Now that the draft has a few "DONE" teams and things are winding down a bit, I'm curious about 3 things from anyone who wishes to opine:
1) Which player were you most happy to get? In other words, you were biting your nails, hoping he'd fall to you.
2) Which player was your biggest "reach" - in that you think he might have been available a round or two later, but you just didn't want to take the chance?
3) Which player/players were taken by another team WAY before you expected them to go?
I'll start:
1) Which player were you most happy to get? In other words, you were biting your nails, hoping he'd fall to you.
I'm gonna go with 2 players: 1) Jonathan Loaisiga ( r3.8 ). I didn't have a 2nd round pick, and thought for sure he'd go in round 2. And 2) Caleb Ferguson in round 7. I almost took him with my 5.3 pick (and had a long wait till 7.16) due to so many Dodger fans in this league.
2) Which player was your biggest "reach" - in that you think he might have been available a round or two later, but you just didn't want to take the chance.
Myles Straw (5.3). He probably wasn't on most team's radar, but I love his plate discipline, defense in CF, and how just about every Astros blogger raves about him.
3) Which player/players were taken by another team WAY before you expected them to go?
Honestly, more than half the players in the first round. I mean no offense - obviously we all value players differently. But I was very surprised to see ANY catcher go in the first round, as well as a couple of the pitchers. But that's why I love this game. Always interesting to see how rival teams evaluate players.
1) Which player were you most happy to get? In other words, you were biting your nails, hoping he'd fall to you.
Zach Brown P. (5th rd) He has dominated the Southern league and Im a Brewers fan.
2) Which player was your biggest "reach" - in that you think he might have been available a round or two later, but you just didn't want to take the chance. Brown I guess (without my homer blinders on)
3) Which player/players were taken by another team WAY before you expected them to go?
Griffin Conine (early Rd 6). I thought the strikeouts would scare off teams and most teams still weren't picking 2018 draftees
1. I was very happy to get Swaggerty at the top of R2 - I thought his college record/high draft status might be worth a first-round pick from somebody.
2. My biggest reach was I guess Lazarito - I knew I didn't have a pick in R4 so I figured I had to grab him at the bottom of R3.
3. I sure wish Drew Waters had lasted a bit longer, he would have definitely been my R3 pick if he did. He looks like a fine prospect - Nomads got a good one there at 2.10.
bob h
Robots
3. I sure wish Drew Waters had lasted a bit longer, he would have definitely been my R3 pick if he did. He looks like a fine prospect - Nomads got a good one there at 2.10.
Robots
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I was ready to take him at 2.12
#1 - I don't know that I can pinpoint one that I'm most happy to get. I'm thrilled with Madrigal, but I figured Bart and Mize would be #1 and #2, so there wasn't much nail biting with my #3 pick. My four selections in round two were the four I wanted, so maybe Hernandez falling to me at the bottom of the round qualifies? Especially after all the catchers taken previously. Then again, having to wait TWO full rounds after my round six selection hoping Josh James would fall to me in round nine would qualify as well.
#2 - Don't really have a selection I made early. My selections all pretty much fell in line with where I wanted them. If you consider risk as a "reach", then I think Josh James was my biggest reach. He's broken out this year after a few fairly nondescript seasons, and he's a virtual unknown and has been since being drafted from the (non)powerhouse Western Oklahoma State College. But if his improvement this season, both in terms of performance and the quality of his stuff, is real then he could be a real hidden gem.
#3 - Quite a few actually. All the catchers being selected has surprised me for sure. Never in all my 15+ years of DMB have I seen this many catchers drafted in a Minor League draft.
I'll add another question if I may: 4) Which player are you most disappointed not to get?
For me that's the easiest question to answer . . . Diego Cartaya. I was REALLY praying he would fall to me at the top of the 2nd round. Dodger signee to a Dodger fan. He was too much a risk to take with the overall #3 pick (and I really wanted Madrigal anyway), but man was I watching closely to see if he would make it to the overall #23 selection!
Brendt, I was just now constructing a post adding that very same #4 question! Great minds... well, I suppose if mine was as great as yours, I'd have added it with the first post!
Anyway, for me, there were a few I was hoping would fall to me at 3.8 (I really hate that I didn't have a 2nd round pick this year - there were some gems in there): I thought the following might be available:
Swaggerty
Gorman
Graterol
Cartaya
Obviously I had some others ranked alongside them, but I expected them to go. These four I had higher hopes of getting.
1. I'm pretty happy with all my players but Waters stood out. When researching for my draft list I saw a couple things on Waters that peaked my interest. I was thinking he would be a later pick but then came the hype machine. I read through the transcripts of a BA chat on their midseason top 100 and they said he would likely move into the top 100 shortly. At that point I realized I wouldn't be able to wait to long and since I did not have a pick until the 7th round I knew I had to pull the trigger. By the looks of it I am glad I did it when I did.
I was really sweating Pardinho. I may have taken him in the 4th if I had had a pick.
2. If you had asked me when I started putting my list together it would have been both Graterol and Waters but by the time the draft rolled around Graterol was in top 100's and Waters was on the cusp. Because I didn't have a pick after the second all the way until the 5th (which I traded) it's hard to talk about reaches. Julio Rodriguez is probably the guy I could have waited on but I like him a lot and was comfortable taking him with a late 7th.
3. I actually don't see a problem with the first round catchers (though taking 16 year olds early would make me nervous). But I will go with the catcher theme and say I was suprised by William Contreras. Not that I don't think he's going to be good and I really like the bloodlines, but I just had him on my list a few rounds down. It would probably be the only Cache Hogs picks I was suprised about. Pretty much all the other guys he took I was bummed not to get.
4.The player that really bugged me was Akil Baddoo. I really liked him and he was taken just a few picks after my 5th round pick I traded in the middle of the draft. I also really wanted Kevin Smith but I didn't expect to get him without an extra 2nd or a 3rd.
Gorman was another one I was hoping for as one of my 2nd round picks. I wasn't sure if the swing and miss concerns would put people off, but with the light tower power he has, I would have snagged him in the 2nd round if he'd been available. Before the draft began, I had a list of seven players I was targeting in the 2nd round, topped by Cartaya and followed closely by Gorman and Turang.
Let me start by saying this is going to be very difficult for me. I've done a couple drafts here and I seem to be able to make a list and no one is ever taken from it. This is likely because I know very little about minor league baseball and do this purely based on the data I accumulate. But still, I'll participate.
1) Which player were you most happy to get? In other words, you were biting your nails, hoping he'd fall to you.
Danny Jansen, I thought he would be available at the pick but knowing now how much people valued catching I am a bit surprised I was able to take a MLB ready catcher with the penultimate pick of the first round.
2) Which player was your biggest "reach" - in that you think he might have been available a round or two later, but you just didn't want to take the chance? There was no one I really thought I had to pull forward to get. My last two picks however probably would have lasted a long time. Richard Lovelady is going to be a reliever which isn't really desirable in "earlier" rounds but with how well he is pitching in AAA at 22 I had to take him. Also, Gilberto Celestino is 19 in low A ball but the .868 OPS with only 4 HRs is interesting to me.
3) Which player/players were taken by another team WAY before you expected them to go?
I don't really have an answer for this because I am so far off of everyone's list. However, Seeing Luis Alexander Basabe get drafted made happy. For a few years now, in this league and another, I have had him on my list but never draft him for one reason or another; plus no one else ever drafts him either. I'm glad he, and his memorable name, finally have a home.
4) Which player are you most disappointed not to get?
I thought I was going to get Isaac Paredes but there are a few Tigers fans in the league. Not a candidate for the question 3 since he went 1 pick before I thought he would.
Great questions:
1) I pretty much picked everyone about where I thought they would go. I went into the draft having a pick in the first round and nothing more until the 6th round. I traded two picks next year (#3 & #5) to get two picks in the 5th round. More than a specific player, I thought this was my best move of the draft. If their was a player where I was holding my breath hoping he'd get to me it was Isaac Paredes (SS, DET). The funny part is that I wouldn't have gotten Paredes if things had gone as I planned in the 5th round. More on that in the answer to question #4.
2) I really don't think any of my picks were a reach. Of course others might feel differently about my picks.
3) There'd be too many names to mention here. I don't think that's a knock on anyone else's picks. It's just that we all probably use some different resources and value different things. Lots of guys took players I would never have drafted but that might be just as true when they look at my picks. On the other hand, some guys made picks that weren't on my radar but when I looked at the player I wondered how I missed him. It just shows me how big the pool is we have to choose from.
4) I had two disappointments, one greater than the other. In round 1, I came within two picks of getting Peter Alonso. I honestly hadn't expected him to be available at my slot (1.18) but the closer he got the more I kept hoping I'd get him. The second disappointment was in round 5. Part of the reason I traded to get into that round was to get Hudson Potts. I had the #7 and #18 pick in the that round and the Hogs took him with #17. Maybe I should have taken Potts with #7 and hoped Yu Chang slid to #18. But Chang was the higher ranked prospect and I thought Potts would get to me at 5.18. Then the plan was to take Paredes with pick 6.8 but the Landlubbers indicated they might have taken him with 5.19. The disappointment of not landing Potts allowed me to get Paredes even though it was sooner than I thought I would need to take him.
Overall, considering the lack of high picks that I had, I was pretty happy with how it went.
I wanted to say I have really enjoyed reading all these fascinating perspectives. Now that I know your styles and habits, you'll never steal a pick away from me again. ;)
Yeah, right!
I know you're joking (mostly), but I learn a lot more about strategies of other owners just by how they pick WAY MORE than from reading answers to these questions.
I was completely joking.
My spybots already mined that information way before this questionnaire appeared.
So what have you learned about me?
LOL... well, that you trade away lots of early picks, favor offensive prospects over pitching (TNSTAAPP - if you know what that refers to), and tend to favor older, closer to the bigs players over hyped-up teenagers.
How'd I do? :)
Probably not too far off:
- Regarding trading away picks, this is pretty true but is also impacted on where the MLB team is in a cycle. If my team is competitive and I can trade away picks to help the MLB club, I will do that. I think I can do the opposite when going through a rebuild but I don't go for long rebuilds. I don't have the patience and there's nothing more frustrating in these leagues than to go through a couple rebuilding seasons only to have the league collapse. Interestingly, I tend to trade picks more readily than prospects. Once I've done the research and drafted someone, I become attached to them. That means I probably overvalue my own prospects when making a trade.
- I do think my teams tend to lean more to hitting than pitching in most of my leagues but not all. I've had teams with strong pitching in other DMB leagues but those are more often historical replay leagues. I think it comes down to predictability. When you draft Jim Bunning, you pretty much know how he'll pitch for a decade. In a league like Mutiny, pitchers seem to be more unpredictable than hitters (both in performance and health) from year to year. I think I lean to the predictable. As far as TNSTAAPP, I may lean that way but not always. This year, 3 of my 10 picks were pitchers but last year it was 7 out of 11.
- I think all of us favor higher level minors than lower level minors and, again, I think it comes down to predictability. Predictability must be a personality trait (spoken like a true CPA). Higher level minor league players have more history to predict and have a higher probability of making the bigs. On the other hand, I might miss out on the future star by drafting someone in AA rather than taking a chance on the next Juan Soto in rookie ball. It's probably why I missed Hudson Potts this year. I took the AAA SS first in round 5 thinking Potts wouldn't go before my next pick. But someone else saw the potential of a 20+ HR guy in A ball and grabbed him before I could.
I am a little late here but the one play that I am extremely happy I was able to draft is Nolan Gorman. The dude is raking since being drafted with 15 HR, 39 RBI, and an OBP of .413. I could see him being the starting 3B for the Cards come this time next year if he keeps this up.
I'm late to this too
1) The guy I'm most happy about is Diego Cartaya. We'll see how it all pans out, it's really hard to project where a 16 year old catcher from Venezuela will end up, but I'm really happy with drafting him where I did. Especially after I was skipped a couple times.
2) oh man, there's several guys I probably reached on. Durbin Feltman is probably first on that list, Zach Shannon is another one for sure (15th round draft pick out of Div II, yes he's smoking hot in rookie ball but he's old for that league), Miguel Vargas hasn't played professionally in years. It's going to be very interesting to see how this draft turns out for me.
3) I'm still mad I took Durbin in R2 and didn't take who I really wanted - Ethan Hankins. That's not really an answer to your question as I'm not surprised Hankins got picked where he did. I just wanted to express some buyers remorese. I gambled Hankins would fall to me in R3 and it didn't turn out that way. Boo...