Friday, March 21, 2008

National Fantasy Baseball Championship Draft Results – Part 1 of 4

My partner and I drafted out of New York last Saturday for the National Fantasy Baseball Championship. Finally month of preparation, strategizing and mock drafts get put to use as we chase the $100,000 prize for the Main Event.

Our overall fantasy baseball strategy was to defer closers. All closers have risk so why not assume a little more to pick up 3 and 4 category players in the mid-first 10 rounds. This also means we’ll need to ear mark a significant amount of FAAB (auction money for free agents) to pick up at least one more off the waiver wire in season. The handicap of more potential volatility and less FAAB money seemed like a sensible trade off. It’s also a way to indirectly use FAAB before the season even starts. The sooner you use it the sooner you can get a return – better to spend $400 on someone in April than $100 in August.

We also wanted to target some higher batting average bats so that we could grab some late round power and speed guys with garbage batting averages.

Our goal was to pick out of the 14th slot and that’s exactly what we got. The National Fantasy Baseball Championship uses a KDS (Kentucky Derby Style) drat order. You basically rank your preference and when your name gets pulled out of the hat you get the best spot available. We wanted 14 to exploit something very specific that I saw in the mock draft. Of the 7 that I did either Ryan Howard, Carl Crawford or Johan Santana fell to 14 – every time! Everyone of these guys is a top 10 player and I was fairly indiscriminant as to which one we got. This also yields the 17th pick which would give us a great chance to grab second baseman Brandon Philips (featured in the baseball card at the top). It’s beyond me why a 30/30 second baseman isn’t top 10 right now but he will be next year. In other words, the 14th pick could allow us to grab 2 top 10 players – in my opinion.

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