Tonight I completed my first live NFBC draft of the 2016, the "Beat Jeff Erickson" league, part of the RotoWire Online Championship. It's a 12-team mixed league, standard 5x5 scoring rules, no trades allowed. It's the same format as the "Beat Chris Liss" league from last week.
One aspect of NFBC drafts is that you get to select your preferences for your draft slot, and then there is a selection based on everyone's preferences. I was hoping to get a pick in the top four - I haven't yet seen a draft where one of Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Paul Goldschmidt or Clayton Kershaw has fallen out of that top four. But in a 12-team league, if I don't get a top four pick, I'd prefer to be towards the back of the round, to get a better second-round hitter. Plus there's still a good chance that I'll get the ace that I want at the end of Round 3. Thus, I set my draft preferences as: 4, 3, 1, 2, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5. I ended up getting the 12th pick.
Here are the full results:
My idea result at the wheel would have been Miguel Cabrera and Jose Altuve, to get a combination of power and speed from two high-average hitters. Unfortunately, my competitors believed that those would be great players to own as well, and they went immediately before me. That said, I've frequently said that the gap between the fifth player and the 15th player in this year's draft pool is virtually indistinguishable - it's just a question of which skills do you want to acquire.
I settled on the combination of Andrew McCutchen and Anthony Rizzo. I like how McCutchen provides something in every category, and I went with Rizzo ahead of A.J. Pollock, Mookie Betts and Max Scherzer. I decided I preferred good power with some speed over a the lesser power/more speed combo of Betts and Pollock. Scherzer was a consideration too, but in a 12-team league I still like the starting pitching options that are likely to be around picks 36-37.
Speaking of those two picks, My debate was between going with two aces, or instead take one ace and one hitter if there was one that stood out to me. As it turns out, there was a hitter remaining that I really liked - Carlos Gomez. My rankings have him in the early 20's, though his ADP is in the 50's. It looks like an overdraft to take him there looking at ADP, but in my realm he's coming at something of a discount. This is a guy that was taken in the middle of the first round last year, but saw his price plummet after an injury-riddled 2015 campaign. There's a big Last Year's Bum upside with him.
I took Gomez over combining Stephen Strasburg with David Price, which might be the critical decision of this draft. If I take the second ace there, then I'm more likely to double up on hitters on the 5-6 turn, and then get a closer from the first or second tier at 7-8. Instead because I didn't have two aces, I wanted to double-up in rounds 5-6 with two of the last remaining pitchers in the second tier.* Closing out this tier helps make up the strikeout gap by not having two aces, and then allows me to wait on starting pitcher in the murky middle rounds. I selected Johnny Cueto and Sonny Gray with those two picks.
*By "second tier" I'm defining the aces minus Kershaw (who is in his own stratosphere and describing him in tiers is unworthy of his brilliance) as the first tier, roughly ending with David Price and maybe Dallas Keuchel. The second tier then likely begins with Noah Syndergaard, and also includes Carlos Carrasco, Chris Archer, Adam Wainwright, Felix Hernandez, Johnny Cueto, Sonny Gray and probably Jon Lester.
I won't break down every pick, but I'll point out a few other notes. A consequence of taking three starting pitchers in the first six rounds is that I didn't shop in the expensive tier of closers, settling instead at 9.15 for Jonathan Papelbon and 12.1 with Brad Boxberger, and didn't take another starter until 16.1. Because I was less certain about my closers, and because this is a 12-team league rather than the 15-team Main Event where the replacement level on the waiver wire is so low, I cornered the market on Toronto closers with Roberto Osuna and Drew Storen with my 17th and 18th picks. I'm hoping the job battle is resolved early so that I can release the other in short order. It's important to get a third closer for this league because there's an overall contest in addition to your individual league.
In the endgame, I was especially happy with the Glasnow, Niese and Bassitt picks. So now you know who to fade.
Overall, I'm going to have to be aggressive streaming with the bottom of the rotation. But that's always true with the NFBC.