Floored 2016 Draft Recap and Year Preview

When we look back on the 2016 Floored draft, what will we remember? Dean forcing us to cancel the draft party, and then not even showing up on time? Keith not knowing how to use the draft application and forcing a 2^nd ‘pause’? Or maybe more items a little more technical in nature: Max not drafting any minor leaguers? Hell, NO ONE drafting any minor leaguers? Dean drafting 3 straight starting pitchers to open his draft AFTER having traded away the reigning MVP Josh Donaldson? I’ll leave it up for you to decide.

For this draft recap and year preview, I am going to go through each team’s draft and say what each team needs to do to win the league this year…or at least get through the year leading the standings. As we know, ANYTHING can happen in the playoffs.

I apologize this ended up being kinda long, but I go into depth on every team so everyone has something to read.

We’ll go in reverse order from the standings last year, with one exception you will see later:

Max, team #beatingDave (one of the best names in Floored history),

For Max to win the league, he will need elite production from his elite picks. There isn’t a lot of upside in his late picks and a ton of injury risk with names like Troy Tulowitzski, Jacoby Ellsbury, George Springer and Brandon Belt. At the end of the draft Max took bargain starting pitchers and the Phillies’ closer. Max is strong at the top with McCutchen and Dee Gordon but he will need a breakout year from one of his Miguel Sano or Garrett Richards types to make a run.

Team Brian and Josh Waring, I use the full name as Yahoo shows it now because it sounds like Brian and Josh are married

These guys took the bait on Buster Posey at pick 12, boy that feels early. What it will take for team gay rights to win is solid output from middle picks David Peralta and Maikel Franco. I like many of the picks they made, but there are some questionable ones too. Michael Conforto in the 15^th round they might want back, Conforto is currently projected to be platooned. Ken Giles in the 7^th round isn’t looking so good either given that he is the Dellin Betances for the Astros.

Cory, team Hebrew Nationals

Cory draft a lot of risky upside guys that he will need to pay off to make a run this year. This list includes Puig, Carlos Gomez, and Addison Russel. It is a well rounded team with a good pick in Gerardo Parra in the 16^th round. Cory has some of the highest ceiling keepers in Jose Fernandez, Josh Donaldson, and Noah Syndergaard. This team has very good potential, and he should know fairly early into the season if his upshot guys can have the years they need.

Marcley, team China Basin Bombers

Josh left the draft competing for top projected standings with Dave. While this is a very high honor, a cog of his team succumbed to injury before opening day and now the Marcster will be looking to overcome the loss of A.J. Pollack. For this team to win, Freddie Freeman will need to stay healthy, Zack Greinke will need to come close to last year’s numbers, and Gregory Polanco will need to take a step forward in the power department. A 16^th round Stephen Piscotty and 15^th round Matt Duffy should help to shore up platooners Jore Soler (full disclosure I wrote this before the Schwarber injury) and Yasmany Tomas who will likely be coming to a waiver wire near you shortly.

Michael

I really didn’t like my draft; I tried a different approach to the draft this year. I ran a ton of numbers to see which players were ranked better and worse given our intricate rules/categories. I think this helped me at the top of the draft. Names like Heyward, Pujols, and Kyle Seager were all good values. What it will take for me to win though, will be my keeper pitchers. I didn’t draft any aces, so I need Kluber and Chris Archer to be the aces they can be. If they disappoint, my team will not be able to compete because my bullpen is awful. The other thing I need to win is to have one or two of my late flyers to break out, this includes one or more of Raisel Iglesias, Delino Deshields, and Byung Ho Park.

Dave, team who shall not be named

I’m gonna do something different for mister, ‘I have too many keepers than I know what to do with.’ I’m gonna guess what has to happen for Dave not to end the year atop the standings. For Dave to have swung and missed on the year, we are going to need a sophomore slump from Carlos Correa. Paul Goldschmidt will likely need to fall victim to some of the pre-season narratives about lineup protection and a proposed decline in stolen bases. Stephen Strasbug will likely be Stephen Strasburg, so we’re good there. Dave’s bullpen has plenty of risk in one year wonder closer Jeurys Familia who probably is still reeling from the World Series collapses. As much as I try to hate, I loved Dave’s draft, he yanked Christian Yellich, Yu Darvish, and wil Myers from guys I was targeting and he has great late round flyers to round out high end talent. OK enough, let’s take Dave down.

Paul, southfloridagators

For Paul to win, he will need his high end draft picks to be elite, and he took some risky ones. Yoenis Cespedes and JD Martinez were two players that are not projected to fit our rules set particularly well with their low  walks and high strikeouts. However for Paul to win he will need these players to combine for about 70 home runs like they hit last year. Paul has some very good keepers which should provide him a good base. I really liked a few of his late picks in Cesar Hernandez, Pillar, and LeMahieu (even before his scorching start this week). Paul has a team full of risk in his draft, safety in his keepers, with some good late round flyers. He should have a team to work with this summer

Keith, Bourbon Street Blues

It doesn’t particularly matter what Keith did in his draft. He dropped 7 of his last 10 picks before opening day happened. So we’ll just take about the first 11. He apparently didn’t mean to draft Miguel Cabrera, saying he was unable to figure out how to click on the player he wanted and then draft him, but Keith could have done worse than Miggy in round one. Keith had a pretty steady draft, he reached on a few players early like Rougned Odor and Jung Ho Kang. For Keith to win he will need these players to overperform where they were ranked pre-season, but it is very possible. For Keith to win he will need his keepers to impress as well. Todd Frazier and Michael Brantley had some injury based struggles in the second half last year.

Arthur, American Brawler

Our Bryce Harper infused second place finisher last year has a strong keeper base coming into this year thanks to offseason trades. He may not have had high end  draft picks but if he nailed the first picks he DID have then he can absolutely contend. Arthur took Relief Pitchers with 4 of his first 7 picks hoping that his keepers can  support his offense. For Arthur to win he will need to change his pitching strategy from last year. Last year Arthur was at or near the top in the league in W and K, but near last in ER, ERA, and WHIP due to all his SP. For Arthur to win he will need to execute a new pitching strategy. In typical Arhtur form he took some names that were great 5 years ago in Gio Gonzalez, Mark Teixiera, and David Wright, for him to win he will need to get some production out of these guys or have a quick trigger finger to cut them

Dean, Bad Hammy

Dean has a very frustrating team to play against, and I’m not just saying that because I can’t remove myself from the bias of him shutting me out for most of this week. Dean took many of the elite SP at the top of this draft, making it very frustrating as someone like myself was trying to draft one or some of them. For Dean to win, he will need these pitchers to fulfill the strategy Dean has in mind. Dean drafted a well-rounded team focusing, in the typical Dean way, of focusing on low K and high BB guys. Dean is the Billy Beane of our league, he found a loophole in the rules set and the rest of us are just trying to catch up after being in denial for years…or maybe that’s just me. I don’t really have a good read on Dean’s offense in part due to this drafting strategy though, because when people think about breakouts, they don’t talk about sub 100 K seasons or over 80 BB seasons. We’ll see how it goes.