Mock Draft Army: Early-Round Attack Strategy

The industry always preaches that fantasy baseball championships are won in the later rounds of your draft, and while that still holds true, let’s face it – if you botch those first six to eight rounds, you may as well just lay down and bury yourself in that hole you’ve just dug. Quality scouting and a strong knowledge of the player pool will always help you in those later rounds, but when you’re making those early-round picks, drafting the right positions is just as important as selecting the right guys. In some cases, it’s more important.

Before I get down and dirty with one of my actual drafts, there are always a few things I like to do before plotting my attack on the early rounds. First and foremost, I establish my tiered rankings at each position and study the degree of production drop-off between each tier. From that, I decide who my floor is -- the lowest-ranked guy I’d still be happy with to open the season – at each position and see where I can wait without incurring too significant a drop in production.

Some might consider this drafting with “position scarcity” in mind, but that’s actually a misconception. A position with a significant drop-off in overall production after, say, the top two tiers, is not necessarily scarce. By definition, position scarcity occurs when there are not enough positively valued players available to fill all the starting spots in your league at a given position. For example, in a 12-team, two catcher league, you need 24 catchers to fill out the league’s starting lineups. If after you assign dollar values based on your projections, there are only 8-to-10 catchers who have a positive value, that position is said to be scarce. Guys drafting Buster Posey early are doing so with position scarcity in mind.

What I do is more of a bastardization of the scarcity concept. Now that I have my tiers and my “floors” at each position established, I hit the mock drafts as much as possible. Once the Army has enough drafts under its belt and the sample size affords us better data and trends to analyze, I like to break down the first 100 picks and see which positions may require a little extra attention in the early rounds. Through 42 drafts, the breakdown of players taken by position is as follows:

Well, with a split like that, you can easily see that the top 25-30 outfielders come off the board fairly quickly and the tilts towards drafting starters early is in full effect. We’ve seen this with the outfield before and both Ray Flowers and I have both preached filling the position early. With a standard five outfielders needed in most leagues, you want to get a piece of the top two tiers. As for starters, it’s pretty obvious that most teams in your league are looking for a strong 1-2 punch to anchor the rotation and if you wait too long to draft a couple of arms, your middle to late-round picks MUST hit in order to, at the least, keep pace.

The other two positions I’m looking at early are first and third base. With the top-10 at each position coming off the board this early and the magnitude of the drop-off in production after the top two tiers, the investment, in my opinion, is necessary. Save for the outfield, another position flying off the board early, there really aren’t too many sources for power. Sure, you can try to load up on some cheap power late in your drafts – maybe hope that Mark Teixeira stays healthy or Trevor Plouffe holds the job all year and hits 20 home runs – but I prefer the security of an Anthony Rizzo/Kyle Seager tandem.

When I follow this blueprint, I usually finish the first seven rounds with a high-end first baseman, a strong third baseman, two top-20 outfielders and two upper-tiered starting pitchers. The seventh player in that group is a bit of a wild card and usually is a reflection of how I think the draft is going. I’ve taken speed at one of the middle infield spots, an elite closer and in some cases, I’ve even doubled-up at first base just to have a big power bat at my corner infield spot. But regardless of my wild card selection, the foundation of my team remains ridiculously strong, barring injury, of course.

Here’s a look at one of the mock drafts I did recently where I implemented this blue print:

http://bit.ly/1nmhx4T

You’re more than welcome to criticize my selection of Anthony Rizzo with the No. 4 pick, but with 16 picks between my first and second round selection, I wasn’t going to chance missing out on an elite first baseman. Yes, I would have been happy with Jose Abreu, but the ADP dictates that I stood just as strong a chance of missing out on him. Clayton Kershaw was also an option, but knowing that I was going to attack pitching early, I knew I would get my hands on an ace soon enough. I didn’t even hesitate to grab Madison Bumgarner with my second pick.

With 10 outfielders already off the board by the first pick of the third round, I wanted to make sure I took care of the minimum two spots I wanted to fill by the end of the seventh round. Justin Upton was an easy pick and while I wasn’t exactly planning to double-tap the position in Rounds 4 and 5, the fact that six more outfielders came off the board, I figured it was safer just to act fast, so I grabbed Carlos Gomez for a little power/speed combo. Yes, he needs a rebound here, but for the price, the risk/reward seems to tilt in my favor.

I kept a watchful eye on third base, especially with the top five already off the board, but with there still being five left before I hit my floor at the position, it was easy for me to go with Gerrit Cole in the fifth. Even when Matt Carpenter and Evan Longoria coming off the board, I felt comfortable enough with waiting one more round. The three teams picking behind me here all needed a third baseman, but two of them seemed a little pitching deficient and there were still three third sackers I liked. So instead of acting immediately, I grabbed my wild card in the form of Prince Fielder and locked in some serious power. When Kyle Seager came my way in the seventh, I knew I made the right decision and read the room correctly.

The rest of the draft was incredibly smooth after that. I grabbed some more pitching, including a high-end closer with strong job security and I was able to fill in the middle infield with a little bit of speed. Hell, I even landed a strong power bat behind the plate and grabbed some fantastic upside in my outfield thanks to the security I felt from my early round picks. The team is easily one I would be happy to go into battle with for an entire fantasy season and my draft blueprint seems to be a strong one for the 2016 season. I’ve tested it in drafts twice a week over the last three weeks and plan to continue giving it a look each week as the regular season approaches. Of course, I’ll mix it up in the draft rooms and try some other things out, but so far, this strategy appears to be working best for me.

We’ll see what happens this week.

To join the Mock Draft Army and test your skills against some of the industry’s finest, send an email to mockdraftarmy@yahoo.com and I’ll add you to the schedule distribution list. You can also send an email here to request your own copy of the Army’s ADP on a color-coded, sortable Excel spreadsheet which is listed below.

Mock Draft Army ADP