I recently did my mixed league draft and here is my team, with comments.

One dicta of conventional wisdom that I rail against is the idea that you should not target specific players. That is hogwash; I almost always target specific players and often will get them. When you see the team I drafted in this league, you will see many of the same players that I have on the expert league team and in my high stakes league auction team, if I ever get around to writing about it! This goes to show that not only is this piece of advice ridiculous but also that no matter the caliber of the competition in your league you can often get most of the players you want.

I like to call the following idea “leverage.” When you like a player and strongly think you have a better idea of what the player will do than the masses, then it is usually smart to leverage that player. What I mean is that he should be a building block of all of your teams insofar as it is possible. The reason is that when you think you have a big edge in a specific player that few others recognize, that player has great “leverage” to you and you can leverage that player to victory across multiple teams and leagues.

This idea was pulled from my horseplayer days, much as the “learned minority” theory. When I saw a horse that I loved I would leverage him in most of my bets, often playing only the race involving that horse that particular day and putting all or most of my money into that one race where I felt I had a strong edge. I was leveraging that horse across multiple bets, hoping for a large return. That is the idea behind leveraging a player in fantasy baseball.

In this particular draft I usually go for the Standard Strategy. The only time I deviated from the Standard Strategy was in year two of the league, in which I went with the Pitching Strategy and got smoked as my top two pitchers, Randy Johnson and Ben Sheets, were injured for much of the year. Year one I won, and year three I finished second by a mere seven total points out of over 7000, losing to fellow General Matt Finkelstein. I had the tenth pick overall this year.

The league has seen a trend of players drafting pitchers far too early, pursuing the “two start” strategy. This is fine when you are dealing with the top four or five pitchers. When you draft Dice-K or Jeremy Bonderman in the first seven rounds, then it is not so much of a good strategy, for reasons that go without saying if you are a regular reader.

I could not have been happier when Miguel Cabrera dropped to me! I was practically dancing a jig, as a player that I touted as a possible number one overall pick was there at number ten. I then followed him up with Mark Teixeira. Note that in rotisserie style leagues I think that it is far better to come back with a speed guy in the second round, as I did in the expert league with Carl Crawford. Here, in a points league that devalues steals compared to total bases power hitters are to be preferred.

All the better, since because people were drafting pitchers left and right I was still able to get Crawford in the third round! I followed him up with Nick Markakis. Then Torii Hunter, then Michael Young, then Adrian Beltre. I was the only team without a pitcher at that point and most teams had two or three. Not to worry though.

Because I expected many owners to draft pitching early, in accordance with the league’s trend, this meant that I would almost certainly be able to get all the pitchers I wanted starting in the later rounds. Why? Because this is when everyone else had to take hitting! When they filled themselves at the pitcher buffet in the first five rounds, the later rounds had to be used on hitters. I was essentially able to cherry pick my pitchers at this point and every single pitcher that I picked up was a guy that I have written about previously as a great bet for a breakout or an undervalued pitcher.

I snagged Ian Snell in round 8 and then miraculously I found that Aaron Hill was still on the board in round 9. My next ten picks were all pitchers as I had filled up all of my hitting spots except for catcher, and as I have stated before I will usually fill up my reserve roster with players before I draft my starting catcher with my last pick.

The players I felt were my “leverage” players:

Cabrera, Crawford, Beltre, Snell, Blanton, McGowan, Greinke. I have taken some or all of them in virtually every mock draft and got many of them in my high stakes auction league and in the Fantasy Baseball Search expert league. Don’t fall for the malarkey about not targeting specific players; the best General will never go with conventional wisdom when it interferes with a sound battle plan. As with most conventional wisdom, it is great if you think of it in a vacuum without considering how you can be attacked and whether others will pursue the same strategy. The fantasy General strives to be Napoleon and not Hohenlohe.

My team with more comments will be in the next post.