15 Team, NFBC Draft Champions Recap: Owning 17 Orioles Is Good, Right?

This draft is a crock pot vs. a microwave.  A love sesh vs. a ‘hold the moan.’  A nature hike vs. “I’m gonna sit in the car as we drive past some mountains.”  Guys and five girl readers, it’s a slow draft.  This slow draft took about eighteen days, 3 hours, four minutes and–okay, only a lunatic counts seconds.  Not almost 18 days of straight drafting, mind you.  I don’t need to ice my clicky finger.  It’s five minutes of drafting, twelve hours of waiting.  It does allow you to second-guess your picks.  Actually, more like triple-guess.  (Who are we kidding, you quadruple-guess, fiveruple-guess, sextruple-guess, ochocinco-guess your picks.) For those not in the know, it’s a weekly, 15-team, two-catcher league that lasts for 50 rounds and there’s no waivers.  Anyway, here’s my NFBC draft recap:

C: Francisco Mejia — 18th round
C: Austin Barnes — 22nd
1B: Jose Abreu — 5th
2B: Javier Baez — 1st, 12th overall
SS: Xander Bogaerts — 3rd
3B: Jurickson Profar — 10th
MI: Rougned Odor — 7th
CI: Ryan Zimmerman — 21st
OF: Giancarlo Stanton — 2nd
OF: Nicholas Castellanos — 6th
OF: Ramon Laureano — 11th
OF: Jake Bauers — 14th
OF: Cedric Mullins — 16th
UTIL: Austin Hays — 23rd
Bench: Jeimer Candelario (25), Carson Kelly (27), Hunter Dozier (30), Billy McKinney (32), Jason Heyward (34), Kolten Wong (35), Nick Martini (37), Austin Riley (39), Curtis Granderson (42), Alen Hanson (43), Anthony Santander (44), Austin Slater (45), Austin Wynns (47), Drew Jackson (48)

P: Walker Buehler — 4th
P: Jose Leclerc — 8th
P: J.A. Happ — 9th
P: Nathan Eovaldi — 12th
P: Jose Alvarado — 13th
P: Tyler Skaggs — 15th
P: Kyle Gibson — 17th
P: Hunter Strickland — 19th
P: Brandon Woodruff — 20th
Bench: Trevor Richards (24), Tanner Roark (26), Matt Shoemaker (28), Steve Cishek (29), Pablo Lopez (31), Dakota Hudson (33), Nick Kingham (36), Joe Kelly (38), Bryse Wilson (40), Daniel Poncedeleon (41), Yoan Lopez (46), Colin Poche (49), Tanner Scott (50)

NOT TO GET ALL TOUCHY-FEELY, BUT HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES AND TOUCH THIS TEAM?

Like so many of us, I’ve drafted more than one fantasy baseball teams this preseason.  With this addiction love comes a very real side effect, I don’t want to own the same guys in every league.  I mean, you can’t avoid it sometimes — Hey, Cedric Mullins!  What’s up, Ramon Laureano?  Imagine seeing you here, Kyle Gibson.  David Fletcher, nice to see you–Whoa, no David Fletcher? — but when tasked with creating this new team, I leaned heavily on the new and less on the team.  That mental burpee forced my brain to bend down and jump up over a team I love to a team that I’m…okay with.  Lots of new faces that I just need to wear for a few weeks and see how happy I am.  My category targets don’t jump off the page that I should love, love, lurve this team:

It’s like this, “Runs…cool, power…nice…steals…hey, this isn’t bad…average….well, they can’t all be winners…OH MY GOD WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR PITCHING?  MY EYES ARE BURNING.”  I don’t think I’ve ever had a team so bad in Ks before.  When I look at that team, it doesn’t jump off the page as being bad for Ks, but, apparently, I’m blind eh-eff.  To defend myself, the target goals are based on Rudy’s pitcher projections and not my projections.  Unfortunately, I can only ostrich my head into the sand so much, because Rudy had the 2nd best pitcher projections last year, according to Fantasy Pros, and he’s always near the top of the heap.  So…*raspberries lips* By the way, if you want to inject some of Rudy’s magic into your fantasy teams, our fantasy baseball subscriptions are live.  They are in-season tools, it’s not a draft thing.  It’s silly to not use these tools.  Even if you wish to ignore them, it’s a 2nd set of eyes on matchups for hitters and pitchers.

YOU MAY HAVE ENROLLED YOURSELF IN A KARATE CLASS WITH TWENTY 12-YEAR-OLDS, BUT THERE’S NO DEFENSE FOR THIS.

*sighs*  Yeah, I don’t know what happened with the pitching.  It got away from me, and if Walker Buehler isn’t 100%, I’m gonna be less than optimistic about this team.  The one bright spot (if you take a magnifier glass and the sun and shine it on this post) is the pitching totals (and hitting) don’t include my bench.  Also, in my favor, I won last year (and the year before), and here’s my staff last year:

P: Yu Darvish – 4th
P: Felipe Vazquez – 6th
P: Trevor Bauer – 8th
P: Michael Wacha – 12th
P: Shane Greene – 14th
P: Rick Porcello – 16th
P: J.A. Happ – 18th
P: Hyun-Jin Ryu – 20th
P: Cam Bedrosian – 24th

That staff was way more than I needed last year.  I finished in the top 20 out of something like 1,000+ teams with that team.  So, how?  My bench was:

Bench: Miles Mikolas (25), Trevor Williams (26), Mike Montgomery (30), Nate Karns (32), Brock Stewart (33), Matt Andriese (36), Jake McGee (38), Tyson Ross (39), J.C. Ramirez(42). Trevor Hildenberger (44), Dillon Peters (46), Tyler Beede (48), Justin Nicolino (50)

Okay, dunked on the 1st two, but not a ton jumping out there.  I pretty much need to hit on Trevor Richards, Lopez, Hudson, Kingham or one of those schmohawks.

I KNOW YOU’VE WON YOUR NFBC LEAGUE THE LAST TWO YEARS (HE’S MAKING ME TELL YOU THIS), BUT DID YOU HAVE ANY TAKEAWAYS FROM LAST YEAR THAT HELPED THIS YEAR?

You don’t need to hit on everyone–

YOU’RE DEFENDING YOUR PITCHING AGAIN, AREN’T YOU?

You really need IP and ABs!  Of course, garbage IP or ABs isn’t a good look. Erik Gonzalez is blech in any format.  I also tried to find complementary players when possible.  For unstints, your mileage may vary on Ryan Zimmerman, but Jeimer is Zimm a few rounds later, so when Zimmerman invariably goes down, I slot in Jeimer (in theory) and the team dynamic remains similar.  I don’t suddenly go from a 25-ish homer, .255 hitter to a speed or average guy.  If Laureano goes sideways, nothing is shaken when Martini appears.  If Javier Baez falls back to earth–Okay, if you lose a top guy, it’s hard to recover.  No one is just stepping in.  Speaking of Baez (Profar and Bauers), I didn’t set out to have so much positional eligibility, but, when I hit the later rounds, it was nice to have a lot of guys who could play just about everywhere.

SNOOZE!  OKAY, ONE LAST QUESTION, YOU HAVE FOUR HOURS TO CHOOSE A PLAYER, BUT YOU DON’T HAVE AN EXCUSE FOR DRAFTING THAT MANY ORIOLES, DO YOU?

At-bats?  Okay, no real excuse.  Drew Jackson sounds like he hosts NFL Today; Santander sounds like me saying Santana; Slater is friends with Zack Morris and Wynns is just a blind gamble.