The Beginning of the End: The Irwin Classic's Draft

Intro

For those of you who don’t know, I run a fantasy baseball league every year. My plan is to blog about it a little bit as the season runs along. Today was the draft and it was a pretty good one. By far this is the most disgruntled I’ve ever seen people during a draft! There were a lot of player steals and a lot of people getting upset as their picks were swept away.

At the end of the draft I opened up Excel and began doing a little analysis. I have certain formulas I use to project hitter and pitcher value. Hitter value is based on OBP, runs, homeruns, RBIs, and stolen bases; pitcher value is based on W-L record, saves, innings pitched, strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP. In the end I pump the numbers into some equation I came up with and some intrinsic value is thrown up. For a hitter 500 is elite, 250-300 is the bottom of the barrel. For pitchers the high value is the same, but the low value only gets to about 350, and there aren’t huge deviations.

So, what I did was find these values for each player on each team. Then I added up the total hitter value and the total pitching value to find who has the best team. You can think of these values as “total season points” if you’re in a head-to-head points league like we are. This gives me an idea of who projects as having the best offense, pitching, and overall team.

The Results

Best Team Overall-

The best overall team came out to be No Yankees Allowed. There is no player that profiles as “elite,” but a lot of high value players all around. He definitely got a steal with Zach Greinke in the 11^th round. It seemed everyone was afraid to touch the mildly injured ace, and No Yankees Allowed snatched him up. Greinke is only expected to miss a couple starts and I’m incredibly surprised he fell this far. He also has a couple high risk, high reward, picks with Joe Nathan and Matt Kemp. If both can come close to their 2009 season totals it’d be huge.

The biggest issue for No Yankees Allowed is his rotation. While his top three look great, his number four guy (Brett Anderson) could be a key to success. If he’s healthy this rotation could be amazing, but if he can’t pitch very many games it’ll hurt.

Here’s the overall roster for No Yankees with the draft round in ():

C- Kurt Suzuki (10)

1B- Ryan Howard (2)

2B- Brandon Phillips (8)

SS- Troy Tulowitzki (1)

3B- Jose Bautista (4)

OF- Matt Kemp (5)

OF- Nelson Cruz (7)

OF- Hunter Pence (12)

UT- Aramis Ramirez (16)

SP- Ubaldo Jimenez (3)

SP- Zach Greinke (11)

SP- Roy Oswalt (6)

SP- Brett Anderson (9)

SP- Gio Gonzalez (13)

RP- Chris Perez  (15)

RP- Joe Nathan (14)

The total offensive value came out to 2898.86, the total pitching value came out to 2815.62, and that brings the total overall value to 5714.49 points. The closest runner up is Let’s Go Red Sox at 5620.95, and rounding out the top three is The Teammates at 5546.59 points.

Best Rated Offense-

Overall, the best-rated offense also belongs to No Yankees Allowed. There are three big boppers in Howard, Tulo, and Bautista; and, if Matt Kemp returns to stud form and Nelson Cruz stays healthy this could be a real good outfield. The weakest position is catcher, but Kurt Suzuki has 20 homer/.280 average upside, which is pretty standard for a good catcher.

For a list of No Yankees Allowed’s offense look right above you. The average line for one of his hitters, based off projections, is:

.349 OBP, 87 runs, 27 HR, 93 RBIs, 11 SB, 396.64 total value per bat

Best Rated Pitching-

When it comes to pitching value my team, The Teammates, was rated the best. I front-loaded my rotation, taking a pitcher in the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 6^th rounds. I then took some high upside picks in the later rounds. Personally, I think I have the two Cy Young winners for this season (King Felix and Kershaw) and that makes me ecstatic. I really wanted Francisco Liriano as my number three guy, but he went a round sooner than I thought he would (I figured he’d be a steal and someone else thought the same way). I’m not crazy about David Price, but he’s pretty much guaranteed 200 innings and 200 Ks and I wanted three of those guys so I’m happy. The list of my rotation and relief corps is below.

SP1- Felix Hernandez (2)

SP2- Clayton Kershaw (3)

SP3- David Price (6)

SP4- Daniel Hudson (12)
SP5- Brandon Morrow (11)

RP1- John Axford (14)

RP2- Craig Kimbrel (16)

The average line for one of my pitchers, based off projections, is:

15-8, 37 saves, 208 IP, 203 K, 3.0 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 400.49 total value per pitcher

Best Rated Relief Corp-

Fantasy players love to debate the value of saves, so I thought I’d also look into whose closers profiled as the best. This one was obvious: it’s Grizzly Neimann. He has Joakim Soria (the best AL reliever) and Heath Bell (arguably the best NL reliever) as his closers. If Grizzly can propel past the rest of us this closing duo could be a big factor. Here are the three stat averages for his relievers:

43 saves, 81 Ks, 1.10 WHIP,

Best Rated Outfield-

Just for the heck of it I thought I’d also search out who has the best outfield. Outfield is always a loaded position, but I think people take for granted just how good the best outfielders really are. The best outfield belongs to dembums. Second rounder Carlos Gonzalez leads this trio of outfielders. His second outfielder is Dodgers big bopper Andre Ethier, and bringing up the rear is upside pick Just Upton. Things get even scarier considering he has high upside pick Grady Sizemore as a possible UT/bench guy. The average line for this outfield is:

.360 OBP, 94 runs, 29 homeruns, 93 RBIs, 16 stolen bases, 420.48 total value per outfielder

Final Words

All in all everyone has a different team and this is anyone’s game. The draft helps you build a base, but it’s the moves you make throughout the season that determines who wins. All our teams have different strengths and weaknesses, and all my calculations are based off projections; projections are never 100% right, and between injuries and breakout seasons who knows what will happen. All I know is it was a great draft and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where the season goes from here!

Top Three Steals of the Draft

1. Chase Utley- Beaches- 5^th round

2. Zach Greinke- No Yankees Allowed- 11^th round

3. J.J. Putz- Nesbutts- 15^th round

4. Grady Sizemore- dembums- 18^th round

5. Vladimir Guerrero- The Teammates- 19^th round

Biggest Shock of the Draft

My buddy Kevin, aka Yankee Pankee, a life long Yankees fan, drafting Yankee killer Joe Mauer, Philadelphia playoff rival Cole Hamels, and Sox David Ortiz and Clay Buchholz.