2008 Fake Teams Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft

by faketeams on Feb 19, 2008 6:52 AM EST in Baseball

Sunday night, I had the pleasure of participating in a mock draft with a number of fantasy bloggers for Seamless Baseball's 2008 fantasy guide. My fellow experts were:

1. Pete Abbate and Zach Piso of Rotonomics
2. Bob Taylor of Fantasy Hurler
3. Brad Stewart of MLB Front Office
4. Tim McLeod of RotoRob
5. David Chase of Brock for Broglio
6. Tony in Hitchin of Fantasy Baseball Mafia
7. Knox Bardeen of Crooked Pitch
8. three Seamless goons from Seamless Baseball

The draft was held on Mock Draft Central. Each team needed a 23-man roster (2 C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, 5 OF, UT, 9 P), and 20 games played were required for a player to have eligibility at a position.

I have been asked to answer six questions about my draft and could use your help with them. Here are the questions followed by my roster and a link to the draft grid. Obviously, some will be harder for anyone outside my head to answer, but you could guess anyways. To help, I had the 3rd overall pick, and I rearranged the players into the positions rathert than presenting them in the order in which I took them.

Questions:
1. Your first round pick: Skill, luck or fate?
2. What was your draft strategy?
3. Would you do anything differently?
4. Your best pick?
5. Your worst pick?
6. If this league were being played out, how would you look to improve your team?

My Draft:

Pos	Name	Team	Pick
C	Jason Varitek	BOS	R19
C	Ryan Doumit	PIT	R23
1B	Carlos Pena	TB	R5
2B	Rickie Weeks	MIL	R9
SS	Hanley Ramirez	FLA	R1
3B	Ryan Zimmerman	WAS	R6
CR	Todd Helton	COL	R12
MM	Miguel Tejada	HOU	R7
OF	Ichiro Suzuki	SEA	R2
OF	Carlos Lee	HOU	R3
OF	Jeff Francoeur	ATL	R8
OF	Jose Guillen	KC	R18
OF	Cameron Maybin	FLA	R20
DH	Carlos Gomez	MIN	R21
SP	Josh Beckett	BOS	R4
SP	A.J. Burnett	TOR	R10
SP	Chad Billingsley	LA	R13
SP	Ian Snell	PIT	R14
SP	Oliver Perez	NYM	R15
RP	Manuel Corpas	COL	R11
RP	Joba Chamberlain	NYY	R16
RP	Eric Gagne	MIL	R17
RP	Jeremy Accardo	TOR	R22

Link to Draft Grid.

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Comments

My Analysis

I printed out your team and studied it during my commute in today...car pooled for the first time in a while. So this is a true contemplative analysis...not some off the cuff, opinionated editorial :) Anyway, here is my take.

1. Your first round pick: Skill, luck or fate?
Can we add a 4th option along with the above...something along the lines of "Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn"

2. What was your draft strategy?
High BA guys to fill out my hitters. This allowed some flexibility on riskier picks with potential low BA/high power guys (read Pena, Weeks). Could focus on SB's late with my 1st and 2nd rd selections. Get one good SP anchor early and one high upside 2nd tier Closer for my reliever anchor.

3. Would you do anything differently?
Not ignore my last two outfield/Util spots until the end of the draft. The whole complextion of the draft changed when Beckett was selected in rd4. If you had gone with, say, Hafner, your SP's may not have looked that much different, but your power hitters would have been substantially improved.

4. Your best pick?
When I get asked this question, I wonder should I look at value first, skillset second or the other way around? I chose value as the barometer...therefore Helton at R12P9 as your best pick.

5. Your worst pick?
There were several risky picks and reaches to choose from. Given the SB's you accumulated in Ramirez and Ichiro, why reach for Weeks in R7...wait for a Pedroia or A. Hill. Why take the risk of a Tejada, when O. Cabrera and Peralta is availble 7-8 rds later. And Joba was a reach, but if you feel he will deliver 16th round value, so bit it. Also, you could have filled your Dh spot with say Konerko in round 7 in lieu of Tejada. I would say Weeks is the worst pick.

6. If this league were being played out, how would you look to improve your team? I would look to the outfield to improve the team. There are guys like Church, Diaz, Scott for the OF if Maybin and Gomez do not pan out.

Hope that helps Eric! Hopefully you didn't mind my brutal honesty :)

by Ratdog90 on Feb 19, 2008 9:57 AM EST reply actions

+1

Nice job especially with the strategy answer. Whenever one gets to the end of a draft, there are plenty of .270 hitters sitting there. The problem is having lots of those already. your AVG is sunk.

I agree with Helton, I have found that there are quality 1B still on the board in the 10-12th rounds and those make great CR/DH options.

As for Tejeda, I took him to fill my MM which gave me some flexibility to reach for Weeks. With Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Tejeda in the middle already, I felt this could explode as one of the best MM combos in 2008.

by faketeams on Feb 19, 2008 10:56 AM EST reply actions