BABS comes to Music City

The industry’s annual “first pitch” of the fantasy baseball season is the Fantasy Sports Trade Association’s (FSTA) experts league draft. This year it was held at their winter conference in Nashville.

This was the second time that I’ve taken BABS with me to this league’s draft. Last year, a yet-to-be-fully-realized BABS took me to a third place finish, no thanks to second-rounder Dee Gordon’s brush with the PED-police. It was also the experience that helped support my contention that there is power drafting from the wheel.

When it came to draft-slotting, I was not as lucky this year. I ended up at No. 11 in this 13-team league – which is not horrible – but not optimal. Defending champion Ray Murphy of BaseballHQ.com chose the No. 13 wheel pick this year, I’m sure in part due to him reading my Baseball Forecaster book… that he edits.

But BABS was more of a fully-formed entity this year, which helped me construct a stronger master plan. Although I like to keep things simple (but structured), I created a separate target list to use in tandem with the master balance sheet.

This target list included all the players I’d be happy to draft in each round, including those at par value as well as those who I planned to push up a round from their ADP.

Those “push” players almost always had a BABS value that was far higher. In other words, a player with a 10th round ADP would be pushed into my 9th round target list if his BABS value was 8th round or earlier.

Some of the players that fit this criteria included Matt Carpenter (potential 2nd round value, 6th round ADP, targeted for the 5th round), Kris Davis (4,8,7) and Evan Longoria (5,9,8). I would only get one of these guys, but the list of BABS profit targets was long.

This target list was over 100 players deep and included at least a half dozen names at every position, stretching from early to late rounds. There were 25 outfielders, stretching from round 2 to outer limits of the reserve rounds. It provided safety nets everywhere in case I got closed out of earlier picks. And for those positions where there could be runs, I even included players outside my comfort zone… nine frontline closers, six backups and another handful of backup backups.

For demonstration purposes only, here was my target list (PDF). At one point before the draft, I had the fleeting thought that I could draft exclusively off this list. Against lesser caliber competition, I might have, but not against some of the top baseball analysts in the industry. So I decided to use this list as just a support tool.

In the end, 19 of my 29 players came from the list – 13 of 16 batters and six of 12 pitchers. Had I drafted exclusively from the list, I would have missed some very important picks. So don’t do it.

For a 13-team league, I used the 12-team mixed BABS targets. The first thing I noticed during the planning process was that it seemed like there is risk everywhere. With the burgeoning disabled list and the exploding number of young, inexperienced players expected to have full-time roles, it would be tough to avoid all the “INJ” and “EX” Liabilities. I was doing pretty well in the early-going, but the end-game was littered with liability landmines. I did the best I could.

Here is the complete draft board.

Here are my results:

adp	draft	BATTERS	Pos	Tm	PT	Pw	Sp	Av		Inj	Ex
8	5	Contreras,Willson	2o7	CHC	F	PW		AV			EX
18	15	Murphy,Tom	2	COL	M	P+		a			EX
3	2	Votto,Joey	3	CIN	F	P+		A+
16	14	Castellanos,Nick	5	DET	F	PW		a		INJ
13	12	Belt,Brandon	3	SF	F	P+		a
4	3	Gordon,Dee	4	MIA	F		S+	a
15	13	Swanson,Dansby	6	ATL	F		SB	a			EX
7	6	LeMahieu,DJ	4	COL	F		SB	A+
2	1	Blackmon,Charlie	8o	COL	F	p	s	AV		inj-
8	7	Davis,Khristopher	o70	OAK	F	P+		a
12	9	Tomas,Yasmany	o97	ARI	F	PW		AV
21	17	Drury,Brandon	o795	ARI	F	p		AV		INJ	e
24	21	Owings,Christopher	68o	ARI	F		S+	a		INJ
18	20	Gyorko,Jedd	456	STL	F	PW
		Targets	12 Mixed		14	14	8	14		3	3
		PITCHERS	Pos	Tm	PT	Er	K	Sv		Inj	Ex
4	4	Price,David	SP	BOS	F	ER	KK
6	8	Hendricks,Kyle	SP	CHC	F	ER	k
11	11	Fulmer,Michael	SP	DET	F	e	k				e
18	16	Nola,Aaron	SP	PHI	M	e	k			INJ	e
18	18	Smyly,Drew	SP	SEA	M		k			inj-
25	22	Weaver,Luke	SP	STL	M	e	KK				EX
32	23	Wood,Alex	SP	LA	M	ER	k			INJ
8	10	Giles,Kenneth	rp	HOU		ER	K+	SV
19	19	Bedrosian,Cam	rp	LAA		ER	KK	sv-		INJ	e
		Targets	12 Mixed		6/3	7	7	3		2	2
26	24	Lynn,Lance	SP	STL	M	e	k			INJ
31	25	Pearce,Steve	3	TOR	M	PW		AV			INJ
23	26	Reed,Addison	rp	NYM		ER	KK
26	27	Liriano,Francisco	SP	TOR	M	e	KK
26	28	Revere,Ben	o87	LAA	M		SB	AV		–	inj-
	29	Jae-Gyun Hwang	5	SF

BABS Targets

How did I fare relative to the targets?

I needed 14 full-time batters; I rostered 13. Catchers are tough.

I needed 14 power hitters. I covered here, thanks to four P+ bats, but that only served to offset the four players who will be voids in that department. BABS is about balance, and while I have some nice extreme skills here, if one P+ hitter gets hurt, that essentially zeroes out power in two positions.

I needed eight speedsters; I covered seven, thanks to two S+ runners. More imbalance here.

I needed 14 Batting Effectiveness units; I drafted the equivalent of 15. My first three picks gave me a nice core, I think.

I needed six starting pitchers; I drafted seven, including three 180-plus inning arms. I needed seven Pitching Effectiveness and Strikeout units; I drafted six and seven, respectively. From a skills standpoint, I’m satisfied.

I am happy with Giles as my first closer but waited too long for my second one. Bedrosian is a good speculation but no sure thing. I grabbed Addison Reed on reserve to at least provide some April saves assuming that Jeurys Familia gets suspended. There will be work to do here.

As I expected, budgeting risk was a challenge. I exceeded all the target maximums on the Liabilities side, for both batters and pitchers. The back-end of the pitching staff is a mess. But the nice thing about BABS is that she gives me an immediate view into this team’s strengths and weaknesses.

So I saw this all coming – before the draft as well as during. I tried to mitigate the inevitability of my situation by embracing it. I grabbed a few players who I know will likely open the season on the DL; that was deliberate. With a draft this early, it will be good to open up a few roster spots for some undrafted players who earn jobs in March. The first FAAB period is Opening Weekend. Lemons into potential lemonade.

Challenges

The ranking of the Assets Groups is a work in progress that I will continue to tweak. The biggest area of weakness right now is that high-skilled mid-time starting pitchers are falling too far. I’d rather draft a multi-asset Sean Manaea in the hopes that he’ll find his way to 180-plus innings as opposed to a guaranteed 180-IP, single-asset lesser arm like Collin McHugh. So the next BABS update will address that.

Final point… You’ll notice that most of my picks seem to be “reaches” as compared to the ADPs. I blame bad ADPs (with tongue planted firmly in cheek). But seriously, this was an astute group of analysts in the draft room and the current ADPs are based on fewer than a dozen early drafts, so there may be some truth to the tongue.

However, there is a bigger picture. ADPs provide only half the story when it comes to uncovering profit potential. An interesting exercise is to compare the draft results to the BABS master list to see exactly where players were selected. Group the players in the master list into “rounds,” according to your league size. Then see where your picks came from. Here are mine:

BABS Rd         Players selected
1                                  1
2                                  1
3                                  3
4                                  3
5                                  3
6                                  1
7                                  0
8                                  2
9-11                            0
12                               1
13                               2
14-15                         0
16                               2
17                               2
18                               2
19-20                         0
21                               1
22                               2

The remaining three players came from outside Round 30, as speculations.

The good news here is that I selected 12 players from the first six BABS “rounds.” Getting the equivalent of two picks per round is a win.

Now all they have to do is perform.