Can you win at 5 x 5 drafting...

[wkelly91]

Can you win at 5 x 5 drafting...no pitchers till the 10th round?

I have drafted pitchers high for several years and been bured at a much higher rate than position players.


Last year I took C-Zam in the 3rd...and his ERA and Whip were a severe dissapointment.

Smoltz in the 7th, and Harang in the 8th were good. But I saw come in 2nd with no high pitching draft choices.

Have you ever finished in the top tier of a league without drafting pitchers till the 10th?

[Field]

It can be done, although I've never actually used this strategy. You can create scenarios where this would work as long as you hit on a few of your middle round selections and used the WW effectively- this probably wouldn't work as well in highly competitive leagues. I think the latest I've ever drafted an SP was the 8th round. At that point, you're almost forced to draft a bunch of upside starting pitchers even if solid hitters fall to you who present good value.

With that said, you should always take best player available especially in the first 7 or 8 rounds.

[A Fleshner Fantasy]

Last year I did that, not as a strategy going in, but because pitchers started flying off the board left and right and I just got great value on hitters that I couldn't pass up. I actually won the league that year, because I was able to trade a lot of my bats midway through the year to get pitching. My final staff had Bondy (traded for him), Verlander (traded for him), Liriano (FA pickup), Penny (FA pickup), and Bedard (drafted him). I also had Borowski (FA pickup), Paps (FA pickup), and Rivera (traded for him) as my closers. So, obviously you have to get lucky, as well as making good pickups and trades, but it absolutly can be done.

[CraigMasbruch]

I do it every year. It works. Hundreds of lengthy articles have been written on the subject, so suffice it to say...hitters in the early rounds are less risky than pitchers (take a look at the # of top 50-100 starting pitchers who actually earned what you paid for them)...quality pitchers are more readily available on the waiver wire...and a mid-late round pitcher is more likely to outperform his draft position than a mid-late round hitter.

[Bloody Sox]

Top 5 rounds? You can definitely get away without drafting pitching.

Top 10 rounds? You CAN do this, but you need to get lucky to get the right guys. Its risky.

Regardless, the objective is to draft upside on your SPs... and I think the best values are in that 5-12 round range.

Personally, I like to grab 2-3 guys in the 6-9 round range and build around them. Last year I was able to get Sabathia and Haren.

[Yoda]

I've never seen anyone win by picking all hitters for the first 10 rounds. If you play in a semi competitive league where pitching usually is thin, then you will likely finish in the middle of the pack at best.

Value drafting is proven and it will beat any other draft strategy. When your league mates go all hitting, then there will be great pitchers on the board. If they go pitching, then you should pick up bats that you feel shouldn't be available at your turn.

[CraigMasbruch]

Yoda's right, it's all about value. It's just that in the first several rounds (10 may be a stretch, although I've done it...let's say 7-8), hitters ARE the best value. You are going to get your best return on investment with hitters, as a general rule. Of course, there are exceptions, but as the old saying goes, "you can't win your league in the early rounds, but you can sure lose it." Of course, the "zig when they zag" rule of thumb always applies, and more and more people are employing this strategy every year, so if you find great buys on early SP, it's hard to pass them up...but they better be truly great buys IMO, because a good portion of those early pitcherw will bite you in the butt.

[wkelly91]

I have read of those who say to pick a "solid" pitcher in say round-3/4 who will give you a bedrock to build around. I did that with C.Zam last year and he failed me. It can be argued that Santana was a dissapointment in the first round as well.

I probably won't go to that extreme (10th) round next year...but I will definately be waiting longer. Smoltz had better number's in the 7th than Zambrano in the 3rd.

[-Slap-]

I won't rule out a SP before round eight, but they have to be absolutely absurd value and that rarely happens. I like a 10-2 hitting/pitching split after 12 rounds, with one SP and one closer. If I can build a 45-50 point offense on draft day, all I need to do is patch together a 30 point pitching staff to have a strong contender.