Very happy with the results of this draft!
It's $260 budget, so I:
- Named two keepers who by my projection were top-20 picks and likely $30+ values. That allowed me to cap my budget on any other position at around $20.
- The league on average spends 2/3 on hitting ($170) and 1/3 on pitching ($90), despite the fact that half of the points in the league come from pitching.
- I aimed for 11 hitters and 11 starting pitchers (plus 3 relievers). There are 10 hitting slots, so I left one open for a sub. There's no limit on pitching innings, so the more pitchers the merrier as long as they're quality. And since the league tends to undervalue pitchers, I should be able to grab quality ones at reasonable prices.
- Since I had two OF spots filled with my keepers worth (in my estimation) $65, I only needed to spend another $105 on hitters to keep up with the league. I saw a lot more quality options at 1B and OF than anywhere else, so I slotted $15 for the 1B slot. For scarcer positions like catcher, it was $20. I had a list of inferior fallback players available at each position for the worst-case scenario. Fortunately I got a quality player at every spot, in some cases surprisingly good at discount prices (looking at you, Jean Segura).
- There's a certain amount of draft fatigue as you get past the first 100 of 300 total picks, as owners frantically overpay for the top players (at least according to my calculations). Not only in patience but in dollars available. I nominated popular players for bid that I didn't expect to get because someone would overpay, hoping that my main targets would stay off the board until fatigue had set in. This pretty much played out to perfection.
- I wanted to get at least one middle infielder with serious speed (Segura fit the bill), and one outfielder (Desmond Jennings). I had Shin-Soo Choo for a third leg, and Alex Gordon became a fourth.
- Unexpected benefit of slotting the top 260 players into dollar slots: I was able to police players on the verge of going for abnormally low amounts and bid them up to decent levels. This probably happened 25 times.
- Besides the speedsters, my lineup is filled with power guys with experience and youth (Carlos Santana, Jose Abreu, Aramis Ramirez, Jose Bautista, Brandon Moss). Random utility guy Kolten Wong of the Cardinals has a little speed and can spell Jed Lowrie at 2B if it turns out I need more speed than pop at that position.
- I got three top-flight relievers good for more than 100 saves, within my $18 budget.
- The rest of the budget was for starters ($93). I reached for an ace (Verlander) and otherwise kept in check for the dollar amounts I'd allocated to the other slots. Again a mix of experience and youth, a little younger, and mostly playing for winning teams:
Tigers (Verlander)
Nationals (Zimmerman)
Braves (Teheran, Wood)
Red Sox (Lester, Buchholz)
Yankees (Nova)
Cardinals (Lynn)
Picked up promising Zack Wheeler of the Mets and took a flier on former ace Cole Hamels, who's targeted to be in play by the third month of the season.
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