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These types of posts can devolve quickly into bragging about good teams (or, in my case, good team) or whining about the bad luck on poor teams.  I will do my best to stave off that devolution and hope to write another post in the offseason that digs in deeper to find some insights that may help for 2015 draft strategy.

 

12-Team Mixed Leagues

Razzball Commenter League #1 (109.5 pts – 1st of 12 and 3rd overall out of 1,008 teams)

This league was a combination of various Razzball writers (me, Grey, Sky, Jay, Scott the ex-prospect guy, Tehol) and various off-site experts.  It was not just my only championship in 2014 – it was the only one that I was even in contention.  I had finished 2nd in our ‘Expert’ league the past two seasons despite tough early pick injury/suspension luck (Votto/Longoria 2012, Braun 2013).

The draft gods were with me in 2014 as my top 3 picks of Trout/Beltre/Wainwright delivered $83.2 in end of season value which was tops in our league (Grey finished 4th at $53.2) and 30th overall (out of 1008 teams).  My first two picks were as no-brainer as they come – Trout was the #1 pick in 75 of 84 leagues and our league was the only league where Beltre made it to #24.  The only luckier drafter was possibly Love Me Tindor who picked #2 and had Trout fall to him (11% chance) and then had Kershaw fall to him at #23 (2% chance as he made it to #23 in only 2 leagues).

The rest of my draft was worth $211.3 which was also tops in our league as my ‘hits’ (Altuve, Rizzo, Hamels, V-Mart, Rodney, Allen, Morneau) outweighed my ‘misses’ (Verlander in 4th round over F-Her!!!!, Allen Craig in 5th round).  That was followed up with in-season pickups like Corey Dickerson, Josh Harrison, and Hector Rondon plus a ton of (what I assume for now was) relatively successful streaming/churning (20th out of 1008 teams with 437 moves – Grey with 479 was the only other one in our league within 250 moves of me).

I admit, though, it is hard to come that close to winning the overall RCL Championship and not be pissed about 1) selecting Verlander over F-Her pick and 2) waiting too long to dump my closer surplus (Dee Gordon for Addison Reed worked out well but I ended up trading Rosenthal and Rodney for useless SPs).

Kudos to Grey (who finished 2nd) for making it such a dogfight given my $86 draft advantage (Grey’s $208 draft was 6th in our league) and Yahoo Del Don who finished 3rd despite only 28 moves!

 

15-Team Mixed Leagues

LABR Snake Draft (59.5 pts – 12th out of 15)

In a 15-team format with weekly roster changes/pickups, the success of your team is incredibly dependent on your draft.  In this league, there was a 68% correlation between a team’s drafted hitter value (based on Razzball Player Rater end of season values) and their hitter standings points and an 85% correlation with pitching.  I drafted neither hitting nor pitching very well (11th best draft) hence my team sucked.  The four teams that had worse drafts than me finished 7th, 13th, 14th, and 15th).

While almost all my draft picks were within consensus ADP range, it was only shortly after this draft that I regretted the amount of risk I took on with my early hitter picks:

  • Chris Davis (#8) was tough for me to pass up in late February as his 2013 season was the 4th best hitter season of the previous 3 years (Kemp/Ellsbury in 2011 and Miggy 2013 are the three that finished higher).  That was on the heels of a promising 2012 where he hit 33 HRs in 511 ABs.  While a regression in AVG was not shocking given his K-rate, going from .270 (2012)/.286 (2013) to .196 was hard to foresee.
  • Yasiel Puig (#22) delivered solid value (albeit 1 pick before Stanton).
  • Jean Segura (#38) and Allen Craig (#52) really could not have turned out worse.

Based on my rankings/strategy, it was a coin flip going with Davis/Puig vs picking Adam Jones + best 1B on the board.  That would have been Freddie Freeman.  Jones/Freeman, while not amazing, would have netted +$11 vs Davis/Puig.  My biggest regret is choosing Segura over Wainwright.  There were a number of SPs still on the board for my 3rd pick and I gambled that someone from Wainwright/Sale/Strasburg/F-Her/Bumgarner would fall to me at #4.  That said, I still probably end up with Craig at #4 and hard to say if I still would have drafted Jordan Zimmerman in the 6th round.  So I don’t think there was much of a path to a championship here given my draft spot and my preseason rankings – unless I stumbled into a ton of late round values.

The rest of my draft was a mix of ‘hits’ (Gardner, Dickerson, Cain, Torii, Neil Walker, Archer and Odorizzi), frustrating upside ‘misses’ (Gyorko, Moustakas, Pinto), frustrating value ‘misses’ (Masterson, Peavy), and frustrating injury ‘misses’ (Anibal, Wacha, Arenado, Arcia).

Fun fact.  Despite finishing 6th in K’s and 11th in ERA/WHIP, I managed to AMAZINGLY suck at Wins.  I finished with 64 wins.  2nd worst was 72 wins.  3rd worse was 80 wins.  I was a 20 win pitcher away from finishing tied for 11th!

Kudos to Steve Gardner of USA Today Fantasy for being such a poor host by winning his league.  The Kershaw pick at #5 proved prescient (especially since just about every hitter picked around this spot underperformed) as did his Jose Abreu (7th round!), Victor Martinez (12th round), and Yordano Ventura (20th round) picks.  Slightly less kudos to Ray Murphy of BaseballHQ who finished 2nd (only 0.5 points behind – 116 to 115.5).

KFFL Snake Draft (54 pts – 14th out of 15)

This expert draft took place a few weeks after LABR and, luck should have it, I got the #8 pick again.  I went with Adam Jones with #1 and then was shocked to see that Votto was still available at pick #20 (he went earlier in all my other drafts).  Jay Bruce miraculously fell to #38 (he went #32 in LABR). I landed Verlander at #4 after Sale and Bumgarner went 3 picks and 1 pick before me and then gambled on upside with Wil Myers on my 5th pick.

So, uh, yeah, my offense was horrid.  That happens when you miss badly on 3 of your first 4 hitters – especially in this format.  I finished last in HR/RBI and was fortunate to get 3 points in Runs.  On the plus side, I got 1st place in SB as I drafted Altuve and was the most aggressive bidder on Dee Gordon in free agency.  (I tried halfheartedly to trade Gordon for HR/RBI but got only 1 taker who wanted a SP that I could not spare).

My pitching was marginally better than my hitting.  Verlander and Masterson crushed my ratios.  Those two helped spoil an otherwise decent pitching draft (Hamels, Ryu, Kennedy, Gee, Hudson, Leake, Paxton, K-Rob, Reed).

All in all, I could have drafted better but hard to have worse luck than stacking Votto/Bruce in 2014 (well, except for host Tim Heaney who finished 2o points behind me thanks to CarGo/Wright/Choo + a pitching staff that managed an end of season value of $15(!!!) aside from David Price (Latos/Balfour/Veras/Estrada/Parker/Morrow/Odorizzi/Eovaldi).

Kudos to Ryan Bloomfield from BaseballHQ who dominated this league from start to finish.

Yahoo! Friends and Family (91 pts – 6th out of 15)

Thankfully I did not get the 8th pick in the draft again.  Unfortunately, I got the 13th pick.  Channeling my inner-Saberhagen, I nailed my first three odd picks (Adam Jones – 1st round, Albert Pujols – 3rd, Jordan Zimmermann – 5th) and crapped the bed on my first two even picks (Kipnis – 2nd, Hosmer – 4th).  The rest of the draft had a few great ‘hits’ – V-Mart and Lester at 168 and 193 plus Dickerson at 258 (whom I ended up dropping before he secured regular playing time) and a number of huge disappointments including Wilin Rosario (7th rd), Tony Cingrani (9th), Aoki (10th), and Brad Miller (11th).

My overall draft was about as poor as my LABR draft (9th overall but 11th if you deduct Dickerson) but I was able to make up a lot of standings points with in-season transactions.  This league allows free daily pickups (vs LABR/KFFL which is weekly with FAAB) with the only catch being the earliest you can start a pickup is tomorrow’s game.

Through active roster management (thanks Hittertron), I was able to finish 3rd in hitter games which helped me go from 11th in drafted offense value to 6th in hitter standings points.  My biggest in-season pickup was Josh Harrison with guys like Inciarte, Kennys Vargas, James Jones, and Juan Francisco providing decent contributions (remember, 15 team league).  My pitching jumped from 11th in drafted value to 5th in pitcher standings points thanks to luck with rookie starters (200 solid IP from Odorizzi and Stroman, a great homestretch from Carlos Carrasco), Hector Rondon and Jake Petricka combining to create a decent 2nd RP, and the Streamonator filling in the gaps.

While finishing 6th is nothing to brag about, it was rewarding to leverage the daily roster strategies I detailed in 12-team leagues (such as this one on maximizing ABs) and see success in the 15-team format.  My team had the 4th biggest boost from in-season moves; Yahoo’s Scott Pianowski was #1 followed by Razzball-contributor Paul Singman+Brad Johnson’s team (aided by picking up Dickerson) and Yahoo’s Dalton Del Don.  So if I can have an above-average draft next year, I should be able to make a run for the championship.

Congrats to Scott Pianowski for the victory.  I doubted he could win with his offense and RP draft but an in-season trade for Kershaw (swapping Miggy) + amazing SP streaming/pickups got him 26 points (out of 30) in Wins and K’s.

Note:  Grey and I managed individual teams this year in Y! F&F versus share a team. Two positives came out of it: 1) We were both more aggressive in-season managing individual teams than when we shared a team and 2) My team stomped Grey’s (to be fair, his offensive draft was super unlucky – Fielder, Rios, and Myers were his 1st/3rd/4th picks).

NFBC (sponsored by Razzball) (83.5 pts – 8th out of 15)

This was the 50-round slow-draft format with no in-season pickups allowed (see here for more details).  We sponsored 3 15-team leagues with me playing in one of the leagues and Grey in another.

I picked 3rd and ended up with Goldschmidt/Puig/J-Up as my first three picks.  So unlike LABR/KFFL, I still had a chance after the first 3 rounds.

Hits – K-Rob (9th), Samardzija (13th), Neil Walker (14th), LaRoche (19th), Tim Hudson (22nd), Cody Allen (24th), Dickerson (25th), Juan Francisco (27th), McGee (47th), Elias (50th)

Misses –  Craig (4th), Prado (8th), Venable (11th), Brad Miller (12th), AJ Pierzynski (15th), Bourn (16th), AJ Griffin (17th), Lake (20th)

I had too many misses to field the team I was hoping for – a team that would lead in AB and could go 7 quality SP/2 RP.  My offense ended up being middle of the road in all categories except SB where it finished dead last.  My pitching was 3rd in WHIP/Saves and 5th in ERA but tough Win luck + having to go 6 SP/3 RP a lot led to a 12th place tie for Wins and an 8th in K’s.  The lack of SPs was the most frustrating thing at all as I drafted a ton of them.  The injuries to Wacha, Ryu, Griffin, and Paxton were too much as my prospect picks all crapped the bed – Archie Bradley, Jonathan Grey, Erasmo Ramirez, Burch Smith (was 7th in line for Padre starts…could have provided Jesse Hahn numbers)).

Kudos to Brennan Perkins who managed`The Deam` to a 107.5 point 1st place finish, edging out Jason Perkins (brother?) with 105.5 points).

14-Team H2H

Razzball Radio’s La Liga – 88-111, 13th out of 14)

My ‘punt SB and Saves’ strategy did not pay much dividends.  Looking at my draft, it doesn’t look like this should have been such a bad team – Miggy, Pujols, Pence, Alex Wood, Cueto, Lance Lynn, Doug Fister, Ian Kennedy.  I put myself in a bad hole in the early weeks with guys like Gyorko and Brad Miller.  It felt like my good weeks were 6-4 wins and my bad weeks were 1-9 losses.  Not sure what I’ll do differently next year but this season did nothing to dissuade me that Roto is superior to H2H (especially the completely random nature of end of year playoffs).

Congrats to JayWrong who won the Playoffs.  Congrats to Sonny and Will who won the regular season.

AL-only

FantasyPros911.com Pundits League (66 pts – 5th out of 11)

I am so overdue for a victory in this league.  I think I’ve finished in the first 5 for 4 straight years.  I try to draft a well-rounded team in this league vs stars and scrubs – this year, too many of my $10-$20 players had garbage years:  Brad Miller, Jed Lowrie, Justin Masterson, CJ Wilson, and Joe Nathan.  Not to mention my top $ player was Eric Hosmer at $25.  Luckily, I made enough solid picks – Jose Altuve, Kyle Seager, Adam Eaton, Torii Hunter, Cody Allen, Marcus Stroman, Jake Odorizzi, Rick Porcello) to finish middle of the pack.

Kudos to Adam Ronis of RotoExperts/SiriusXM for a dominating victory (87 points and only one other team above 70 points).