The first of my 4 leagues is drafting tonight, this is one of my 3 keeper leagues from last year. Finished in 4th last season, but I'm pretty optimistic about this season. It's a 12-team H2H league, standard 5x5 scoring, we keep 5 players from the last season, and all keepers are simply counted as your first few picks of the draft (I won't lose, say, a 21st round pick for taking McLouth or a 1st round pick for taking Hanley ramirez, for example). Here's what I'm looking at so far:
C 1B Miguel Cabrera (DET) 2B 3B SS Jimmy Rollins (PHI) OF BJ Upton (TB) OF Carlos Lee (HOU) OF Curtis Granderson (DET) UTIL
SP SP RP RP P P P
B B B B B
I'm looking at all offense, loads of power, loads of speed, good average and a lot of runs scored. With a pretty good foundation in all five offensive categories here, I'm looking to take the best available player for the next couple rounds (especially if a lot of these guys who should've been kept but weren't, say a Prince Fielder or Matt Kemp who weren't, for example fall to me), but I'm really looking to load up on a lot of quality pitching. I'm letting Russell Martin go, and I may get a chance to grab him back here in the 6th or 7th round, which should be good considering his ADP, and then I'm looking for good value at 3B and SS.
Since I'm just doing on the road sales, I have a lot of time to kill on my hands, so I've been really trying to perfect all my lists and draft notes over the last month or so, so I feel I'm pretty prepared. But I suppose I should ask, not knowing exactly who is left, what direction do you think you would take with this league at the start of the draft? Concentrate on nailing down an unbeatable offense, or try to load up on pitching?
I'll update this periodically throughout the draft. This isn't my most important league (I'm not saying I don't care, but I'm saying the $50 I'm throwing down in a couple weeks for my in-person draft, where I'm keeping Teixeira, Utley, Sizemore, Halladay and Aramis Ramirez/Matt Kemp is a bit more important than a free league here), so this should be some good practice for the rest of my drafts, I get a chance to see just where some of these guys are falling and I can plan those later drafts accordingly. Hopefully I'll get my other 2 drafts in before this in-person draft so I can be as prepared as possible...
If you couldn't tell, I'm pretty darn excited about this (as I'm sure you all are,) because it's finally getting close to Spring, just a couple more weeks until baseball begins again. Wheeeee!
Do you have a list of players who weren't kept? I think we could provide better guidance with that list. I think grabbing 1 SP and 1 bat would probably be best. I wouldn't target Martin with your 1st pick.
I don't know about going with Martin first, but I would certainly be on the lookout for players that could have breakout seasons and turn into a keeper for you next year at some point in the draft, like Wieters, Justin Upton, Votto, Bruce, Chris Davis, and what have you.
All 12 teams except for 1 kept 5, that guy kept 3. So he gets 2 picks at the start, then in the 6th round I'm 9th. Something got screwed up it seems, where instead of snaking around I just have the 9th pick in each round, I dunno how that happened...
Available players:
Lance Berkman Alfonso Soriano Nick Markakis Matt Kemp Carl Crawford Kevin youkilis Roy Oswalt Alex Rios john Lackey Alex Rios Chipper Jones Russell Martin Adrian Gonzalez Felix Hernandez Bobby Abreu Mariano Rivera Jacoby Ellsbury Alexei Ramirez Francisco Liriano Corey Hart Chris Davis Carlos quentin Geovany Soto rafael Furcal Johnny Damon carlos Pena Hunter Pence Chad Billingsley Stephen Drew Shane Victorino Joey Votto Josh Beckett Zach Greinke Garrett Atkins Yovani Gallardo
There's the top 35 or so players available right now...
I wouldn't sleep on Chipper Jones if he is available. Billingsley could fall, then he would be a good pitcher to target. Beckett would be even better. Davis and Votto, and obviously Quentin, are profit picks at that point.
I've added Chris Davis, John Lackey, Josh Beckett and Yovani Gallardo to my team so far... ,maybe reached a little on Lackey and Gallardo, but they were about to be autodrafted and I wasn't sure if I wanted to let them fall any further, especially because the best available hitters were in positions I already had, and they weren't guys I'm particularly sold on (Garrett Atkins and the like.)
Good 6-9 rd picks or no? I'm down for some criticism, like I said I'm trying to work out the kinks before I get to my last draft of the year, since it's the first in-person draft I've done, and it's the first money league I've done...
Cafe Home
Fantasy Football
Fantasy Basketball
Fantasy Hockey
by Texas Flats » Sun Mar 15, 2009 5:00 pm 
