Day 60: Pitching the Pitchers (Fantasy Baseball Discussion Part 2)

When it comes to draft day there are a few different strategies that people tend to employ, and there are two different schools of thought when it comes to the prioritization of players in the early rounds of the draft. In the one corner you've got those people who tend towards the big bats in the early rounds, where players like Mark Teixeira, Arod, Evan Longoria and their brethren tend to to be drafted, and then in the other corner you've got the guy who would take Tim Lincecum with the 6th pick of the draft.

I personally tend to be in the former of those two corners, and I can't understand the mindset of someone who is of a different mindset than myself. Today's post isn't to convince you whether either methodology is right, or even worthwhile, but rather to compare and contrast the results of the two different schools of thought, and then allow you to decide which you prefer. My plan is to illustrate these differences by comparing two mock drafts, and then to try and objectively discuss the two different outcomes.

Today I will discuss the results of a "Pitchers Early" methodology.

I chose to go with a 10 team draft, and took the #6 spot with the hopes of getting Tiny Tim, but without inducing too much volatility into the draft.

Here are my draft results--in addition I'll highlight a few aberrations or other points of interest as well.

1st Rd, 6th Pick (6th overall) - Tim Lincecum (SP)
2nd Rd, 5th Pick (15th overall) - Roy Halladay (SP)
3rd Rd, 6th Pick (26th overall)- Troy Tulowitzki (SS) <-- This is nuts

4th Rd, (35th overall) - Victor Martinez (C)

5th Rd, (46th overall) - Dustin Pedroia (2B) <-- Great Value

6th Rd, (55th overall) - Nick Markakis (OF)

7th Rd, (66th overall) - Shin-Soo Choo (OF)

8th Rd, (75th overall) - Nelson Cruz (OF)

9th Rd, (86th overall) - Chad Billingsley (SP)

10th Rd, (95th overall) - Carlos Pena (1B)

11th Rd, (106th overall) - Andrew Bailey (CP)

12th Rd, (115th overall) - Brett Anderson (SP)

13th Rd, (126th overall) - Jair Jurrjens (SP)

14th Rd, (135th overall) - Vladimir Guerrero (UTIL)

15th Rd, (146th overall) - Kevin Slowey (SP)

16th Rd, (155th overall) - Francisco Cordero (CP)

17th Rd, (166th overall) - Gordon Beckham (3B)

18th Rd, (175th overall) - Rajai Davis (OF)

19th Rd, (186th overall) - Ted Lilly (SP)

20th Rd, (195th overall) - Mark Buehrle (SP)

21st Rd, (206th overall) - David Price (SP)

22nd Rd, (215th overall) - Homer Bailey (SP)

23rd Rd, (226th overall) - Johnny Cueto (SP)

The one major issue I noticed while taking this sort of style drafting, is that I felt like I was constantly playing catchup with offense. While doing so I felt like the advantage I had gained in pitching initially had been lost by the 8th round simply because I wasn't able to comfortably take another pitcher yet. My 9th round pick had to be a SP in order to keep from falling behind, but by doing so this left me with gaping holes at 1B and 3B, with still no closers taken. So I relented and ended up taking Billingsley.

This left me with no choice but to take a 1B or 3B in the 10th round. Fortunately, by the 10th round there was a surprisingly decent pool of 1B's left with Carlos Pena, Billy Butler and Lance Berkman available; however, the 3B pool wasn't as deep. The best available options according to Yahoo were Ian Stewart, Chipper Jones, Gordan Beckham and Jorge Cantu. Given that I had holes at both positions, and that all of those options at the hot corner suck (or would certainly be available at later rounds) I opted for the power provided by Pena (even though he hurts me on average). The way I figured it, Pena is in a contract year and players have a strange knack of having career years during their walk year.

I then followed that up with a closer (Andrew Bailey) who wouldn't just give me saves, but would also have a K/9 IP rate with a low ERA/WHIP contributions. So after 11 rounds, I'm feeling pretty good with a nearly full roster (besides the 3B and a UTIL) spot I decided to start bolstering the rotation a bit more. I then went with the potential breakout Brett Anderson and the ERA/WHIP machine Jair Jurrjens. As it stands at this point I've got a lot of high K/9 type starting pitchers and a few control artists in Jair and Andrew Bailey. My bats needed a little power boost yet so I opted for Vlady at this point since his new home in Arlington should provide him with a pretty decent boost in HRs along with a pretty potent lineup around him.

The next few rounds were spent grabbing yet another SP in Slowey (my obligatory Twins player) along with my second closer in the incredibly underrated Francisco "CoCo" Cordero. This guy throws up 35+ saves every damn year but never gets any respect from the fantasy community, so I'll gladly scoop him up in the 16th round.

In the 17th I finally got my 3B in the semi-sleeper Gordon Beckham. I'd expect numbers along the lines of 90 R/85 RBI/22 HR/5 SB/.270 AVG from him, so considering I could have drafted him in the 10th and he's got an average draft position of 133.5, this was a high value pick. My next pick was to grab the speedy Rajai Davis, as mentioned here already once I'm big on this guy this year as a poor man's Ellsbury so to get him in the 18th round I was pretty pumped.

With my last 5 picks I spent them all on bolstering my roster depth. I drafted more ERA/WHIP stability with Lilly along with some un-sexy veteran consistency in Mark Buerhle. The other three picks were spent on high upside, low risk picks. Last year I drafted Cueto somewhere near the 14th round and he delivered incredible value for about 65% of the season, so I'm willing to take a flier on this guy again this year. As far as David Price and Homer Bailey, well Homer I've got a slight man-crush on, so this was slightly predictable but to get the incredibly talented David Price in the 21st round when the next best options were the likes of Bronson Arroyo or Andy Sonnanstine, I'm going with the young incredibly high upside guy every single time.

Okay so all in all I felt the draft went pretty well, I'm going to save any particular criticisms or praises on this draft until after the other mock draft. But suffice it to say, if this was my team going into the season I'd have a hard time complaining too much about it.