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AL Only 10 team, 4x4, $260. 26th season.
Draft Friday April 2.
This league has drafted in a Vegas sportsbook for 20 of the last 21 seasons (the void that was 2020 excluded). A couple of the guys were not yet comfortable with traveling, so after some deliberation on auction software, we settled on running a live auction on Zoom. Our rules variations in our normal auction format provided some challenges (Nominating and bidding is performed in order of standings from previous season, once you're out on a player, you're out for good. Both of these are critical in end game play.) One of the guys whipped up a simple spreadsheet to track bid order and who was in or out - and as main cat-herder (commish), I ran the draft through that with a shared screen. Our normal 5-6 hour draft wound up running from 3PM-Midnight EST. No livers reported failure.
I finished runner-up in 2019 (2020 did not exist for keeper purposes). Keepers in bold, replacement players in ( ):
C Austudillo $1
C Jeffers $1
1B Olson $12
3B J Ramirez $11
CI Moncada $18
2B Lemahieu $8
SS Mondesi $10
MI A Rosario $1
DH JD Martinez $32
OF Trout $53
OF Soler $10
OF Kepler $10
OF Dozier $10
OF Mazarra $1
P Glasnow $10
P Luzardo $18
P Paxton $11
P Minor $1
P Mize $1
P Severino $2 (Singer)
P Staumont $1
P N Anderson $6 (Merryweather)
P R Iglesias $26
Prior to the draft, I jotted down on a pad what I thought I might be able to get for the ~$77 that I had earmarked for the 7 pitchers needed, this is what I came up with:
Luzardo 19/Paxton 15/Severino 4/Mize 3/Clase 5/Scott 8/Romano 23
I wound up pretty damn close to my prediction, which is extremely unusual as I dont tend to zero in on players that tightly.
Closers are like gold in this league, and generally are highly overvalued at draft. By way of example, Chapman was kept at $40. I was inwardly ecstatic when I got Iglesias for $26 as the third player nominated - I had written him off as a possibility as I was sure he'd go for $30+. Instantly this was an upgrade to my plan of getting Romano or Montero as my primary closer.
Luzardo and Paxton came in under what I had valued, and I was pretty comfortable with my auction and an ability to wait for the end game, which I felt would be very lucrative with the way the auction had been going. I kept tabs on several handfuls of players that I thought I could get dirt cheap, and slowly but surely (and with a LOT of discipline), I passed on a lot of bids and went from the low man on the $$ totem pole to nearly the boss of the board.
My keeper offense was strong enough that I was confident I really didnt have to spend any money there to finish in the upper third of the league. But a curious feature to the draft was developing that had all but 2 other teams filling their DH slot with JD Mart still on the board very late in the draft, with all other studs long gone. At some point, another owner pointed out what I'm certain that the 3 DH free teams all knew, and JD's availability became a discussion point for the zoom. One of the other teams brought up JD soon after, and we had a bidding war up to the limit of what he was able to spend, so I nabbed him for $32, leaving me the ability to only go to $3 max on a bid for 8 remaining draft slots.
I spent the next hour or two patiently keeping an eye on the players that I really wanted, while trying to maintain the ability to keep a couple of extra dollars in case I needed to go over someone that could only do $1 bids. The JDM bid crippled my plan on getting a better MI, but you could do worse than Rosario as the last MI taken in the draft. I'm pretty pleased with my end game bargains, and expect at least a couple of them to be on the team in 2022.
As I was trying to nominate players that I thought others would go over $1 on, I brought up Mike Minor, and the league went silent. A pleasant and unexpected surprise. Not a guy I would normally target, but a bargain at the price.
Also, I think (I hope) I may have lucked out getting Merryweather as an injury replacement immediately following the draft. Hoping for lightning in a bottle there. I was a little bummed near the end of the draft, with only one owner that could outbid me for a pitcher, I got outbid on T. Scott for $4. I've already contacted that owner about trading, but he's reluctant. I closed 2019 with returning cheap contracts for Giles/Leclerc/Anderson, so my strength had become my weakness entering the draft.
My quick and dirty post draft analysis has me in a tight group of 3-4 teams at the top. You cant ask for too much more than that from draft day.
Sorry about the lengthy post, but I enjoy reading about people's drafts. Hopefully some of you do too.
Draft Friday April 2.
This league has drafted in a Vegas sportsbook for 20 of the last 21 seasons (the void that was 2020 excluded). A couple of the guys were not yet comfortable with traveling, so after some deliberation on auction software, we settled on running a live auction on Zoom. Our rules variations in our normal auction format provided some challenges (Nominating and bidding is performed in order of standings from previous season, once you're out on a player, you're out for good. Both of these are critical in end game play.) One of the guys whipped up a simple spreadsheet to track bid order and who was in or out - and as main cat-herder (commish), I ran the draft through that with a shared screen. Our normal 5-6 hour draft wound up running from 3PM-Midnight EST. No livers reported failure.
I finished runner-up in 2019 (2020 did not exist for keeper purposes). Keepers in bold, replacement players in ( ):
C Austudillo $1
C Jeffers $1
1B Olson $12
3B J Ramirez $11
CI Moncada $18
2B Lemahieu $8
SS Mondesi $10
MI A Rosario $1
DH JD Martinez $32
OF Trout $53
OF Soler $10
OF Kepler $10
OF Dozier $10
OF Mazarra $1
P Glasnow $10
P Luzardo $18
P Paxton $11
P Minor $1
P Mize $1
P Severino $2 (Singer)
P Staumont $1
P N Anderson $6 (Merryweather)
P R Iglesias $26
Prior to the draft, I jotted down on a pad what I thought I might be able to get for the ~$77 that I had earmarked for the 7 pitchers needed, this is what I came up with:
Luzardo 19/Paxton 15/Severino 4/Mize 3/Clase 5/Scott 8/Romano 23
I wound up pretty damn close to my prediction, which is extremely unusual as I dont tend to zero in on players that tightly.
Closers are like gold in this league, and generally are highly overvalued at draft. By way of example, Chapman was kept at $40. I was inwardly ecstatic when I got Iglesias for $26 as the third player nominated - I had written him off as a possibility as I was sure he'd go for $30+. Instantly this was an upgrade to my plan of getting Romano or Montero as my primary closer.
Luzardo and Paxton came in under what I had valued, and I was pretty comfortable with my auction and an ability to wait for the end game, which I felt would be very lucrative with the way the auction had been going. I kept tabs on several handfuls of players that I thought I could get dirt cheap, and slowly but surely (and with a LOT of discipline), I passed on a lot of bids and went from the low man on the $$ totem pole to nearly the boss of the board.
My keeper offense was strong enough that I was confident I really didnt have to spend any money there to finish in the upper third of the league. But a curious feature to the draft was developing that had all but 2 other teams filling their DH slot with JD Mart still on the board very late in the draft, with all other studs long gone. At some point, another owner pointed out what I'm certain that the 3 DH free teams all knew, and JD's availability became a discussion point for the zoom. One of the other teams brought up JD soon after, and we had a bidding war up to the limit of what he was able to spend, so I nabbed him for $32, leaving me the ability to only go to $3 max on a bid for 8 remaining draft slots.
I spent the next hour or two patiently keeping an eye on the players that I really wanted, while trying to maintain the ability to keep a couple of extra dollars in case I needed to go over someone that could only do $1 bids. The JDM bid crippled my plan on getting a better MI, but you could do worse than Rosario as the last MI taken in the draft. I'm pretty pleased with my end game bargains, and expect at least a couple of them to be on the team in 2022.
As I was trying to nominate players that I thought others would go over $1 on, I brought up Mike Minor, and the league went silent. A pleasant and unexpected surprise. Not a guy I would normally target, but a bargain at the price.
Also, I think (I hope) I may have lucked out getting Merryweather as an injury replacement immediately following the draft. Hoping for lightning in a bottle there. I was a little bummed near the end of the draft, with only one owner that could outbid me for a pitcher, I got outbid on T. Scott for $4. I've already contacted that owner about trading, but he's reluctant. I closed 2019 with returning cheap contracts for Giles/Leclerc/Anderson, so my strength had become my weakness entering the draft.
My quick and dirty post draft analysis has me in a tight group of 3-4 teams at the top. You cant ask for too much more than that from draft day.
Sorry about the lengthy post, but I enjoy reading about people's drafts. Hopefully some of you do too.
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