the j. botter weblog

All in all, this was the best-executed draft strategy I’ve ever done.

My strategy going into the draft:

1. Spend as many of my top picks as possible on offense. Pitching is so mercurial that unless you get Johan Santana or Jake Peavy, you’re better off waiting until later for pitching and instead using your main picks on getting as many offensive categories as possible.
2. Go young. Take as many highly-rated prospects as possible while still referring to the Baseball Prospectus fantasy rankings as much as possible. Ryan Braun, Corey Hart, Hunter Pence, Adrian Gonzalez and Kelly Johnson are all prospective superstars on offense. So are Tim Lincecum, Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain and Clay Buchholz.
3. Don’t sacrifice everything to win this year. Draft a lineup that can be a contender for years down the road. It is a keeper league, after all, and I didn’t want to get in a situation where I would be a contender this year but then have a roster filled with old dudes who will deteriorate quickly. I thought long-term.
4. Have a list of my sleepers, and do not reach for them. Take them where I think they are worth and stick to that. My four main sleepers were Akinori Iwamura, Casey Kotchman, Stephen Drew and Daric Barton. I wanted to get them in the last few rounds. Both Kotchman and Iwamura went VERY early (round 12 and 14). I ended up with Barton and Drew in rounds 24 and 25. I think Barton is going to have a real breakout year and could potentially have a huge breakout year; Baseball Prospectus has him projected for 103 runs, 19 home runs, 85 RBI’s and a .299 average on the high end and 80 runs, 14 homers, 72 RBI’s and a .274 average on the low end. For the 249th pick in the draft, I would say that’s a pretty awesome sleeper.
5. Get young, highly-rated pitching prospects. If they blow up this year, I’m good to go, and if they don’t I can either trade them for needs later in the season or keep them for next year. I have Lincecum, Bonderman, Buchholz, Chamberlain, Hughes and Marmol, all of whom are very young.
6. Don’t pay for saves. J.J. Putz wasn’t even a closer to start last season, and he ended up being the most effective closer in the game last year. The closer position is the most unstable position in the league, so I didn’t draft for saves. I’d rather work the waiver wire to find a potential closer than to waste a draft pick in the first 15 rounds on one. I did draft Carlos Marmol, but that was more of just a general reliever pick than for someone who’s an actual closer. Good thing, too, because Kerry Wood was named the Cubs closer this morning, leaving Marmol as the setup man.

I got almost all the guys I wanted; in some cases, I had to reach for them because I had the last pick in the first round and I wasn’t sure they would be available when the pick came back around to me. I also had to reach for a few guys because everyone in my league is Houston-based and are huge Astros fans, so I knew that if I didn’t take Pence early there would be no way he would still be available when my turn came up again.

My strategy was to go young, and I did well. I don’t have very many people over the age of 30 on my team. In a regular league, this wouldn’t be beneficial to me at all, but it’s a keeper league, which means that I should have a good nucleus to build from over the next 4-5 years. I can only keep 5 people, but the prospects do give me some serious trade bait if I feel like I have a shot at the championship towards the end of the year and need to make a move to bolster a certain category.

My sleepers were Akinori Iwamura, Daric Barton and Stephen Drew, and I got two out of the three. Iwamura went in like round 11, which was about ten rounds before I would have drafted him. I probably reached too high for Towles, but I knew that I was about to start drafting young pitchers and that most of them would be available in later rounds, so I felt okay with grabbing Towles at 150. Plus, again I was dealing with Astros fans who are nuts about the team, so he would have been gone before I could grabbed him. Baseball Prospectus has Towles rated as the 4th best fantasy catcher, so I think it was a steal getting him. The REAL catcher steal of the draft was a guy getting Saltalamacchia in round 25.

I used the valuation/projections tool I posted about earlier in the thread to input all draft picks from every team, and here’s the results in PDF form.

So I’m tied for 6th in the projected standings, which is actually better than I expected given how young my team is.

My real hope is that Braun, Hart, Lincecum, Pence and either Hughes, Chamberlain or Buchholz end up going into next year as top 15-20 guys and I have all of them. Someone commented that my team looks like the 2012 All Star roster, but hopefully I’ll at least be able to contend this year.

I love fantasy baseball and baseball in general. Expect many, many more posts on the subject as the season goes on. I’m working on my 2008 season preview, which should be posted sometime this week or next, so stay tuned for that.