Taking pitchers early

[A Fleshner Fantasy]

I never have, and probably never will do this strategy, but it's just something that comes to mind.

Would you consider trying to take just pitchers early?

This would obviously only work if you had an early pick, and could take Sananta. Then in the 2nd and 3rd rds you might be able to get Halladay and Carpenter.

In the 4th round, you could jump early and taken Nathan.

Then in the 5th, draft either Krod or a hitter.

[sportsguy138]

No. There are a lot of good pitchers you can take in mid rounds compared to hitters IMO. I wouldn't consider taking pitchers only first few rounds.

[j24jags]

Anything over 1 pitcher other than Johan in the first 5 rounds is pushing it for me. If I get the chance at Carp/Oswalt/Peavy/Halladay/Webb/Zambrano in the 4th/5th when the time is right I'll take him, but the early round bats are too good to pass up.

[Ratdog90]

That strat will only have a slim chance of success in a Roto League. It would never work in H2H.

IMO, the easiest position to rebuild "in-season" is SP.

[CadensDad]

As ratdog posted that is a roto strat. I've done it before and made it work. But it's hard, I did it last year with Santana,Oswalt, Smoltz, K-Rod, Wagner, Then in the first week traded to add Webb, I added Papelbon off WW and then added Wickman a few days later. I won every pitching cat and balanced out my hitting and finished 3rd in R's and around 6th-9th in every other hitting cat.

It's very hard to do and you have to pick alot of 10 homer/20 SB guys or .300 AVG type guys and other 1 or 2 category type players.

In H2H I see these picks as "ok"

1st round Santana MAYBE Carpenter with the very last pick

2nd Carpenter MAYBE Oswalt/Halladay

3rd Oswalt/Halladay/Zambrano

But in the first 3 rounds you should never end up with more than 1 pitcher and by round 5 2 is the extreme most you should have. It's easy to find 3-7 pitchers in rounds 14-20 that can win you 12 games with a under 4 ERA. It's hard to find hitters who are going to give good numbers there.

[teddy ballgame]

Last year I came in 2nd in a midseason league with 16 teams. I drafted a pitcher with 4 of my first 5 picks, and one of them was Pedro who played like 3 games for me. I didn't go in with this strategy, but there was no one I liked on the board at the time so I just kept grabbing pitchers. Point is, it can work but you need to draft the right guys on offense.

[Whomper]

I have the number 1 pick in a 15 team draft 5X5 Cats. Im going with Pujols first..I think Halladay will be there when it gets back to me for my back to back 2nd/ 3rd rd picks. I may grab him there because he never will get back to me for my 4th and 5th

[teddy ballgame]

Grab Carpenter instead.

[Yoda]

I think it really depends. If everyone is picking bats early on, then I would consider taking a few pitchers who really should not be still on the draft board.

In a 10 team league I just drafted, the best available hitters in the 4th round were: Wells, Mauer, Atkins, Aram types so I took Peavy with my pick for instance... I already had Ortiz, Wright and Bay. Then I took CC with my 8th and Cain with my 10th which what I wanted. 3 SPs with my top 10 picks.

[bceagles04]

Unless their is an ace that has fallen right onto my lap, I make a point to take just hitters in rounds 1-5. Hitters are much more dependable, much less liable to injury, and pitchers are a dime a dozen in rounds 8-12. Especially this year; their are many mid level pitchers to be had in the middle rounds.