Recaps and Nightcaps: Draft Strategies for 2022

Not everything in this world is logical or sensical. The MLB labor relations situation is pretty over-determined: each side knows what the other wants and there’s not a lot of true leverage on either side. MLB is a practical monopoly and the players can’t play in another league, and the owners can’t fill their rosters with replacement players that fans would want to watch. Are there things like replacement fans? Bots? Maybe MLB doesn’t care about fans because they plan to fill the stands with bots. That’s it. Now we’re treated to a lockout, where the most we can do is draft imaginary baseball teams while we fans practically beg for closure on how much season we’ll get.

While we wait [sips sweet tea], I’ll recap my two recent industry drafts and go over some draft strategy that you can make actionable for your own leagues.

My Resumé: Winning isn’t everything, but much like you wouldn’t want a financial analyst who has an annualized -25% return on investment, it’s important to know what kinds of games your favored fantasy analyst is good at. For yours truly, I could probably be called a “best ball” specialist. In 2020, I won the DataForce Charity Fantasy Football Charity League against 14 of the top fantasy football players in the world while also claiming two Razzball staff league championships. In the 2021 RazzSlam, I “won the draft” by having the top overall draft score according to Alex Chamberlain’s Draft Tracker, and subsequently finished sixth overall in points (and probably one Yermin Mercedes FAAB add away from being a candidate for the top 3). So, I’m definitely a more reliable player for best ball leagues like the RazzSlam as well as Underdog and DraftKings leagues. I know enough theory behind the 15-team roto leagues, like TGFBI or the NFBC Main Event, to give competent advice. But to be honest, traditional fantasy baseball leagues are starting to bore me, and I’ve developed a habit of abandoning my teams the moment I determine they are out of contention. It’s kind of like cooking your favorite chili: if you can tell after 30 minutes that the final product isn’t going to work out — and I mean, like, you realize the onions were rancid and you put in cinnamon instead of chili powder — do you spend the next 8 hours at the crockpot hoping for a miracle? Or do you throw it out and start over? Tabula Rasa, my friends.

Top Picks: RazzSlam and TGFBI

As I wrote in my piece last week: Go big or go home in tournaments. If you’re playing in a single league, you only need to beat 9-to-11 other people. But if you’re playing in a tournament — and these are tournaments of 200-400 people —  you need to beat hundreds of other players, and you’re not going to do that by playing it safe.

Here are my first picks in both the 12-team best ball style RazzSlam and the 15-team roto style TGFBI leagues:

RazzSlam: 

In tournaments, we need as much upside as possible. We want to ask: if healthy, who could blow past their projections? Before a freak sliding accident, Ronald Acuna was on pace to hit nearly 45 dingers last year, with another 20+ stolen bases to go with it. Acuna was, more or less, the consensus #1 pick last year, and somehow everybody thinks he’s barely top 10 material this year. Whatever. Getting Acuna at pick 10 in an industry league is straight-up theft, especially as it looks like we’re going to get another 1-2 weeks of healing under his belt. Because RazzSlam favors home run hitters with a high average, getting Yordong in round 2 was a no-brainer.

These two players — Acuna and Yordan — set the table for my strategy over my first ten picks.

You’ll notice that by round 3 of the draft, I have 2 Atlanta Braves stars: Ronald Acuna and Austin Riley. By pairing Acuna — likely the leadoff hitter in Atlanta — with a slugging run-generator (Riley), I maximize my possibilities of capturing the runs generated by the lineup. This “pairing” or “stacking” (when you get three or more players from the same team who directly affect each other’s production) can improve a team’s upside, which is essential in tournament mode. I’ll get to this later, but I added Dansby Swanson — who will be hitting somewhere in the top part of the order — to complete my Hotlanta Stacks (you choose whether that’s a record store or a pancake shop).

Speaking of pairs, eagle-eyed reads can probably tell that my fifth-round pick, Jose Altuve, is the leadoff man for Yordan Alvarez. Acuna/Alvarez/Austin/Altuve…the A-Team! It’s like a double date with the very awkward Shane Bieber acting like the third wheel in there. Even though Bieber is somewhere around SP30 on my personal rankings for this year, he also has the biggest upside if the Guardians can eke out some wins.

I was attracted to this build because the Hotlanta Stacks will face off against the bottom-dwelling pitching staffs of the Pirates, the Nationals, and the Marlins more often than any other team. Sometimes all you can do is line up the odds and see if they play out.

TGFBI: 

Shohei Ohtani at pick 5 in roto!? Yeah, I do what I want. But, Ohtani is probably the only player out there who could hit 50 dongs with 30 swipes, and I’d be happy to call that “Jose Canseco 2.0.” Also, I don’t think I’d like that nickname if somebody gave it to me. Because TGFBI requires pitchers to be assigned on Mondays, Ohtani can only be either a hitter or a pitcher once a week. Due to the roto status, this could be beneficial if Ohtani enters a hitting slump or I need a two-start week to catch up in pitching. Again, it’s a tournament situation, and I’m happy to grab the hitter with the most HR upside in the draft, who also provides pitcher flexibility should I need it.

Everybody’s concern with Ohtani is that his batting average is “low.” Whatever. The difference between a .250 average and a .280 average is 3 hits over 100 at-bats. Ohtani hit.285 over 700 at-bats when he first came to MLB so I’m not entirely worried about his average in 2022, but juuuuuust in case, I grabbed Tim Anderson. Just to make my team Dong-a-Licious (who was the short-lived fourth member of Black Eyed Peas before Fergie, bee-tee-dubya), I brought Pete Alonso aboard in round 4 with the hopes that my front 3 hitters could produce 100 combined homers and 50+ steals. In 15-team leagues, starters and relievers get bumped up in value a bit. Robbie Ray is one of my top 10 pitchers for 2022, and my WHIP category screamed in terror at that pick. Ray still hasn’t entirely figured out his walks, but — thinking about upside again — if his simplified repertoire results in even a mild reduction in walks, we’re talking about a top 5 SP. If he flops, well, whatever. I have a 1-in-400 chance of winning the tournament and I’m not going in with Max Scherzer. Nothing wrong with the bi-chromatic ocular fortitude of Scherzer, but his upside is known: 2.70 ERA, about 180 IP, and the Mets training staff at age 37. Yeesh. We all know that relievers are arbitrary, and Will Smith was the last guaranteed closer on the board, so adding him was as much of a defensive move as it was a smart move.

Quick aside: I was part of the First Pitch Online “debates” panel this past week, and the debate before mine was about paying up for closers. In a 15-teamer tournament, I’m absolutely fine with spending a fourth or fifth-round pick on a closer. You really don’t need Liam Hendricks or Josh Hader at top 20 value, but you definitely need a guy who has a shot at 30+ saves and who won’t kill your ratios. SAGNOF works fine in 12-team leagues because there are about 12 actual closers in MLB and another 15+ relievers who will spend time in the closer position throughout the year. However, in a 15-team league, if there are only 12 closers — and right now there are actually about 9 closers with “guaranteed” jobs — you need to grab one of the better options, otherwise you’re relying too much on variance. ENYWHEY, let’s take a quick look at the second half of the top half of the first round of the eighth layer of hell industry drafts.

The Rest of This Mess

I realize I’m nearing the length of War and Peace (abridged version) here, so let’s quick hit some of these picks:

Tyler Stephenson / Joey Votto:  Another pair! RazzSlam is a best ball league, and best ball leagues are all about at-bats. Stephenson has C/1B eligibility and sounds like he’ll grab some DH duties this year, which could easily put him above the elite 450 AB threshold that elude so many catchers. I paired him with stat cast extraordinaire Joey Votto, who Rudy and BDon don’t believe in, but they also don’t believe in hope for the future or the tooth fairy, so what do they know.

Seiya Suzuki: Since Coolwhip posted his Seiya Suzuki article, the unsigned Japanese player’s ADP has jumped nearly 40 spots on NFBC; if you want Suzuki, you’ll now need to draft him near the 150s to consider yourself “normal” and the 180s if you’re “lucky.” Suzuki has the most upside of any player at that point in the draft, and we know he has speed, but just hasn’t deployed it recently. In TGFBI, Suzuki was the last OF with potential 20+ SB ability, so I set the minimum pick on him among recent drafts to capture that upside. Whether he actually steals any bags in the good ‘ol US of A will remain to be seen.

Charlie Blackmon / Alec Bohm: “I’ll take ‘Players we loved in 2021 that Sucked’ for 600, Ghost of Alex Trebek!” Blackmon and Bohm had decent stat cast stats despite a weak 2021 year. Also, they’re going to get 550+ at-bats if healthy while providing plus run and average value. You’ll see me at the B&B more often.

Catchers: You’ll notice each team has their second-tier catchers locked up. Much like good fantasy football teams are correlated with snagging a good tight end, many good fantasy baseball teams are correlated with vaguely-productive catchers. You don’t need a lot of production out of your catcher, but if you’re going into battle with two backup catchers that are going to get a total of 20 combined at-bats per week, you’re already lagging the teams that are getting 40+ at-bats from their “every day” catchers. Mike Zunino is the most controversial of these snags, but even the strikeout kings can luck into a .240 batting average. I’ll cross my fingers that Zunino ends up on the .230-.240 side of variance instead of the .190 side. Yeesh.

Other Thoughts

Indeed the drafts go on, much like the unpublished work of Charles Dickens. I don’t want to bore you with late picks, but here are some dart throws I’ve been targeting:

Brandon Nimmo: Guy has .400 OBP ability and is projected to bat leadoff for the Mets. Why are we drafting this guy at pick 250?

Jeff McNeil: Mets are gonna Mets, but at one point last year the Mets had an entire MLB team on the IL at the same time. Like, we can’t sit here and pretend McNeil fell off the face of the earth when his entire team was injured. Sure he wasn’t thrilling in 2021, but every projection system thinks he can pull off a 110 wRC+ in 2022, which is a ludicrous value at ADP 310. He’s also got the 2B/OF combo platter, which is amazeballs for MI depth.

Pairing/Stacking Outside of Best Ball: In TGFBI, I paired Tim Anderson with Jose Abreu — and I took Abreu over Matt Olson because of that correlation — and also stacked Pete Alonso/Brandon Nimmo/Jeff McNeil. In best ball, studies have demonstrated that pairs and stacks usually have upwards of a 1 round improvement upon draft capital. In daily/weekly lineups, the return on investment is a little more mitigated because the user needs to manually “time” the correlation, much like in DFS. So, there’s more room for human error when pairing/stacking for non-best ball leagues. That said, I would have been drafting Nimmo/McNeil anyway because I find them to be extreme values, so any correlation I can get out of the stack is simply syrup on my pancakes.

MJ Melendez: 40+ homer potential from a catcher, but he just needs [checks notes] Salvador Perez to get out of the way. It’s really easy to see Melendez arriving in MLB sometime in May and then getting full-time play. The AL Central is easily up for grabs and a Salvy/Bobby Witt/Melendez/Merrifield/Mondesi combo platter is already making most of you drool. Almost everybody is overlooking MJM, so hop on my sales pitch now for your early drafts before the MLMs start over-selling him as your C1 for 2022.

That’s all friends! Let me know how your early drafts are going down in the comments, and let’s start those prayer hexagons for the return of (a slightly more equitable) MLB 2022 season.