Monday, March 24, 2008

2008 ECB Draft: A Retrospective

Another ECB draft is in the books and clearly everyone wants to know what JB thinks about it. First of all, I would like to express my extreme regret for my tardiness on Sunday, but god damn, apparently a dude's gotta be ready and chatting at least 25 minutes before the start of the keeper rounds to prove he's still alive, otherwise his cellie runs out of memory from all the texts and voicemail he receives. I've drafted before, boys. I know where the pre-rank button is. And if you must know, I was playing tennis, didn't draft from my own computer, and still had a better draft than Watts. What. Okay, on to the round-up.

The 2008 cast of keepers was a pretty solid group, but as always, some keepers' sole job was to remind their owners not to repeat their bad-to-fuckin'-terrible 2007 draft. We all love to jack with Yahoo!'s ADPs by picking sure-fire keepers like David Wright and Carlos Lee well before they would be taken in an average Yahoo! draft, but some players had no business being drafted in the Top 40. I guess what I'm trying to say is, in my opinion, the 2008 ECB draft was very important for New Haven and Marshall Street.

Watts led off the draft with a surprisingly strong pick in Jake Peavy. I'm too lazy to do the research, but I remember back when Watts' teams were better than average they had formidable pitching. It seemed like he was going to try to re-establish that persona until his third pick came around (Huston Street). Ffej literally had me thinking that someone had fucked up the keeper rounds when he took Brandon Phillips. I'm not sure what his thinking was there, but Phillips wasn't anywhere on my radar for the first few rounds. The rest of the first round went pretty true to form. Sitting in the eighth slot, I wasn't expecting guys like Magglio Ordonez, Manny Ramirez, and Justin Morneau to get to me. I kind of enjoy drafting at the end of the line because a lot of the decisions are made for me by the rest of the league. I was debating on whether I should take Alex Rios or my eventual pick of Nick Markakis. When Grashow took Rios, I got to spend the next three minutes pining over Vernon Wells.

My reasoning for taking Wells? He's usually on Rich's team. Speaking of Colonel Rice, he had a very Pimpy draft. In fact, almost every team in the league seemed to draft guys that fit the persona of their team. Half-crazies like Manny, K-Rod, and Rickie Weeks wound up in Woosta. Young'ns Alex Gordon, Jeff Francoeur, and Matt Cain went to the Wipes. Adler kept things in Chi-town with Paul Konerko, Carlos Zambrano, and Bobby Jenks. Personally, I look at my roster and seen n'an guys that make me think "why did I draft that douchebag?" Can the same be said for Watts when he sees Joakim Soria? I leave that to him.

Some picks I loved...

  • Ryan Garko (Speedway, Round 22) - For some reason I got to see a lot of Garko games last year towards the end of the season. I think with a healthy and productive Hafner in front of him, Garko could put up some big power numbers. A good pick by Frieds as Garko would not have made it back to him in Round 23.
  • J.J. Putz (Baltimore, Round 8) - Had he not finished 2007 on Adler's team, there's a good chance he would have been a keeper somewhere else.
  • Brad Penny (Chicago, Round 17) - This dude carried my pitching staff last year, so I'm not sure why I let him slip this far. I have no problem with him playing in Chicago though, Penny would probably be 8-Ball's favorite player if he knew who Penny was.

... and some I thought were... well... bad.

  • Brian McCann (Keeper, Marshall Street) - I still don't get why Watts needed to keep two catchers. I realize McCann scored only two less points than Melky Cabrera last year, but with only one C-spot to fill, questionable health for all catchers, and Joe Mauer already in tow, I think Watts should have kept a guy like Chris Young (the hitter) and let someone else have McCann. I just think it would have been a more efficient roster move. But that's just me...
  • Chone Figgins (Round 11, New Haven) - I'm never going to like small-ball guys in this league. Never ever. "But JB, your team led ECB in Offense and steals last year, what are you talking about?" Shut up.
  • John Lackey (Round 12, LA of A) - Sorry Bob, but I have a bad feeling that Lackey's going to put up B.J. Ryan-esque numbers this year.

So if no one were to make any moves all year, who do I think would win? Hell if I know, but I'll tell you who I think will join me in the playoffs...

  • Chicago Tiger Army. Adler's hitting his stride with this league and he won the Frieds lottery this year. It'll be tough to screw up that lineup, but it's been done before.
  • Woosta Pimp Roostas. I'd be a fool to think that a team with Pujols, A-Rod, and Papi would miss the playoffs two years in a row.
  • Los Angeles Squatters of Anaheim. I don't think I'm the only owner who would like to see Bob's team make the playoffs. This team was really bad for years and Bob has stuck to his guns and put a lot of work into turning the franchise around.

4 comments:

Jon said...

I hear everyone loud and clear on McCann. I don't have an airtight explanation, but I do have one.

Let's start off with the fact that my team sucked last year. I had a hard time picking 5 keepers, I really did. Heck, I don't think Jeter might have made the cut on some of your superior squads from '07. So I looked at something I had that nobody else had. I hate depth, I'm all about "the best player", but I think because it was a truly unique thing, I went with it.

Here's another thing: Brian McCann is going to hit in the 5-spot. In this league of disliking the little guy (/little ball), there are only 90 3-4-5 hitters, and I got one of them. Plus he's a catcher, and Joe Mauer is going to be foolishly placed behind the plate far more than he should be.

Here's another thing--I used a Baseball Prospectus Player Forecast Manager (which spit out what they thought was the best pick at the time; the CG thing rises to levels of epic suckiness here, as BP--surprise surprise--doesn't even have it as an available category to plug in), and with our parameters (leaving out CG), it values saves really highly. And at that moment, Street was the clear, slam-dunk best player available. It didn't feel great, doing that, but I thought there were a lot of comparable players offensively at the time, and not many Streets left.

C'mon, JB, why the venom, I mean really? I made the draft, took the league far more seriously, and am going to make a run at making the playoffs (not gonna talk about winning).

Ryan said...

Agree with JB on the closer thing, but that's only a personal preference as I hate watching entire weeks go by with my closer not even getting a save chance, so I'm done wasting top 10 picks on any of them.

Disagree with JB on Brandon Phillips - he was sneaky good last year - better than Beej Upton, I think.

Agree with both on the catcher thing. Not ideal, but best choice available. As long as they're both good enough to occupy a UTIL slot, it's barely worse than keeping two shortstops.

Anonymous said...

I understand your pre-draft dilemma, Watts. I actually checked your roster after you announced your keepers to see where else you could have gone. The options were not good, as you have admitted. In about a week I'm sure people will come calling for catchers, so maybe you can spin it into something better.

I'm not disputing that Phillips is a solid ECB player, especially considering the lack of high-scoring MIs. I'm just saying that Ffej may have been better served with a solid middle-of-the-order hitter like Maggs, Markakis, or Morneau. That's just my opinion. Everyone is entitled to their own draft strategy...

If anyone wouldn't have kept Hanley and J-Roll given the opportunity, I would love to know why. There was n'an chance of either of those guys getting back to me at 8 had I let you vultures have a shot at them.

Ryan said...

Oh god no, I would never have dropped either SS in a million years. I'm just saying there's only one extra slot where you can play two SS as opposed to 2 C (the MI slot)

Mmmm, slots.