LABR Mixed: A Self-Indulgent Draft Write-Up

As pitchers and catchers get ready to report to spring training, the League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR) officially began it’s 2017 fantasy baseball season Monday night. The LABR Mixed league, which is a 15-team, mixed, standard 5x5 roto league that uses the traditional batting average instead of OBP, kicked off its season in style with a lengthy draft that was broadcast live on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio. You can hear the coverage, done by our own Rick Wolf and Glenn Colton along with former big league GM Jim Bowden, on SiriusXM On Demand, but before you do, here’s my take on how it all went down.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I am in this league? I am. This is my second season in the LABR Mixed league and I already have quite the chip on my shoulder. I spent the first two months of the season in first place and was stretching out my lead until I lost a collection of players to injury and watched helplessly as Todd Zola passed me in the standings (talked a whole bunch of smack while doing it too) and ran away with the league. Unable to recover from my tailspin, I finished somewhere around eighth or ninth and have since been eagerly awaiting this draft. Redemption will be mine.

Here are the participants in order of the draft and a link to the Draft Board:

23 starters – 2 C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, MI, CI, 5 OF, UT, 9 P

6 Reserves

My Strategy Coming In:

I wanted to load up on offense first, but knowing this group and the fact that I was drafting 11^th, I wanted to make sure I grabbed one of the top five starting pitchers as a base for my rotation. If I don’t make a move on a starter early, I run the risk of having the load up on second and third-tier starters at a time when everyone else in this draft is filling out their offense. As far as my offensive players, I had two major criteria – multi-position eligibility and/or a power/speed combo. I wrote an article for the Fantasy Alarm MLB Draft Guide called Target Speed Late and wanted to utilize it here. From there, I would attack mid-tiered pitching and closers while continuing to mix in position players based on the draft flow.

Thoughts on My Team:

When it came time for my first pick, I was deciding between Manny Machado, Josh Donaldson and Anthony Rizzo. All three were worthy of selection but Machado had the position flexibility I wanted and there were going to be other options later in the draft at both shortstop and third base who I like as well. Machado might not steal me any bases, but that’s fine. I can grab other power/speed guys in the next few rounds.

As I said in my strategy, I wanted to add an ace early and with Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Madison Bumgarner off the board, I knew if I didn’t grab Corey Kluber now, no ace was coming back my way in the third round. When Noah Syndergaard, Chris Sale and David Price went after I took Kluber, I knew I made the right decision. He was ranked fourth on my board anyway.

My next two picks of Andrew McCutchen and Wil Myers were exactly who I was targeting and both meet the power/speed criteria. I am not alone in my belief that Cutch will rebound from last year’s struggles and Myers is a budding star. People forget he was a highly-ranked prospect coming into the league and despite moves from Kansas City to Tampa Bay to San Diego, it doesn’t change the fact that the raw skills are there. His 28-28 season in 2016 proved that.

From there it was Todd Frazier who kicked in 15 steals with his 40 bombs last year (Machado now as my shortstop? Hell yeah!) and Jason Kipnis who is also a solid power/speed combo at the keystone. Jose Peraza may not have power, but he’s got great speed, strong contact rates and should help with pulling up Frazier’s average. And not only does he qualify at both shortstop and outfield, he’ll add second base eligibility by the end of April thanks to the trade of Brandon Phillips to Atlanta. He may have been a little bit of a reach at 83^rd overall (Mock Draft Army ADP – 131.17, NFBC – 137.5), but since the Phillips trade, he’s been going higher and higher in drafts and with the way this crew loves on some of these up-and-comers, I figured he would be a highly-coveted commodity.

Closers started flying off the board, so I grabbed Roberto Osuna and then, after a weird catcher run, I went back to my multi-positional offense with another budding star in Javier Baez. From there I grabbed starters with high upside in Danny Salazar (yes, an injury concern) and Marcus Stroman and then finally snagged a backstop in Stephen Vogt. It’s a two-catcher league, so I didn’t want to totally punt the position.

The rest of my draft was about filling out my outfield with high-upside guys like Nomar Mazara, Hunter Renfroe and Aaron Judge (Those bombs! Those strikeouts too, but a hot start makes for great trade bait), piecing together some closing options in Brandon Kintzler and Cam Bedrosian (closers really just flew off the board) and sprinkling in some nice hitting production from Mike Napoli and Howie Kendrick while also adding some decent pitching potential on Matt Moore, Jose Berrios and even maybe Ervin Santana.

The bench was filled out with position players who are expected to play regularly (Brett Lawrie, Pablo Sandoval) or offered specialized production in a specific category – Ketel Marte, stolen bases and Jeanmar Gomez, saves. If I needed to use them in my starting lineup, they’ll contribute and if I needed a free agent and needed to drop someone, I wouldn’t be broken up if I lost them.

Overall, I really like this squad. It’s a nice blend of proven veterans and high-upside youngsters. The pitching should be there for me and if it struggles, I’ll have to stream in one of the many starters who are available throughout the season. As for power and speed? I got both, baby!

Thoughts About the Rest of the Draft:

Reaches (in my opinion, of course): Trea Turner (10^th overall), Jonathan Villar (17^th), Buster Posey (26^th), Gary Sanchez (47^th), Billy Hamilton (48^th), James Paxton (141^st), Sean Manaea (157^th), Jim Johnson (201^st).

I tend to agree with those who criticize Jeff Erickson for grabbing Kershaw second overall. It’s not that I don’t think Kershaw is a great player, but with the back issues last year, I think I would have been happier with Mookie Betts or Paul Goldschmidt and then grabbed someone like Syndergaard or Sale second.

Speaking of which, I’m a big fan of what Alan Harrison did early on his draft. After grabbing Mike Trout, he double-tapped the elite starters with Syndergaard and Sale, knowing that this group would deplete the top two tiers of pitchers before he would have a chance to make his fourth pick. It enabled him to focus on offense through the critical rounds.

Tough to criticize Todd Zola, who won this league last year, but I’m not so sure about grabbing two catchers in his first nine picks. I understand the concept of drafting for position scarcity, but I just think there were players at other positions who may have served him better than how J.T. Realmuto will.

I’ll stop here because, in truth, I really don’t want to sit and criticize anyone’s draft. It makes me sound silly, I think. Everyone has their different methods and strategies and this group has A LOT of fantasy championships under their collective belts. I may not agree with how people went about their particular selections, but we’re a group of strong fantasy baseball minds and as we’ve seen year after year, anything can happen. The race is on and Fred Zinkie has a million trades to make. I’ll just wish my competitors the best of luck and we’ll see what the standings look like come October 1.