This is the third year I’ve drafted solo in the Yahoo Friends & Family MLB league. Here are links to the draft results and a Q&A with all the owners.
This league allows daily pickups where all adds/drops take effect the next day. The biggest challenge is that this is the news sharkiest expert league ever created so there is NO WAY I’m ever landing a player based on breaking news (there are three from Rotoworld, two from Rotowire, and Yahoo’s Scott Pianowski. If they get by those 6, then there’s Grey. I had some success in 2014 grinding to a 6th place finish with a mediocre draft leveraging the Streamonator and Hittertron (and even out-sharking people on two closers) but that advantage was nixed when a move cap of 125 was added in 2015.
In addition, several members have no problem drafting in an unorthodox way (the hit/pitch splits this year ranged from 48/52 to 80/20!). This has put me in some uncomfortable spots in past drafts.
All that said, I felt good going into the draft for three reasons:
- There are only 12 teams for 2016 where historically it has been 14 teams. Grey and I are used to streaming in RCL and – while the 125 transaction + 1,400 IP cap makes it slightly different than RCL – I felt more comfortable waiting on SPs after acquiring two top pitchers.
- I had a good feel how the draft would go based on my ADP research and previous drafts. Even if Jeff Erickson, Chris Liss, and Dalton Del Don followed through on their SP-heavy 2015 strategy and Scott Pianowski did some gambit, I felt comfortable enough that I wouldn’t be caught off-guard.
- I got the 3rd pick.
Here is my team:
| Pos | Name | Pick |
| C | Brian McCann (C/1B) | 14.166 |
| 1B | Chris Davis (1B/OF) | 3.27 |
| 2B | DJ Lemahieu | 16.190 |
| SS | Elvis Andrus | 18.214 |
| 3B | Maikel Franco | 7.75 |
| OF | Bryce Harper | 1.3 |
| OF | Starling Marte | 2.22 |
| OF | Carlos Gomez | 5.51 |
| OF | Gerardo Parra | 11.123 |
| CI | Danny Valencia (3B/OF) | 22.262 |
| MI | Jonathan Schoop | 23.267 |
| UT | Kevin Pillar | 12.142 |
| UT | Marcell Ozuna | 17.195 |
| SP | Corey Kluber | 4.46 |
| SP | Danny Salazar | 6.70 |
| SP | Francisco Liriano | 10.118 |
| SP | Jeff Samardzija | 13.147 |
| SP | Wei-Yin Chen | 15.171 |
| RP | Trevor Rosenthal | 8.94 |
| RP | Ken Giles | 9.99 |
| RP | Jumbo Diaz | 20.238 |
| RP | Luke Gregerson | 21.243 |
| B | Josh Reddick | 19.219 |
| B | Juan Nicasio (SP) | 24.286 |
| B | Yasmany Tomas (3B/OF) | 25.291 |
| B | Brad Miller (2B/SS/OF) | 26.310 |
General Draft Observations:
- Check out the below hit/pitch splits – it’s rare that you ever see teams dip below 60% of their draft on hitting but Rotowire’s Liss & Erickson hit levels (48.6% and 53.0%) that I’ve never seen in a draft. Dalton and Rotoworld’s D.J. Short are also below 61%. Conversely, only one team went 70+% hit but that was Pianowski who went 80.3% hit and didn’t draft any starting pitchers.
| Team | Hit Inv | Pitch Inv |
|---|---|---|
| Razzball – Grey | 66.4% | 33.6% |
| Razzball – Rudy | 65.2% | 34.8% |
| RotoWire_Liss | 48.6% | 51.4% |
| RotoWire-Erickson | 53.0% | 47.0% |
| Rotoworld – Boyer | 68.3% | 31.7% |
| Rotoworld – Short | 60.7% | 39.3% |
| Rotoworld – Dougherty | 65.7% | 34.3% |
| WSJ-Salfino | 66.5% | 33.5% |
| Y! – Behrens | 69.8% | 30.2% |
| Y! – Del Don | 58.6% | 41.4% |
| Y! – Funston | 69.0% | 31.0% |
| Y! – Pianowski | 80.3% | 19.7% |
- For hitting, my focus was solidifying power early (bundled with speed or AVG where possible) and using later rounds to flesh out speed and average. I planned on two bench spots for hitting and targeted Rockies (Parra, Lemahieu – just missed out on Paulsen) who I could potentially rotate out for road games. I ended up taking 3 bench hitters because Josh Reddick came at such a good price.
- For pitching, I wanted to draft 4-5 SP and 5-6 RPs which is similar to my RCL draft strategy. The deep ‘ace’ pool gave me the courage to ignore the SP-heavy drafting of Liss/Erickson/DDD and take bats on my 2nd/3rd picks (Marte, Chris Davis). I was happy that Kluber fell to me in the 4th and nabbed his teammate Danny Salazar in the 6th round. I liked the prices on my other three SPs (Shark, Liriano, and Chen) who have been targets of mine all draft season. On the closer front, I wanted 2 definite closers and a shot at a 3rd. I nailed that with Rosenthal, Giles/Gregerson, and Jumbo Diaz. I decided to take a flier on Juan Nicasio versus a weaker RP.
- In all, the draft went about as well as I could have hoped. Based on my dollars, I drafted a top 4 hitting and pitching team. But it is going to be tough to keep pace with these sharks once the season starts.
- As for Grey (here’s his recap), our draft executions were quite similar on hit/pitch split (near identical) and on hitting (I think he has the 3rd best offense behind Pianowski and myself). But I feel like I got better starter pitching value as his staff is a lot more upside-y + WHIP-challenged than mine.
