Staff Fantasy Baseball Draft: Analysis of Our 12-Team Head-to-Head League
Analysis
With the prevalent line of thinking that pitching is deep, many drafters waiting on pitching. As a result, teams such as mine and Peddle and Barry keyed in early.
“Overall, the league wasn't going heavy on pitching, so I put together a staff that includes Felix Hernandez, Corey Kluber, and Adam Wainwright pretty easily. Waiting on pitching is en vogue these days, so building a team with solid pitching is getting easier for those willing to zig while others are zagging,” Peddle said.
“Honestly, I believe few teams in the league are balanced enough to challenge me in all four of wins, strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP at the same time,” he continued.
Cory Rindone went contrarian, spending 10 of his first 12 picks on hitters. With his pitching staff, he drafted exclusively players who will pitch out of the bullpen. Doing so, he has already thrown in the towel on the wins and strikeouts categories.
“You only have to win six of the 10 categories to win weekly,” Rindone said. “To be successful, I’d have to win three hitting categories weekly, assuming I will take ERA, WHIP, and SV every week.”
He took the strategy a step further by passing on high-ceiling closers such as Aroldis Chapman, Craig Kimbrel, and Greg Holland in favor of Huston Street, Joaquin Benoit, Neftali Feliz, and Fransico Rodriguez as his main relievers.
Russell Peddle was intrigued by the strategy, saying, “I'm interested to see how a matchup will go versus him and if that's actually something that I myself might consider experimenting with in the future.”
Dale Redman agrees, adding, “He should have no problem sweeping all five hitting categories each week. The real question lies with how well his reliever-laden pitching staff can hold up, as there is much turnover with closers.”
Here’s what Scott Barrett thinks about his team, which he believes to be the best: “Upon pairing Jose Altuve with Dee Gordon (a combined 120 stolen bases last year), I don't think any other team will be touching me in the speed category. There won’t be a power deficit because none of my other hitters are projected by Yahoo to hit fewer than 15 home runs this year. Six guys are projected to hit 20 or more and Adam Jones, Mesoraco, and Springer could all hit 30. My pitching is strong as well.”
To make the draft more realistic, we even included two autodrafters in Jim Sannes and Nick Friar. Jim has gone on to write about how he is fixing his team, and has already traded away Carlos Gomez, Freddie Freeman, and Max Scherzer.
Nick, meanwhile, says, “I love that I have Greinke and Strasburg as my 1-2 punch… don't think I'm going to win home runs often looking at my lineup, but I have run producers and guys who can hit well for average and swipe bags, so I'll make up for that.”
