A review of the fun at the inaugural Razzball fantasy league draft.

On Saturday, I participated in the draft for the first ever Razzball fantasy league. For a refresher course of the rules of this crazy league, check out my article here. The draft took only 1 hour, the shortest I’ve ever been in! I’d like to again thank the guys over at Razzball.com for the invitation and I look forward to a season of high ERAs and low batting averages.

My strategy was as follows:

Hitting

-Use a positional scarcity approach
-Since this is a bad players league, that meant drafting the opposite positions of a traditional league early, such as 1B, 3B and OF
-Since it’s very tough to balance lots of strikeouts with few HRs and RBIs (weak hitters usually have better contact rates), I basically ignored hitter K’s and plan to just meet the 5200 AB minimum, which means punting the ABs category, and crossing my fingers my K’s are OK even though I basically ignored them.
-I planned to win fewest HRs, RBIs, and RUNs and the lowest AVG, so I tried to pass on the lead-off speedsters who usually also have good averages like Pierre and Taveras.

Pitching

-Draft all or almost all my hitters before any pitchers, just like a traditional league. I figured there are so many bad pitchers, it’s better to lock up the hitting early and to play pitching matchups during the season, making sure to pick up a crappy FA pitcher facing the Yankees, for example. Unfortunately, it seems as if every other owner followed this strategy as well!
-Target low K, high flyball rate pitchers. This allows me to try to win fewest K’s and most HRs allowed, with the added bonus of these types of pitchers most likely being bad which would hurt my ERA and WHIP, just as I wanted. And of course bad pitchers also have a better chance of racking up the losses.
-I figure with a 180 start maximum, there’s nothing I could do to try to do well in the IP category, just hope managers are dumb and leave in my pitcher after allowing 8 runs in 4 innings!

Here are the results, try not to cringe when reading the names:

1. (5) Nomar Garciaparra 1B,3B
2. (16) Luis Hernández SS
3. (25) Mike Rabelo C
4. (36) Aaron Miles 2B,SS
5. (45) José Bautista 3B,OF
6. (56) Ross Gload 1B,OF
7. (65) Skip Schumaker OF
8. (76) Emil Brown OF
9. (85) Erick Aybar 2B,SS
10. (96) Gerald Laird C
11. (105) Jim Edmonds OF
12. (116) Marlon Byrd OF
13. (125) Brian Bannister P
14. (136) Tim Redding P
15. (145) Josh Towers P
16. (156) David Dellucci OF
17. (165) Todd Wellemeyer P
18. (176) Woody Williams P
19. (185) Chris Sampson P
20. (196) Jason Marquis P
21. (205) Esteban Loaiza P
22. (216) Cliff Lee P
23. (225) Brandon Backe P
24. (236) Tony Abreu 2B,3B,SS
25. (245) Micah Owings P
26. (256) Brian Burres P
27. (265) Yunel Escobar 2B,3B,SS

Here are the entire draft results:

-I was happy to get Nomar 5th as he’ll be hitting at the bottom of the order, while providing little HR power and therefore reducing his RBI and R contributions. Hopefully the average isn’t much higher than .280, because he won’t help me any in the strikeouts category. But with most full-time first basemen actually being good, I wanted to make sure I got one of the few who suck. I figure every other one would help in average and K’s at the very most, so getting a 3 category guy was key.

-I was ecstatic that Luis Hernandez fell to me in the 2nd round, and it forced me to stray from my strategy to draft this future Razzball All-Star. Hopefully the Orioles are dumb enough to trot him out there every day and not trade for or sign a real SS.

-I was planning on waiting on catchers with such a plethora of bad ones, but during the draft I was looking at the depth charts at Rotoworld and realized the Marlins’ starting catcher is Mike Rabelo! Razzball bliss! He’s injured now, but should be the starter when he returns. When his backup Matt Treanor was drafted the pick before mine in the 3rd, I figured Rabelo wouldn’t last much longer, and so I once again strayed from my strategy to grab him.

-I was happy to have filled 1B, 3B, and CI by the 6th round, and was even able to add Nomar’s likely replacement at 3rd while he’s injured, Tony Abreu, in the 24th.

-I am also delighted to announce that Gerald Laird, a catcher, is currently filling my Util spot. When else can you say that a catcher is your Utility guy?!

-My first pitcher, I guess you could call him my “ace”, was Brian Bannister in the 13th. He has all the crappy skills of a Razzball MVP, but I worry that his knowledge of DIPS theory and pitching intelligence displayed during his various interviews floating around online might allow him to outperform his awful skill set. We’re just going to have to wait and see on this one.

-I am extremely excited to see Josh Towers in Coors. Here’s hoping he wins a rotation spot.

-And no, that wasn’t a mistake taking Yunel with my last pick. He qualifies at 3rd and I think he’s getting a lot of unwarranted hype. At worst, he’ll suck in HRs and RBIs. At best, he hits only .270, which I think is a lot more possible than acknowledged, and gets dropped to the bottom of the order, limiting his runs as well.

-It wasn’t by design, but check out all the multi-position guys!

So what do you guys think? Is my team crappy enough to compete? I’m happy with my draft and think I executed my strategy exactly how I planned. Now if only Jorge Cantu was added to Yahoo, all would be well in the world.

Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.