2014 Fantasy Baseball Draft Results

Tonight was our draft.  As usual, I will bore you all with the details of how the draft went and what my thoughts are on the entire subject.  This year we managed to scrounge together twelve teams with only three teams being new.  This is a keeper league and we kept up to three players each.  Here are the teams and their owners:

Something Clever:  Me
Burnett’s Eye:  Sean
Game Changers:  Don
i can haz change:  Jason I
Roscoe G Cole Train:  Pat
Kern Dynasty:  Ryan
She Wants The D:  Dustin
Drunk on Jameson:  Jason O
Mark’s Team:  Mark
Stallions:  Steve
Los Muertos:  Thomas
There is no Spoon:  Gideon

Before you think something crazy happened, the first three rounds are where the keepers go.  The only people who actually drafted were Jason O, Gideon, Mark, Steve, and Thomas.  You can tell by the little K symbol by the players name.  I kept Yasiel Puig, Eric Hosmer, and Adam Wainwright.  It was a tough call for me on them, but it allowed me to free up my draft strategy a bit.

I thought for sure Gideon would take Robinson Cano.  Okay, I actually wrote out how I thought the draft would pan out in the first four rounds so I would have an idea who to go after.  I was actually pretty close with a few of the players (I did not take into consideration that some people might be on auto-draft).

This is where my strategy becomes evident.  The elite hitters are gone, but the elite pitchers are still there.  I spent my first two real picks on Fernandez and Greinke.  I took Pence because I wanted stability.  I thought about taking Kemp, but Jason I took him first.

Mark Trumbo.  I should have taken Manny Machado, but I thought I would get him in the next round.  It is just hard to pass up someone who can hit between 30-40 HRs.  Altuve is the second baseman I wanted, I think he could have a little better year.  Then I continued my pitcher drafting by taking Julio Teheran.  Pat may have a stud in Jose Abreu.  I wanted him in a later round.

This is where I went with some fill in guys.  Perez is a catcher, one of the few that is a good hitter.  I believe that Starlin Castro will have a better year than last year, which would make him one of the elite shortstops.  Brandon Belt is going to have a good year.  I can feel it.

This is about the area where I wanted to take a closer and I was able to get Jim Johnson and then it looks like everyone went after closers.   Jason I took Leonys Martin right ahead of me and it caused me to freak out a bit.  I hit Cishek almost by accident.

I drafted Xander Bogaerts next and that was only because I was looking at Jon Lester and I started to run out of time, so I decided to take Bogaerts (I wanted him later, but I started thinking that maybe someone would overdraft him, I guess that someone was me).  Jason I took Jurickson Profar (I caused him to freak out too), who I thought was going much later.  Ryan snagged Lester and it annoyed me.

Allow me to explain the Torii Hunter pick.  I am hoping he can repeat a .300 batting average, which will help balance Trumbo out.  Archer is a high upside pitcher.  We ended up having a discussion about Michael Brantley, who Ryan thinks will have a very good year and is his sleeper pick of the draft.  I think Brantley is one of those guys who is a good baseball player, but bad for fantasy.

Relief pitchers and a starting pitcher.  Nothing too mind-blowing.  Corey Kluber could end up having a very good year, so I guess he would be my sleeper pick.

I took George Springer with the final pick.  Some people have considered him to be the next Mike Trout.  I once drafted Mike Trout in the bottom rounds and then dropped him when he was not starting.  Oops.  I will not make the same mistake twice.

I believe that I am very deep in starting pitching and that I have a fairly decent hitting.  It is pretty balanced on the hitting, at least I hope.  I just cannot afford to have someone like Hosmer start out slow or Puig be a complete bust.

I may need to get rid of a pitcher and add another hitter, I am thinking a trade would be worthwhile.  Hopefully someone will be interested…

Author: Ngewo