RJ Mock Draft Discussion Thread

[joncarlos]

I know we were supposed to put "best ball" out of our minds, but it does seem that many of us concluded that it was far wiser to stock up on pitching options during the reserve rounds rather than hitters, since there's much more need to hedge against a negative performance on the pitching side, versus mostly hedging against injury risk on the hitting side.

I dunno... I always draft a ton of pitchers in my 50-round draft and hold leagues. Pitchers are just so damn unpredictable. I try for at least 21 or 22 pitchers out of 50.

I will say, though, it seems like "best ball" makes it easier for a random pitcher to have 1 good start and pop into your lineup. That's why I drafted Tyler Anderson - hoping for some good random road starts. But if this was a "play it out" league... there's still a decent chance I'd start him on the road. So I dunno.

[Ken]

So who's got the ability to run projected final standings?

Here's the projected standings based on roto format and based on only starting lineups (can't project how/when the bench will be used in these).
I believe the stat projections are Steamer based.

[TranaGreg]

ouch. oh well, it was an experiment ... and someone has to bring up the rear ...

edit: how did you pull the starting lineups? when I look at my roster everyone is there listed by position in alphabetical order ... eg at 1B I see Joey Votto is listed as my 3rd first baseman behind Choi & Vogelbach ...

[frae]

Killing it with pitching uh? We will see pitching is pretty scary to be relying on, but I did like what I got. I had myself with a good OBP too so just hoping that translates into more runs that maybe projected.

[Ken]

Killing it with pitching uh? We will see pitching is pretty scary to be relying on, but I did like what I got. I had myself with a good OBP too so just hoping that translates into more runs that maybe projected.

hmm, you bring up a good point with OBP though - this projection is based on AVG not OBP, so that column might be off if you were drafting based on OBP

[TS Garp]

Very interesting -- thanks for doing it.

I liked Frae's team and pitching but I'm surprised he's dominating the pitching categories like that. Your projections must be very optimistic about Eovaldi, Musgrove, and Nelson.

[Ken]

Very interesting -- thanks for doing it.

I liked Frae's team and pitching but I'm surprised he's dominating the pitching categories like that. Your projections must be very optimistic about Eovaldi, Musgrove, and Nelson.

Steamer is about average on those 3 guys, I think it's more of the top end that they are more optimistic than standard - Sale, Carrasco, Kimbrel all have good projections.

[TS Garp]

Steamer is about average on those 3 guys, I think it's more of the top end that they are more optimistic than standard - Sale, Carrasco, Kimbrel all have good projections.

As they should but when I look at his pitching, compared to JC, it looks fairly similar. Certainly better but not by a huge margin, yet Frae is at the top in ERA and WHIP and JC is at the bottom.

[Ken]

As they should but when I look at his pitching, compared to JC, it looks fairly similar. Certainly better but not by a huge margin, yet Frae is at the top in ERA and WHIP and JC is at the bottom.

Is JC jfranco?

[TS Garp]

Is JC jfranco?

Yes, sorry.

[B-Fly]

hmm, you bring up a good point with OBP though - this projection is based on AVG not OBP, so that column might be off if you were drafting based on OBP

I was. We weren't supposed to?

[Ken]

No prob. It's a good test case to look at.

It might be easiest if you line them up side by side for the top few

Sale vs Bauer. Steamer projects Sale to have a 2.77 ERA and .97 WHIP across 181 IP vs Bauer 3.56/1.2 in 194. Already there's a chasm.
Carrasco vs Price. Carrasco at 3.41/1.13 and Price 3.95/1.23
Eovaldi vs Freeland - Steamer doesn't believe in Freeland's 2018 success at all - you have Eovaldi at 3.92/1.25 vs Freeland at 4.62/1.43

Then, near the bottom, JC has Lopez and Kikuchi neither of which Steamer likes. For Lopez, Steamer is expecting a 5.02 ERA and 1.41 WHIP for example.


But fundamentally when I look at both pitching staffs I see them as pretty different, Sale/Carrasco is a very large commitment to SP and comes with projections of a great staff. Bauer/Price/Freeland is quite a bit cheaper in draft capital, but like we see with Steamer I'd expect a big dropoff

[Ken]

I was. We weren't supposed to?

Since we had a significant number of people not actually participating in a roto mock I don't think it even mattered. I'm just saying that the projections I posted use AVG.

[TS Garp]

No prob. It's a good test case to look at.

It might be easiest if you line them up side by side for the top few

Sale vs Bauer. Steamer projects Sale to have a 2.77 ERA and .97 WHIP across 181 IP vs Bauer 3.56/1.2 in 194. Already there's a chasm.
Carrasco vs Price. Carrasco at 3.41/1.13 and Price 3.95/1.23
Eovaldi vs Freeland - Steamer doesn't believe in Freeland's 2018 success at all - you have Eovaldi at 3.92/1.25 vs Freeland at 4.62/1.43

Then, near the bottom, JC has Lopez and Kikuchi neither of which Steamer likes. For Lopez, Steamer is expecting a 5.02 ERA and 1.41 WHIP for example.


But fundamentally when I look at both pitching staffs I see them as pretty different, Sale/Carrasco is a very large commitment to SP and comes with projections of a great staff. Bauer/Price/Freeland is quite a bit cheaper in draft capital, but like we see with Steamer I'd expect a big dropoff

Interesting. They are projecting a significant step back from Bauer as well as Price, to a lesser extent, while expecting Carrasco to repeat last year, so that explains a lot. I'm not a Freeland fan, either, but I'm pretty bullish on Kikuchi and I like Skaggs. Again, thanks for doing this.

[Mithrandir]

I knew my team kicks ass!!