2009 in Review (Part II)

Some teams surely set themselves up for success or failure based on the draft, but an enduring question of fantasy baseball is how much the final outcome depends on selecting the right players at the start versus in-season moves to bolster a roster. Since we already looked at which teams had the players that ‘outperformed’ or ‘underperformed’ the most, I thought it might be interest to look at which teams had the biggest discrepancy between the actual performance of their drafted players and the total stats of final roster.

If there were no bench slots, no free agent pick-ups and no trades, then the draft would be the only thing that mattered. The decisive winner of the Best Draft Award goes to the Madison Mohels (see Table 3). As discussed in Part I, the Mohels pursued a strategy of placing huge dollars with hitters and then only 20% of the budget to pitching. Since Roy Oswalt ($23) and Justin Verlander ($10) consumed most of that small pitching budget, the rest of the pen consisted of low cost starters under 30 years old who showed prior flashes of skill, including Jered Weaver ($5), Joe Saunders ($2), and Bronson Arroyo ($2). Adding to the pen were good rate-stat relievers Huston Street ($1) and Brandon Lyon ($1). To round things out, Chris Capuano ($1) and Bartolo Colon ($1) were thrown in to the mix. It is unclear if those were serious picks or part of the screwed up end-of-draft problems we experience in 2009 thanks to ESPN. I have doubts as Capuano never pitched that season due to injury and Colon is just really, really fat.



The low cost pitching strategy for the Mohels worked quite nicely, at least in comparison to everyone else. For a grand total of $19, the Mohels got 66 wins (see Table 4) from Weaver, Saunders, Arroyo and Verlander, which contributed to 8 points in that category. Only Owalt truly disappointed. And the rate stats followed as well (7 points for ERA, 9 points for WHIP, 6 points for K/BB). What was saved on pitching provided a wide margin of error for the hitters.



In 2009, only 54 players hit 20 or more home runs. Of those, nine went undrafted in our league. Yet, who among us regrets not drafting the 20-HR power of Shin-Shoo Chin? Those kinds of surprises are fairly common in baseball. However, if there was a pro rata distribution of power hitters on teams, everyone would have four, perhaps five, 20 HR hitters. The Mohels had eight players who combined for 246 HRs. That alone would have been good for 2nd place in HRs, except he had an additional five guys who added 74 HRs to that total. Runs and RBIs tend to go along with homers, and thus the Models soundly took 10 points in each category, with upper tier finishes in OBP and SBs. This was not a result of high risk bets, rather it was the intentional assembly of a murders row that consisted of Miguel Cabrera ($40), Jimmy Rollins ($28), Ryan Howard ($22), Carlos Lee ($27). Sure, the team received great, inexpensive performances by Mark Reynolds ($3 for 40 HRs) and Robinson Cano ($7 for 25 HRs at second base), but the hitting categories were won even without them.

Following the prior post, Dave commented that “If I had put a little more in-season elbow grease into it, I suspect I could have escaped the cellar into the low middle rangers.” Perhaps. Except, his drafted team was a full 10 points behind the Red Hook Misdemeanors. Dave’s team simply stunk like, well, Monkeys. With a couple of exceptions, every hitter and pitcher seemed to put up a disappointing, but not disastrous performance. Grady Sizemore ($37), Chase Utley ($29), Carlos Quentin ($15), Stephen Drew ($11), Matt Garza ($11) and Scott Kazmir ($10) simply each had a down year. This must be how Omar Minaya feels every year.

Looking through the entirety of the as-drafted standings, what is clear is how much working the waiver wire can help. As we explored earlier, * TINSTAAPP * seemed to have a team that was in the lower-half according to PECOTA. In fact, the drafted team would have only provided an 8th place finish. Nonetheless, * TINSTAAPP * managed to nab just the right players, but no one that stands out. With the exclusion of the recruitment of Kendry Morales (34 HR, 108 RBI), the roster seems to be nicely fitted with all sorts of role players who hit less than 20 HRs or won less than 15 games. The transaction counter may provide a clue, as Matt add/dropped 48 players, which was fairly typical for our league. Instead, he made an amazing 170 activations, versus a league average of only 127. Importantly, the winner of the activations contest, which suggests playing daily matchups, was 2nd place finisher Team Los Del Rio with 325 start/bench moves. This also reveals that the deserved receipient of the The Faith In My Drafted Team Award should go to Jimmy, since Ong Rising made only three start/bench moves all season. Removing the extemes of Team Los Del Rio and the Ong Rising from the totals leaves a league average around 115 activations. Second place in this category belonged to Smooth Segues, but they finished in 6th in the standings versus an as-drafted finish of 5th, so perhaps there is a limit to what that method can achieve.

Let me conclude by awarding one more prize. Maykuu no Shoutai were projected to finished 3rd based on the PECOTA projections. My team as-drafted team would have finished in 3rd place. And in fact, I took home the bronze. Thus, I believe I deserve the Atlanta Braves Award for consistency that never leads to a championship.