BP Kings Update: Draft Recap

1. Kevin Goldstein
2. Jeff Erickson
3. King Kaufman & Rob Granick
4. Steven Goldman & Andrew Baharlias
5. Rob Neyer & Dave Mlodinoff
6. Jacob Luft & Albert Chen
7. Nate Silver
8. Dave Cokin
9. Rico Brogna
10. Sam Walker & Nando DiFino
11. Peter King
12. Eric Karabell

1. Jenn Sterger
2. Jeff Ma
3. Will Leitch
4. Joe Sheehan
5. John Perrotto
6. Mike Ferrin & Dave Kaplan
7. Jeff Passan & Mark Pesavento
8. Cory Schwartz & Mike Siano
9. Anonymous Front Office Person
10. Ben Murphy & Ian Lefkowitz
11. Josh Levin & Steven Ehrenberg
12. Rany Jazayerli

Peter Gammons’ unfortunate incident focused the spotlight on cerebral aneurysms, but my connection is more personal. My mother had a cerebral aneurysm rupture way back in 1977 and was fortunate to survive.

I participated in the Mock Draft in the Scoresheet newsgroup, and because of that I expected the draft to be a little more prospect-heavy early-on. With the notable exception of Nate Silver, it wasn’t, which suits me fine. I’m happy to have Brignac and Adam Miller among my top prospects.

We made several value picks, taking a guy we felt had fallen too far whether we specifically needed him or not. We took Rocco Baldelli in the fourth round, Jorge Posada in 10 and Mike Piazza in 15. We decided to be the ones who took Francisco Liriano to stash him for a year, which we did in 6. Having waited on pitching, we tended to go for high risk-high reward types, starting with our top starter and reliever, Rich Harden and K-Rod, who we’ve heard the injury warnings about. We didn’t make much of an effort to draft prospects. We thought about it a few times, but the guy we were targeting was either gone by the time our turn came or we just decided to go elsewhere. Also, last year we drafted way too many Kansas City Royals. This year: Not a one.

We think our team will hit, and it’s a good fielding team. If we can get a decent performance out of our pitchers, we think we can be pretty damn good this year and for a while.

An early example of our “strategy” in “action” came when we dealt Victor Martinez to Nate Silver for Robby Cano and the secret location of the plans. We then converted our next pick into Ken Johjima, who spells his name a number of different ways. An argument as to whether we’d drafted the right Johjima, or even if there is a right Johjima, was referred to the rules committee. They left for lunch some three weeks ago and we have yet to hear back from them. The basis of any successful romantic relationship is mutual respect, followed by affection, lust, and a desperate fear of being alone. And that is why we drafted Carl Pavano.

Of course, we’re hoping that our top guys, Jeremy Bonderman and Dan Haren, give us a solid 1-2 punch, that Bartolo Colon is eventually healthy enough to help, and that the rest of our starters give us enough innings to avoid the dreaded Pitcher AAA (if you haven’t played Scoresheet before, at some point this season you’re almost sure to discover just how dreadful that guy is).

Our outfield needs its own medical staff: Kotsay and Mench are already hurt, while J.D. Drew, Brad Wilkerson, and Rondell White are just waiting their turn. It’s impossible to avoid taking some real risks in the draft, and our big one was with the health of our outfield.

Perhaps our biggest decision was what to do with the fifth overall pick, once Johan Santana, Joe Mauer, Grady Sizemore, and Alex Rodriguez were taken. Despite our love of pitching, we felt that it was too early to grab a starter, so we narrowed our choice down to David Ortiz and Travis Hafner. We opted for Ortiz simply because, given the two players’ histories, we thought that Ortiz has a better shot of playing in September, when the games count toward the Scoresheet playoffs.

We tried to draft as many Twins as possible–because we like to think of ourselves as not only co-owners, but also giant players shaking hands across the Mississippi (I’m St. Paul, Dave is Minneapolis)–but ended up with only six. The left side of the Devil Rays’ infield (Akinori Iwamura and Ben Zobrist, who have 183 combined MLB at-bats) will be starting for us. If this gamble doesn’t work out for us, we’ll probably spend this season just trying to keep pace with the real Rays.

Keeping that in mind, it’s important to remember that young talent only does you good if you’re able to protect it from season to season. And the structure of Kings, with the soft-10 keeper format, is such that there’s a real premium on very good young talent, but not much of a premium on guys who might happen to be young but probably aren’t going to be good enough to protect. Of course, you can also start going young again toward the end of the draft, since we’re able to protect unlimited prospects.

Accordingly, I went through about three distinct phases in my draft. The first phase, lasting for the first seven picks, was to draft premium young talent. And I think I did pretty well by picking up Gordon, Sabathia, V-Mart, Kendrick, and so forth. The second phase, lasting from about rounds 8-20, was shifting to treating this as a one-year league, perhaps with selected fliers on young talent where I felt like I was stuck. Thus the picks of Andy Pettitte and Frank Thomas and the trades for Takashi Saito and Moises Alou. If you look at my team, there’s basically a lot of 27-and-under talent and a little bit of 35-and-over talent, and not much of the “expensive” talent in between. The third phase was supposed to involve picking off a bunch of prospects, but the prospects I was really interested in were going faster than expected, and I felt like Phase II had gone better than expected, so I sort of shifted gears and continued to draft for near-term depth. You don’t take Darin Erstad and Steve Trachsel unless you’re pretty serious about taking a go at things in 2007.

The draft lived up to about the 80th percentile in terms of my expectations. In other words, I was happy. Things sort of came together in the middle stages as I was able to arbitrage the two-league format of Kings. Guys like Alou and Saito and even Wes Helms are going to be pretty important to my chances this year. The one pick I’m sort of unhappy with in retrospect is B.J. Upton, who violates my tweener rule since he won’t qualify as a rookie. If I was going to go young with that pick, I think I’d have been better off going with someone like Cameron Maybin instead.

I think I did a pretty good job with this year’s draft. I have two potential aces, and the back of my rotation has a chance to be pretty good, although it could also be awful. I didn’t draft a pure closer, but you really don’t need one in this format from what I can tell. As for my position players, I should field a lineup that will pose problems for most righthanders, although I could be vulnerable against quality southpaws. I was also able to latch onto some solid prospects I expect to blossom in coming seasons. I feel as though I’ll have a decent chance to contend again this season.

My draft strategy was fairly simple and didn’t involve any complex formulas or gathering of M.I.T. graduates. I did however, put in a lot of hours of prep work going into the draft. I wanted to initially get value for my top picks. I was looking for production at the top; to go along with that, I figured that a durable player meant more reliability. Reliability in this game is hard to come by so taking a player that crosses the white line every game was essential. Mark Teixeira was the just the player to match my number one pick profile. Production, durability and youth, seeing that this is a keeper league, were a foundation that I could build upon. After that, I wanted to get more everyday players, ones I felt I could rely on week to week to give my team a chance to stay in games and enable my pitching staff, bullpen included, to keep us there until the go ahead run could cross the plate late in the game. After the position players, it was time for starting pitching. The rock of reliable starters is also essential, coupled with a matching bullpen, I felt that through them I would have a chance to survive at least through the first half of the season. I did not make trades early, rather, I wanted to get players that I wanted and then let the early season dictate any possible moves that I could make later on.

He predicted that the Street Walkers would finish 72-90 and be “beaten like Ashlee Simpson at a chess tournament.”

Mr. Mayne did not care that this was our first year playing Scoresheet or that only a few months before, neither of us had anything but a foggy notion what Scoresheet was. We were like four-year-olds who’d been handed a fishing rod and asked to catch a giant tarpon. But this King of Stanislaus didn’t care. He’d announced his intention to set up a lawn chair next to the dock and laugh hysterically at the spectacle.

One could only imagine our sense of pride when, at the end of the season, we sat atop the standings in our division, eating metaphorical caviar and sipping virtual champagne. Granted, our record was 80-82 and we sported the seventh-best team record in a league of twelve, but we were in the playoffs nonetheless. Instead of hooking the back of our pants, we’d somehow caught a 5-pound trout.

The first order of business, then, was to make sure that the right honorable John R. Mayne was well aware of our accomplishment. We considered taking out an ad in the Stanislaus County Times just to mock him, or at least his mockery of us. But before we could formulate a plan we were brutally eliminated by one of the fifty teams, it seemed, sporting the name “[insert name of city or town here] Red Sox.”

This morning, nearly a year later, we received an e-mail from fellow league owners Dave Mlodinoff and Rob Neyer, pointing us to the Scoresheet discussion on the Yahoo groups site. John R. Mayne, it turns out, is not a fan of our team this year, either.

We were crushed as we read the words. “Painful to watch,” “offense figures to be outright bad,” “hazardous,” “I really love a good quiche.” Had John R. Mayne learned nothing from our performance last year? Apparently not. Did he not know that Nando works at Court TV as a producer, and that these snarky comments just squashed any chance he has of being a special guest?

One thing we will say about John R. Mayne is that the man did nail our strategy.

“Crisp? Looked good going into last year; got hurt, stock’s down. Cantu? Looked great going into last year; got hurt, stock’s way down. Crosby? Looked possibly good going into last year, got hurt, stock’s down to near-zero. Gomes? Looked good going into last year, got hurt, stock’s down.”

It’s really pretty simple. When you’re playing in a league where you’re still trying to figure out the meaning behind all those numbers next to the catcher on the draft sheet, the only way you can console yourself is to settle on some form of ideology and stick to it as if your life depended on it. The best one we could come up with was to buy low on some of the forgotten guys from last season and pray for the best.

And who’s to say it won’t work? Consider these examples:

Sammy Sosa. He’s #5 all-time on baseball’s home run list and could be the DH who plays half his games in one of the better hitters parks in MLB. We found it hard to believe that a guy who was looking to pass Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds for homerun supremacy just two seasons ago would have much of a problem passing Jason Botts, Scott Feldman, and John Rheinecker for a roster spot, even if his workouts are powered by nothing more than high-protein granola raisin bars.

Nick Swisher. He played the second half of the year while battling mono. We missed three weeks of class when we had it in college. Swisher was facing fastballs from the likes of Jeremy Bonderman and he still managed to hit 35 homers. Hey, wasn’t there another young phenom who had a rough first full year in the majors then rebounded spectacularly? We think the kid’s name was Jason Morneau or something.

Josh Hamilton. We actually selected him BEFORE he went on that home-run barrage in spring training. And we did this even though his Scoresheet number is the ominous “666.”

Jorge Cantu. He’s bad defensively, yes, but he can hit homers, and we can platoon him (once we figure out exactly how to do a platoon in Scoresheet) with Kaz Matsui.

The bullpen. This happy group consists of some key cogs (Scot Shields, Chad Gaudin, Juan Cruz, Francisco Cordero), two major injury gambles (Kerry Wood, Chin Tsao), a couple comeback possibilities (Jeremy Affeldt, Edwin Jackson), and a fireballing rookie (Craig Hansen). We may sink with the last five, but any one of these guys could post elite numbers, too.

Jeff Mathis. There is a chance Jeff Mathis could be the starter in Los Angeles. Although Nando roots for Mike Napoli just because of his Italianness, he’s also a guy who eats mozzarella sticks from McDonald’s, so he’s not exactly a cultural purist. Jeff Mathis, then, is the dollar menu mozzarella sticks of fantasy baseball.

The mystery pick. Rany owes us his 35th round pick for a trade that happened so long ago, we now forget who was included. If John R. Mayne has any brilliant suggestions for us, we will listen. sam@fantasylandthebook.com, Nando@fantasylandthebook.com.

So what good will come of this Stanislausian feud? For one, our willingness to do anything to prove John R. Mayne wrong, including actually reading the rules of Scoresheet this year before play begins, will drive us to become a much better team. And on another, more heartwarming note, this drive will, in some way we would hope, benefit the March of Dimes, to whom we have decided to donate our winnings.

In a couple months, when Nate Silver writes his “Checking In” article, and muses on how the Street Walkers somehow picked “every breakout star of 2007,” we’ll puff our chests with pride. And then when August rolls around, and Rany wonders how the Street Walkers, “could have somehow managed to pick every second-half bust of the year and implode before our very eyes,” we’ll…uh…we’ll look forward to another 80-82 division championship!

We shall see you all in October!

a. a great closer. I got Joe Nathan.
b. starting-pitcher marginalia who throw at least 190 innings (my theory is you can never rely on non-Johan Santana pitching). i got Chien-Ming Wang and a bunch of schmoes.
c. setup guys who can eat innings, along with two situational lefties.
I have no idea how I’ll do. It probably depends how many games I can win 11-9.

In other words … I’m gonna kick everybody’s ass.

Very quickly–I think in the third round–I decided to take the tack of not drafting anyone over 29. With the trade of Roy Oswalt, I don’t believe I have anyone over 28. This is something of an artificial goal, but it’s also fun.

What I am, is a big “Sim” fan, whose favorite computer games of all-time are Radio Baseball, a game so cool, it didn’t actually have any graphics, and Earl Weaver Baseball and its appropriately named sequel, Earl Weaver Baseball II (And not just because you could make “Earl” come out and kick dirt on the umps.)

In recent years, Kap & I had both played in Whatifsports.com Baseball Leagues and had decent success…

But enough about us…Our Draft Strategy was pretty simple…What are the old clichés? “You win with Pitching and Defense,” “Build a team with Power at the Corners and Speed and Defense up the Middle.” We tried to incorporate both those ideas. Our decision early on was to grab 3 good pitchers and a slugger early. Because of the premium on Power Hitters, those went next for us, then speed and defense, then the bullpen. We also lucked out, because there were some “starting” position players available in the late teen rounds, so we could build a little depth. It, hopefully, insulates us a bit, in case we want to make a deal, or a guy has a bad year. Plus, we don’t need to worry about their egos, so we can keep them on the bench.

We realize we took a gamble too on three pitchers who had high ceilings but uncertain pasts (because of injuries or downright lousiness). But, in real life, we’ve learned how injuries can derail a team (Did I mention we’re Cubs fans?) and felt like we needed a little bit of depth, just in case.

We’re definitely in a win now mode. Hopefully we’re in it down the stretch and can deal what little youth we have for that extra juice.

Biggest Draft surprise: That we actually tried to trade up, because we were afraid we might miss out on Ronnie Belliard. Yeah, that Ronnie Belliard.

And that Jenn hasn’t filed a restraining order

How’d that go? Well enough, it seems. Our American League brethren helped us with the ace (Matsuzaka) and the fielding (Chavez and Castillo) while our first- and third-round picks (Beltran and Drew) solidified us up the middle. Our starters are a little thin, though we should have Clemens, Hampton and perhaps Bailey by June. And all of this sounded nice and peachy until the last bit of advice from the executive: “Just when you think things look good, they’re probably not as good as they look or you think.”

Memorable Draft Moment: When a steaming-mad Jeff e-mailed Will Carroll and accused him of letting Jenn Sterger know we were interested in drafting Mark Prior in the 10th round. She took him, and even though Will said he did not tip her off–and we believe him–we still have to say: Thanks, dude.

Favorite Draft Moment: Once the interleague trading frenzy (and mild controversy) settled down, we really feel we took advantage of the opportunity to get better players from the AL than were available at a comparable point in the NL draft: Tadahito Iguchi (2nd base was all gone in the NL), Jason Kendall (a decent OBP later complemented by platoon mate Brian Schneider), 1B/OF insurance and top pinch-hitter Jay Gibbons, and others.

I chose 9th out of 12 teams in the draft, so many of the big boppers were going to be off the board. I chose instead to employ a pitching and defense strategy–going for young position players with good defense and high OBP, and established pitchers who I was pretty sure would give me innings (the phrase “young pitchers will break your heart” is equally meaningful to fantasy owners as it is to traditional baseball fans). I was targeting Beltran or Jose Reyes with my first pick, and of course they were drafted 7th and 8th right in front of me–so I took Chris Carpenter.

I was quite happy with my infield until it was pointed out last weekend that I drafted a first baseman with a broken leg (Nick Johnson, whoopsie), and this set me into a small scramble mode that caused a few probable draft blunders. I was offered Ben Johnson for Ted Lilly to fill my 1B hole, which I agreed to but then realized that I had no left handed starter, so I traded Bronson Arroyo for Doug Davis and an extra pick to make sure I had a lefty. Someone in my baseball ops department then berated me heavily for trading Arroyo, so I hope he performs more like the second half of the year than the first to justify my bad move.

I know I’ve made a few decent moves as well–I’ve had owners trying to pry both Rolen and Orlando Hudson away from me but I won’t budge because I want to see if my infield defense strategy has any value. I also had a report of an owner openly weeping when I took Adam Everett ahead of him later in the draft–this has to be a good sign, right?

The downside to my overall strategy is that it my outfield looks pretty weak on paper–I’ll probably need some young players to make “the leap” to avoid my outfield dragging my team to the cellar. We’ll see. This being my first Scoresheet league, I’ll be happy with a .500 record.

Our general ideas about drafting were to focus on young and elite talent early, useful older guys in the middle, and talented prospects later. We also had to address some concerns about depth in the outfield and in the rotation, so we took fewer prospects than originally planned in the later rounds.

We were able to land David Wright with the 10th pick overall, which was exciting, and at the time, a very tough decision between him and Jake Peavy–we were surprised that either player was available. Naturally, we were shocked when Peavy fell to our second pick. Then, in the third round, we had picked out a few players we wanted, and all but one of them were taken before our pick, so we were happy to have Chris B. Young. Coming back, we stayed balanced, grabbing Dontrelle Willis. Our next two picks, Russ Martin and Tim Lincecum, might have been reaches, as the alternatives we considered lasted quite a while (it seemed like Chris Iannetta was there forever), and we might have been better off grabbing a decent bat, like Carlos Delgado, or another pitcher, like Zach Duke, instead.

It was around this point, after the young and elite talent was gone, that we decided to employ our (controversial) key strategy: trade down as often as possible. To that end we’ve picked up more players than any other team, 43 players total. This strategy gave us the chance to try to build both a competitive team this year and at the same time aim high for the future with two factions of youngsters. One faction is led by guys already on the Major League level, like Matt Kemp, and rookies like Evan Longoria, Andrew Miller, and Tim Lincecum–players that could make a significant and immediate impact, even in a soft-10 keeper league. We also have a group of players in the lower minors, including our 2011 outfield, Cameron Maybin, Jose Tabata, and Jay Bruce–guys who can be kept at the mere cost of a 35th round pick until their rookie eligibility expires.

This year’s team, while missing half a pitching rotation and a second big bat behind David Wright, also features flexible up-the-middle backup defenders, such as Juan Uribe, who will in practice become a hypercharged Chone Figgins, and Ray Durham, who was projected to outslug all the first basemen left on the board at the time he was selected. Our outfield is running two platoons around Chris Hitter Young, with several backup platoon candidates behind them. Did I mention that we dig platoons?

As for our pitching, we have a couple of aces in the bullpen, Eric Gagne and Rafael Soriano, and in the rotation, the aforementioned Peavy and Willis. For the rest of the staff, we’ll be substituting quantity for quality. That is how the saying goes, right? Either way, we’d do anything to avoid the dreaded Pitcher AAA.

Not wanting a reprise of last year, when I took shortstops (Jhonny Peralta and Derek Jeter) with my first two picks, and then could not trade either one all season, I quickly moved McCann for Roy Oswalt (who I would have taken with that pick if McCann had been gone) and future considerations. I still have Paulino and Bard, which gives me a nice trading chip if and when one of my competitors find themselves down to Henry Blanco and Eric Munson behind the plate.

I grabbed a ton of starting pitching, and was happy to snag Matt Morris and Jamie Moyer late–guys who throw 200 innings, even 200 mediocre innings, are very valuable as hedges against injuries or the inevitable disappointments of youth (Chad Billingsley already looks like he’s lost his rotation spot, for instance.) I also wanted to grab guys going into their contract year (which is why I took Andruw Jones with my first pick) and guys moving over from the AL to the inferior league. Freddy Garcia fits both criteria, which is why I think he could prove to be my best pick.

I also tried to grab prospects who should be in the majors by 2008, but who wouldn’t exhaust their rookie status this year, allowing me to use slots at the end of the draft to protect them next year, instead of one of my 10 keeper slots. I thought Andrew McCutchen was a steal where I grabbed him, and a year from now him and Colby Rasmus could be among the 10 best prospects in the game.