Mastersball

It seems like a simple question – which spot would you like to draft from?

But how many leagues offer you at least the chance to answer that question?

My mother said always best to start at the beginning, so let’s make sure we are at the same starting line.

Q: What is the NFBC?

A: The National Fantasy Baseball Championship ($$$$ entry to try and win the $100,000 grand prize and likely some league prizes as well; 15 team, 5X5, mixed league leagues with serpentine draft format)

Q: So what is KDS

 A: Named after Kentucky Derby where when your entry is drawn you get your choice of remaining pole (draft) positions.   So they get a randomized list of your league. Pull the first player at random, check his list and he gets his first choice; pull next drafter, check his list and give him the first on his list that is available (okay easy for instance they both list 1-15 then first player is #1 and second is #2).

Q : Don’t I want the best player I can get?

 A: Well ….yes …..BUT not everyone agrees on who the first pick should be: Albert Pujols?  Miguel Cabrera?  Matt Kemp?  They have all gone #1 in some early leagues) and of course the answers get more disparate after that. Plus if you draft at the end of round one you have a much earlier pick in round two, so maybe you think that taking the last pick in round one and getting Dustin Pedroia and either Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw is better than Pujols and Matt Holiday.

Or maybe you have a particular player you want to get either late in the first round or early in the second round – then you would prefer to be at the end of the first round. Or maybe you like to draft in the middle – guaranteed a nice player in round one and a better choice in round two than drafting from the top of the first round. There are hundreds of permutations. But the point is you have some input. Yeah you might still get drawn last and settle for the empty chair but that might have happened anyway and with everyone else getting their choice you might have improved.

So I had this dilemma a few days ago and after looking at the following table you decide before you see my answer what would YOU pick

Okay FIRST write down where you want to draft ______

Now before you say I massaged our rankings, sure there are ties on projected dollar earnings and I have to break them somehow. So you could flip the order on CarGo, Longoria and Upton – all projected to earn $32; just as you could do with the next four players. I likely did it off which I would draft first or which I know will be available later (nobody is drafting Napoli in the first round – he probably goes in the third or fourth round so even if you loved him (:wave: yeah I was the guy who said he would be worth $30 last year and I wasn’t far off) you know you could get him with your second if not third pick…..depending on where you are.

And that is the point – some drafters will try and plot that out. I admit I think that is the result of over mocksturbation but here is my thought process:

• I wanted the best pick I could get in the second round without sacrificing value in the first round
• I think there is an advantage from drafting at the end of the first round this year – for the first reason as well as draft picks later
• I generally like to draft from the middle of the draft as I believe those on either end tend to reach for a player with their second pick at several points in the draft and the value falls to the middle.
• I thought that a couple of the strongest players in this league would want to be at the end of the draft, so I am happy to be just ahead of them in the odd rounds

So what I looked at was where the point was that I just really didn’t like my choice if the other drafters took the other players. Look at any of those three lists and see how far down you are comfortable with taking a player as your first round pick – the player who is the foundation of your team. Who will be consistent and give you solid production. I stopped at the eleventh spot. Below that I thought I had given up on a better player. Slightly above that I liked several players. (Of course all of this assumes that you don’t absolutely have to or want to start the draft with Pujols….or Miggy…..or Kemp.

But don’t forget that the only draft position that guarantees you that you can get THAT first round player is #1. And then you will wait almost two rounds before you get your next pick.

That however is the point you have some influence in where you draft. In my case my first choice was #11 and I was the eleventh draft picked but still got my first choice. Let’s look at how everyone did – on the left will be the order in which the players were drawn, followed by the pick they got, what choice that was for them, and then the beginning of their wish list for spots.

In my last column we looked at the first round of two different real money leagues that were drafted in December and January to see the differences in early rankings/projections versus actual draft spots.

There was a thread started in the Strategy & Theory Discussion Forum of the message board about the drafting of pitchers.

My contention was that in NFBC drafts where your team is not only competing at the league level but also measured against the entire field in the overall ranking that the better drafters were taking the better pitchers fairly early – not in the first round and only the occasional stud in the second round but starting in earnest in the third round or bunching several picks later than that to likely have three pitchers – either two starters and a closer or three starters – in the first ten rounds. ).  So let’s take a look at the two drafts I referenced last week and see how and when pitchers were drafted.

What the draft results tell us is that most teams drafted either three or four pitchers among their first ten picks. The actual draft for the two drafts is

December Draft                                                               January Draft

1 team took two pitchers                             3 teams took two pitchers

8 teams took three pitchers                        5 teams took three pitchers

4 teams took four pitchers                           6 teams took four pitchers

2 teams took five pitchers                            1 team took five pitchers

Throw out the two and five pitcher teams and you see how most drafters started out.

We can also get good information by looking at the pitchers drafted each round:

December                           January

Note the similarities in the two drafts:

No pitchers taken in the first round.

Two to four pitchers taken (for the most part) in round two through four.

Then an increase to roughly four or five on the low end to seven or eight on the high end from round five through round eight and then a huge explosion with most teams drafting a pitcher in round nine. And no, that was not a round of closer runs in either draft.

Both drafts were very similar in the amount of pitchers drafted in the first five rounds – one had 16 while the other had 18 and in the next five rounds – the first having 37 and the other drafting 33. So both drafts saw 50 or 51 pitchers taken in the first ten rounds – slightly more than three per team.