Olson and Luke Weaver despite enormous divides in National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP) as well as Madison Bumgarner being worse than a not-top-20 starting pitcher (with an asterisk for his late start in 2019). I might’ve hit more bold predictions last year than in my previous three seasons combined.

Bold predictions can but don’t have to be a frivolous exercise. As fun as it is to slap a 40-homer prediction on Franmil Reyes (…should I do that?), I don’t find it particularly illuminating unless it’s supported by evidence (…which exists for Reyes?!). You can make bold predictions without being outrageously bold — it’s exactly what I intended to accomplish last year simply by leveraging what I observed to be extreme market inefficiencies at play. I stuck my neck out for Chapman and Mikolas and Bumgarner, but not as far as folks might think. There was enough evidence in their (and, where applicable, in their teammates’) bodies of work for me to make objectively bold predictions on the basis of draft price or market consensus without them feeling particularly bold to me.

While endeavoring to go 6-for-10 this year just to match last year’s hit rate would be absurd, I do think I can hit another three, at least, in 2019 if I pick my spots correctly. So, here goes: my 10 bold predictions for 2019.

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Allow me to break the fourth wall (more than I normally break the fourth well) and say I’m glad a few of you have enjoyed my recent (mock) draft recaps, especially the format of them. It can be tough to make that kind of content both interesting and informative, so I’m glad it has achieved at least the minimum thresholds in both regards.

(Mock Draft Review: RotoBaller Friends and Family Draft)
(Draft Review: The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational)

I was fortunate enough for the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) to sponsor a “Beat Alex Chamberlain” high-stakes league. It was my first time competing in this specific contest: the $350 Rotowire Online Championship. With that kind of buy-in, I knew I would likely face some sharp competition despite having no prior exposure to any of the other owners.

The league specifications are as follows:

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Fantasy owners have been chasing, to no avail, Chris Archer’s 2015 season, during which he recorded a 29% strikeout rate with a 3.23 ERA. After finishing just outside the top-50 overall by National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP), Archer averaged the No. 50 pick from 2016 through 2018. Unfortunately, the outcomes annually and in aggregate have been awful…

… even though his peripherals before and after 2015 have been nearly identical. That’s the persistent problem with Archer: he has given us perpetual reason to chase results he may never again achieve.

I’m here to argue Archer’s woes started not in 2016, when his ERA ballooned to 4.02, but in 2015 — yes, his career year. That’s because he stopped throwing his sinker in 2015, opting instead to rely on a pitifully bad four-seam fastball as his primary offering. His 2015 success can be attributed primarily to his slider, which he began to feature much more prominently, but the remaining success was thanks to good luck.

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