Fantasy baseball is back! Leagues are getting activated and draft dates are being set. The single most important thing you can do now is mock draft. Mock until you can’t mock anymore! Practice makes perfect and while your “real” drafts will almost certainly be very different from these mocks, they help in so many different ways. They help you to play out different scenarios, strategies and roster builds. That is precisely what we’ve done here at Fantasy Alarm with the Mock Draft Army over at RealTime Fantasy Sports set up by Howard Bender. The mock draft army allows you to mock draft with several great fantasy baseball minds and players who don’t like auto drafting their teams.

What we’ve done here in this piece is mock draft a couple different ways and analyze what happened afterwards. Every week we will try out two different strategies and analyze what went wrong or what worked in our favor. This gives you an idea of what can happen if you want to try out a strategy for yourself. This past week we’ve taken two different approaches in regards to drafting strategy. First, a hitter heavy approach where we load up on bats and take some under the radar, high upside pitchers later on in the draft. Second, a pitcher heavy approach where we try to get the best staff in the draft and find value bats as we progress through the draft. A link to each strategy will also be provided. To follow along, look for my twitter handle @ChrisBouv14 as that was the team name used to do these mock drafts.

The first approach can be found here.

Heavy Hitters

After analyzing the first approach (Heavy Hitters), the one thing that really stands out is the drop off of production after the first tier of many of these positions. Loading up on bats allowed the opportunity to roster several top tier players like Jose Altuve, Anthony Rizzo and Corey Seager. The goal in this scenario was indeed getting top tier players at several positions before selecting pitching. After landing the top second baseman in Altuve with the first overall pick, we have an immediate edge on the field since he is far and away the best at his position. Having to wait until the 24th pick to make the second selection saw quite a bit of talent leave the player pool, however, landing a top first baseman in Anthony Rizzo this late was a huge relief as he’s a lock for 30 Home runs, 90 runs, 100 rbis and can also get double digit steals.

For the turn, with the 25th overall pick, there were plenty of options and different routes to take here. Option A was to select Seager and solidify the short stop position with a still only 23 year old who can hit 30-plus home runs. Option B was to select Gary Sanchez and have a distinct advantage over the field by locking up two positions with the best player at both second base and catcher. Option C was to go with power and take Cody Bellinger despite the fact that he would be the second first baseman rostered in the first three rounds. The selection made was option A, taking the sky high potential of Seager and locking up the middle of the infield with two guys who can hit 25-30 bombs and 80-plus rbis and also hit over .300. Through three rounds it’s looking like this is a very sound strategy with so much value still on the board in the pitching department. The only concern so far is the lack of an outfielder through three rounds so that is sure to be of importance moving forward.

Another long wait until the next pick at 48 saw the fear come to fruition as six outfielders were selected during this time. Several of the targets at this selection disappeared and while we missed out on Justin Upton, Christian Yelich and Marcel Ozuna, there was still one player in particular that we couldn’t be more happy to select. Tommy Pham was the pick here and with his breakthrough vision-wise, he really showed what he’s capable of in 2017. Pham hit .306 with a .411 OBP and .61 BB/K rate. He flashed power with 23 home runs and showed his speed with 25 steals. In an improved lineup and continued progression, Pham could be a top ten outfielder in 2018. At the turn, with the 49th selection, the pick was pretty clear. Even with the selection of Altuve to start things off, Jonathan Schoop was too good to pass up here. Another middle infielder with potential for a .300 average, 30 home runs and 100 rbis gives this roster a huge advantage now with three top middle infielders that could go 30/100 in 2018 when many teams will be aiming to just fill this slot later in drafts with Josh Harrison’s and Jonathan Villar’s.

As we move through the draft, it’s becoming more obvious that pitching is absolutely loaded in 2018. After landing outfielders with three of the next four selections and a third baseman and catcher around that, our hitters were covered for the time being and it was time to start taking some value at pitcher. Five of the next six selections were pitchers and we were able to set a staff of Zack Godley, Luke Weaver, Jimmy Nelson, Jon Gray and Kyle Hendricks. This staff, for being selected so late, has a boat load of potential and also stable ratios and strikeout rates to hold it down even if the potential doesn’t get met in 2018.

This strategy proved to be effective and with a couple less reaches, I’ll admit Luke Weaver was a reach, this can be a great way to go about your “for real” drafts. Using this path, it’s important to have tiers mapped out to make sure you are taking players that give you an obvious advantage over the field in order to lessen the impact on missing on some of the pitchers you take later on in drafts. In a game where pitchers are so volatile and home runs are increasing, this is an excellent strategy to implement.

The second approach can be found here.

Aces Full

The second approach used in the mock draft army was to load up on pitching and take bats as value popped up. To give you a snapshot of how this went I’ll breakdown a couple of interesting scenarios that occurred early on. First, with the seventh spot in this twelve team mock, we went with Max Scherzer. We don’t have to explain what Mad Max brings to your team and how exhilarating it is to own a pitcher with his dominance. The goal here was to land two of the top four pitchers with the first two selections in the draft. That didn’t happen. Kershaw, Sale and Kluber all off the board before the next pick really put a damper on this strategy. In order to not be stubborn and reach for a Madison Bumgarner or a Noah Syndergaard at 18th overall, we pivoted and took the ever consistent Joey Votto. A Scherzer/Votto pairing to start your draft is as solid a duo as you’ll find and despite the fact that we missed out on our ace starter pairing, we can’t be mad about the results thus far.

What happened next was rather surprising. Bumgarner, Syndergaard and Luis Severino were taken before the next selection as teams started to see the top end of the position thinning out and pulled the trigger quicker than usual. Despite that, Robbie Ray and the trendy Humidor factor was too enticing to pass up. Pairing Ray with Scherzer gives us two starters with well over 200 K upside, something to covet in drafts this season. Before our next selection, Strasburg, deGrom and Greinke were taken, leaving Chris Archer and his 249 strikeouts in 2017 for us to take. This is an excellent way to start this draft strategy as we now have 735 strikeouts from a year ago coming from only three pitchers. That upside in this format immediately vaults your team to the top from an “on paper” perspective.

The strategy the rest of the way was to gather power hitters, regardless of position, and keep piling on with strikeout and ratio dominant pitchers. We were able to add Rhys Hoskins, Miguel Cabrera, Ryan Braun, Steven Souza Jr. and Evan Longoria with this philosophy from a hitting standpoint. From a pitching standpoint, we were able to add to our top trio by taking Jose Berrios, Zack Godley, Sonny Gray and Jimmy Nelson who are projected for another 646 K’s even with Nelson not returning until June at some point. While that pitching staff looks amazing and offers all kinds of hype going into 2018, it really took a toll on the hitters for this team as we only got one player, Joey Votto, projected inside the top ten at any position. This strategy can be effective, just like the first one, if you nail all of your hitting picks and should be tried out for yourself in mock drafts.

The conclusion here is that while loading up at pitcher can work and shouldn’t be ignored, the depth at the position is outstanding and requires much more to go your way to be successful, so it’s very risky.  Piling up hitters is a much safer way to go and doesn’t have nearly as much risk since you’ll be selecting top tier players at several weak positions early on, allowing you to dig into some of that pitching depth later on. Both of these strategies carry some risk so it’s recommended to take a balanced approach on draft day. Take a look at the links to the mock drafts for yourself to see which routes you would have taken and try them out for yourselves. If you are interested in joining in on these mock drafts feel free to email Howard Bender at mockdraftarmy@yahoo.com and join the fun at Fantasy Alarm. Practice makes perfect!