Final Preseason Blog: The Final Countdown

Dean and Michael with Michael sporting two-time gold glove winner Ender Inciarte’s All Star jersey got together for a draft shindig at Dean’s place. 

Brian looks super happy about being champ

It’s the final countdown…duh nuh nuh nuh. We’re three days from Opening Day. Let’s go!

Last week I wanted to get everyone’s flag-planting, shot calling, clutch player picks for the year…but instead Dean made jokes about my house.

So this week we’ll take a deeper dive into the draft a little more than last week’s macro-level analysis about Relief Pitchers and league trends.

Early Round Surprises:

Paul Goldschmidt falling to me at pick 8 was rather surprising, sure there will be a humidor at Chase Field this year but so much of Goldy’s value goes beyond Home Runs; sign me up. The big 4 starting pitchers (Kershaw, Scherzer, Kluber, Sale) all went a few picks later than I thought they would. BJ, Dean, and Arthur all made the conscious decision late in the first round AND early in the second round to pass on these guys and opted for varying levels of stud hitters. Time will tell if this was the right decision.

Dean’s curious Relief Pitching strategy came into full view with Andrew Miller being taken in round 4 at pick 35 overall. Andrew Miller finished 42^nd on Yahoo’s Player Ranking last year in Floored and is still not projected to be Cleveland’s closer. In Dean’s opinion Miller’s consistent elite ratios, K rate and good innings pitched total that drove this 42^nd ranking deserve this high-end pick. Dean feared Miller would not make it back to him in the next or even later rounds. The counter argument to valuing Miller so highly is that there were 13 RPs that were ranked in Yahoo’s (Floored) top 85 last year that weren’t even drafted last year and 5 of which that weren’t even owned at year’s end. Dean and I have been debating this argument fairly endlessly since the draft. At year’s end we will look back at names like Xander Bogaerts, DJ Lemahieu, and 6 stud closers that were available at that pick and see what the right strategy was.

Mid Round Surprises:

This has to be where the league’s aversion to starting pitchers came into full view. Jacob DeGrom was the 8^th SP taken at pick 29, Carlos Martinez didn’t go until pick 60, then there were only 7 more SPs that were picked before the round 11 keepers were taken. I both love and hate this. It makes sense in our league to stay away from replacement level starting pitching, but the result this year was basically to ignore all levels starting pitching for most of the draft. This led to some very nice values for all sorts of names. When we made the shift to the 30 innings pitched minimum, we all wanted to make starting pitchers worth more. The change worked and it didn’t. People now need more starts each week, but the number of starts required to get there is about the same as we used to utilize before the 30 IP minimum. The difference is we are all more cognizant of how to play the game and the categories involved such that change hasn’t resonated like we intended. Next offseason we can talk about different changes like adding an Innings Pitched category or removing the Earned Runs category. Another topic for another day.

Some of my favorite mid round picks were Felipe Rivero to Matt in the 5^th, Eric Hosmer to Dean in the 6^th, Ozzie Albies to Arthur in the 7^th (little bit early to gain much value but I’m well documented to be on the Albies bandwagon), Rougned Odor to Matt and Kyle Seager to Keith in the 8^th, Aaron Nola to Dave and James Paxton to Dean in the 9^th and Chris Archer to Dave in the 10^th were great values, Brian had a nice upside grab of Manuel Margot in the 9^th, Luis Castillo by Keith in the 10^th was slick too.

Late Round surprises:

Ronald Acuña lasting until the 12^th round. Boom.

Other Late Round surprises:

The rush of non-closing relief pitchers started in round 14 and carried through the rest of the draft. I can dig it. Some of the picks I really liked were Dean’s Michael Brantley in the 13^th, Arthur’s David Price, Keith’s Lewis Brinson and Michael’s Adam Eaton in the 14^th, Brian taking Blake Treinen in the 15^th, Max’s Delino Deshields and Paul’s Marwin Gonzalez in the 16^th, Paul’s Ohtani (SP) in the 18^th, Brian’s Orlando Arcia in the 19^th, Dave’s Carlos Gonzalez in the 20^th, Matt’s Mitch Haniger in the 20^th, Paul’s Zach Godley, Arthur’s Miles Mikolas, Max’s Jonathan Villar and Cory’s (now millionaire) Scott Kingery in the 21^st.

Some of the head scratchers at least in the Atlanta draft room came from Arthur who took Jon Lester in the 13^th round and to a lesser extent his homer pick of Gleybar Torres in the 18^th round. Also, I was relentless with Dean taking Ryan Madson in the 9^th. That one gave me a good laugh, sorry Dean.

I’m super pumped for the year to start. Send me some photos from the fun stuff you all have going on and we’ll keep the good times rolling in the blog.

Send along your breakouts and busts, because who doesn’t like to say, ‘I told you so!’