Best Values 1st Round

[BalataGrande]

Montana, I completely disagree with your post about the depth of 1B beyond the top 7, I'll say top 8 because you know what you get with Dunn. Here's why I disagree. After the top 7 especially, you are "hoping" that your flier will be a top 10 performer. The truth is, there is probably a .020 difference in BA, 10 HR's, 20 RBI's and 10-15 R difference between the average of the top 7 and the average of the next 7. I don't believe you can make this up by drafting another position at these spots so you end up trying to make up the difference with 2 or 3 other guys and its too much risk. I'll take my 4 categories from the top 7 every time. In the interest of full disclosure, I tried that route last year in one league and was killed by Kendry's grand slam celebration and had Gaby Sanchez as my primary 1B for the rest of the year.........oh, by the way, I didn't win my league.......

[Montana168]

I tried that route last year in one league and was killed by Kendry's grand slam celebration and had Gaby Sanchez as my primary 1B for the rest of the year.

So the top 8 1B cannot get hurt?

[BalataGrande]

The Morales pick was a reach to begin with, not picking the "top 7" which was compounded by the injury and having what I was left with. Had I followed the idea of having one of the top 7, it's quite possible that Morales was my CI or UT position rather than my #1 1B spot. We are always at the mercy of injury to our stars, that's unavoidable. I'm just stating that I put myself at risk AND paid for it!

[RAmst23]

This is a little outside the 1st round discussion, but I really like the 16 - 21 group this year. This is the reason I'd prefer a pick on one of the ends and not the middle.

Also, I'd hate to leave the first 5 rounds without a 1B (Only Morales is projected for 5th round, Morneau and Dunn are in the fourth). This would leave me at a disadvantage not only at 1B, but very likely at the CI spot as well. Those mid tier guys at 1B is what everyone else will be drafting as their CI since 3B is much shallower. Instead of a Votto/Lee (Carlos or Derrerk) at 1B/CI you're looking at a Butler/Huff combo. Yikes.

[sinicalypse]

I'm not as offensive-minded as you lot seem to be, but ideally I want one of the top-2 pitchers in the second round period. The first round basically comes down to for-sure offensive production... barring some cataclysmic injury, you want it in stone that you're getting .300/30/100 at the very worst. The only 30/30 player I'd ever go out of my way to get in the first round was Vlad, but then again I'm an Expos fan and I end up with Vlad on every team every year so c'est la vie =D

I love getting ahead of the game in pitching and then dealing from a position of strength as the season goes on. If i can have one for-sure guy who's going to anchor a top-2/3 pitching staff in the league, I'm going to spend my second round pick on that in a heartbeat. Even with his paltry 13 wins last year, in standard 5x5 roto Felix Hernandez was #10 overall. Granted I wouldn't exactly bet on 2.27/1.06 again, even if he reverted to somewhere between 2008-2009 form and ended up like 2.75/1.21 or something, I'll definitely take that. I like knowing that I've got 200 innings of sub-3 ERA ball on tap, because so many times you see teams that don't even think about pitching til the middle rounds and when the season starts they look like a murderer's row, but by Mid-Late may they're up in the high 3s/low 4s for ERA with a 1.30ish WHIP and not exactly worldbeating on the Ks tip, and then they're desperate for pitching and wanting to bring that ERA down and I can tell you it's easier to bring power #s up than it is to bring ERA/WHIP down.

But that's just me... shrug. In the last two years I've only had one team get buried with my pitching-intensive strategy, and that's cuz in an autopick draft it didn't take an offensive player til round 10.... otherwise, I won every other league I played, barring some goofy condition like moves limits or weekly lineup changes =D

[rotoquest]

I'm not as offensive-minded as you lot seem to be, but ideally I want one of the top-2 pitchers in the second round period. The first round basically comes down to for-sure offensive production... barring some cataclysmic injury, you want it in stone that you're getting .300/30/100 at the very worst. The only 30/30 player I'd ever go out of my way to get in the first round was Vlad, but then again I'm an Expos fan and I end up with Vlad on every team every year so c'est la vie =D

I love getting ahead of the game in pitching and then dealing from a position of strength as the season goes on. If i can have one for-sure guy who's going to anchor a top-2/3 pitching staff in the league, I'm going to spend my second round pick on that in a heartbeat. Even with his paltry 13 wins last year, in standard 5x5 roto Felix Hernandez was #10 overall. Granted I wouldn't exactly bet on 2.27/1.06 again, even if he reverted to somewhere between 2008-2009 form and ended up like 2.75/1.21 or something, I'll definitely take that. I like knowing that I've got 200 innings of sub-3 ERA ball on tap, because so many times you see teams that don't even think about pitching til the middle rounds and when the season starts they look like a murderer's row, but by Mid-Late may they're up in the high 3s/low 4s for ERA with a 1.30ish WHIP and not exactly worldbeating on the Ks tip, and then they're desperate for pitching and wanting to bring that ERA down and I can tell you it's easier to bring power #s up than it is to bring ERA/WHIP down.

But that's just me... shrug. In the last two years I've only had one team get buried with my pitching-intensive strategy, and that's cuz in an autopick draft it didn't take an offensive player til round 10.... otherwise, I won every other league I played, barring some goofy condition like moves limits or weekly lineup changes =D

Interesting philosophy. How deep are your hitting & pitching rosters?

[Tavish]

I'm not as offensive-minded as you lot seem to be, but ideally I want one of the top-2 pitchers in the second round period. The first round basically comes down to for-sure offensive production... barring some cataclysmic injury, you want it in stone that you're getting .300/30/100 at the very worst. The only 30/30 player I'd ever go out of my way to get in the first round was Vlad, but then again I'm an Expos fan and I end up with Vlad on every team every year so c'est la vie =D

I understand craving Doc or Felix to anchor the team, but I feel alot more comfortable with the second tier of pitchers than I do with the second tier hitters so I want to get as many of those top end offensive guys as possible. I don't mind going hitting the first 3 rounds and then starting to see what shakes out with the Sabathia/Lester/J.Johnson types leading my rotation.

[Grounded Polo]

That is a very, very deep list.

How many of those guys do you feel comfortable slotting at 1B right now and feeling like you're not at a severe disadvantage?

[sinicalypse]

But that's just me... shrug. In the last two years I've only had one team get buried with my pitching-intensive strategy, and that's cuz in an autopick draft it didn't take an offensive player til round 10.... otherwise, I won every other league I played, barring some goofy condition like moves limits or weekly lineup changes =D

Interesting philosophy. How deep are your hitting & pitching rosters?[/quote]

* cracks beer *

you asked for it, pardon the longevity of the forthcoming response... and oh snaps i have a h2h league autopicking but it's letting me enter the live draft? 22:33 til it starts... this should be interesting... i reckon i'll be the only person live in the draft if it actually lets me pick =D

Welp, admittedly the majority of my leagues are Standard Yahoo 5x5 Roto Autopick Drafts, tho for the Winners League and ones with friends I do live drafts.... I won last year's winners league by 20 points (101.5 to 81.5 then parity ensued =) and I had the first pick so let's look at that one.... those are obviously the deepest leagues, and while they're not OMFG WORLDBEATING they are filled with people who are full of themselves thinking they're the best and they talk a lot of crap in drafts (TOO SOON!!!!) tho b4 we go back to 2010, if you want to see what this year's yield gave me, feel free to see my thread @ viewtopic.php?t=423790 --- i did mess up on closer's tho... i hadn't done any research before the draft and didn't know that billy wagner had retired, which threw me out of whack from 3 for-sure closers to 2+ at the moment. I'll manage to find my a trois like the free-swinger that i am tho =D

2010. I had the first pick in the draft, so I talked a bunch of crap to everyone in the room about how I was going to draft Justin Upton or Miguel Cabrera... of course, I took Albert Pujols. As I said, you want for-sure production in the first round and roid-boy alberto is the epitome of that. So the round went as planned, of note is that Lincecum went #7. I didn't target lincecum last year, as I was expecting his arm to go flying off a la johan santana at some point so I left him and the wainwrights and carpenters out there as red herrings... obviously, my targets for pitching were doc halladay and felix hernandez. the usual suspects go in the first round and into the second. halladay goes at pick 8 in the 2nd round so he's off the board, but I've still got the ability to nab felix hernandez, that I do. I've got back to back picks, so at the time I was all about getting some value at catcher. Mauer went pick #8 which was and obviously now is way too high, so for some odd reason I decided that I would go for Brian McCann to give me a nice ~.275/20/75 floor at the C position, which would put me ahead of most of the league. and it's funny, looking back at the rest of round 3 here are the picks after I took McCann:

grady sizemore, dustin pedroia, CC sabathia, pablo sandoval, ben zobrist, ryan zimmerman, brandon phillips, zack greinke, derek jeter, victor martinez, jimmy rollins.

CC notwithstanding, you can argue I made the best pick of that round... and I went safe. Fortunately, this year you can get McCann circa round 4-5 and flex out your strategy a little bit (this year I went with david price in round 3 cuz i wanted to make sure I had a 1-2 pitching punch)

At the end of round 4 I took Tommy Hanson, who was ~2 horrible starts away from being in the mid-mid/high 2s in ERA (i think he gave up 10 ER to the whitesox and had a start against the reds where he gave up 8 ER in 1.2 IP) and I sandwiched that with mariano rivera, as I wanted a closer who'd get me a filthy ERA/WHIP to go with my overall pitching strategy. last year I targeted rivera 1 and marmol 2 in the closer's race so I wasn't going to miss them.

At the end of round 6, I got adam dunn, who gave me 38/103 which when combined with pujols was as potent a 1-2 offensive punch as one would get in the first 6 rounds of the draft, albeit sandwiched between 2 dominant/esque starters a top-tier catcher and one of the best closers in the game. round 7 I wanted steals so the sandwich pick was chone figgins, who gave me my steals but otherwise blew chunks. btw, round 6 featured such winners as bobby abreu, jason bay, adam lind, nick markakis, and bj upton.

8/9 sandwich = marmol/beckham
10/11 = the "my guy" sandwich, as i always get my favorite hitter and pitcher every single year, vladimir guerrero and carlos zambrano.
12/13 = rajai davis/alexei ramirez
14/15 = garrett jones/bobby jenks (woops)
16/17 = david price (!!) / kyle blanks (yeah)
18/19 = clint barmes / phil hughes
20/21 = ricky romero / everth cabrera
22/23 = drew stubbs / nick swisher

so as you can see like, beckham was my only real miss in the first 10 rounds, then after that save round 12/13 I missed on at least one player in each sandwich, but as long as I got one quality player out of each 2 picks, I knew I could roto the crap out of the league and fill in the blanks, even literally in teh case of kyle blanks =D

within a few weeks, I had brett gardner join the party, cementing my steals empire (i hadn't forgotten the late-09 best-SB-guy-in-the-game performance of rajai davis even during the hard times) and then zambrano was gone, but by may i had jaime garcia and mat latos in the fold, along with sporadic scrap saves.

the revelation was teh 3B hole left by beckham... initially i went with scott rolen, but i decided to roll the dice on jose bautista, who i got with like ~8 HR so he went and done hit 46 for me and turned a hole into a league-best performance. obviously i'm not counting on that this year, but i won this league by 20 points, so even if i don't manage to go from lower 1/2 power offense (i had steals on lock all eyar) to #2 in homeruns, i'm still going to win this league even if i'm in the middle of the pack for HRs/RBIs, as opposed to the 11/9 i finished with. the standings = http://archive.fantasysports.yahoo.com/ ... /standings

so all things considered, that was a nearly 1/3 to 40% crap draft last year, but by establishing the foundation of dominating pitching i was able to work around my weaknesses and like, once i got up a projected 100-120 IP over the limit i was able to banish phil hughes when nobody would trade anything decent for him... and then i was able to spot start and sure there was SOME luck involved... i mean i worked ricky romero to like ~11-12 wins and a 3.28/1.23, when his overall stats are like 14 wins and 3.70/1.29 or something... i got hit with the two bad hanson starts, but like, by the time latos and garcia came up and added to what i already had, it was only a matter of offense.... realistically, by august the league was done... and all these people who were clowning me on draft day for reaching early for closers/hanson/etc were congratulating me for kicking their posteriors all over the league.

so that's my story and i'm sticking to it... if you can go out of your way to get a stranglehold on starting pitching, all it takes is dedication and the willignness to constantly roll the dice til you get something that works and even in a fast winners league just be a lil bit faster and when the mike stantons and buster poseys and mat latoses are there for the taking, go take them and blam.

since 90+% of people are going offensive crazy in the draft, if you know your pitching, you can carve out a dominant staff and get yourself in a position where you can boast "IF I GET SOME OFFENSE YOU'RE ALL F'D" and then, get some offense and the F'ing ensues =D

hasta

[RyeWhiskey]

IMHO the best values in the first round are the most reliable players: Pujols, Hanley, MCab, Braun, Votto, Longoria, AGon and maybe Crawford (although I don't like going for speed so early).
I think guys like CarGo, Tulo, Cano, etc.. while great, are less reliable and hence less valuable as your first rounder should be a lock. But that's just me.