Drafting with BABS right out of the box

In past years, having a fantasy baseball draft in January would seem a bit premature. Still, by now there would have been enough trades and free agent signings that we’d have at least a general sense of how MLB rosters are shaking out. These days, it’s far more complicated.

As Bryce Harper and Manny Machado continue to take their sweet time figuring out whether any person could comfortably survive on $300 million, a long string of dominoes remain poised to drop.

So we could go into a January draft attempting to speculate on how the dominoes will fall, meticulously configuring our draft lists for the optimal speculation. Or we could just jump in with both feet, use the best broad information available, and let the fates take us where they may.

BABS makes that easy.

On Tuesday, at the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (now, the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association – more on that soon) conference, the annual SiriusXM/FSTA experts league spent two hours running through the first 10 rounds of their draft. I used to have a seat at the table in this league but had dropped out when they limited the public draft to two hours. (It was tough to justify flying somewhere across the country for a partial draft.). However, Lawr Michaels tabbed me to co-draft his team before his death last month, and this year’s Tampa site was only a three-hour drive… so there I sat.

Should the Harper/Machado landing spots matter? Probably not. But a Dallas Keuchel in Philadelphia would be different then a Dallas Keuchel in San Diego. And Craig Kimbrel’s new home could displace a previously firm closer, so there were still some big questions that could have a big impact on a player’s draft value.

Given the uncertainty, I decided that it was not worth my time to predict the fallout and ripple effects. BABS gave me a good enough sense of broad value without worrying too much about roles. So I decided to take her to Tampa, pop open my spreadsheet and just use her right out of the box. No other prep. Just aim, and fire.

In this 14-team draft, I was seeded 12th, which is the spot I had chosen once #13 and #14 were grabbed up. As I’ve written before, I prefer the far wheel because having two of the top 15 picks is better than having two of the top 28 picks, and given our 32 percent hit rate in being able to even identify a season’s first round players, I prefer to have as many early shots as possible.

As I’ll be writing soon, the two scarcest commodities in the game today are 5-category bats and 200-IP/200-K arms. I believe you can cobble together the elements of those hitters over the course of a draft, but there were only eight 200/200 pitchers last year. So for the first time since I paid $35 for Randy Johnson in 2003 (and he went 6-8 with a 4.26 ERA), I decided to try to grab an arm in Round 1.

At #12, I figured that Max Scherzer would not fall to me (he went to the Baseball HQ team at #5 – ha!), but that was okay. BABS likes three other pitchers better. Chris Sale is BABS’ gold standard with a perfect (E+,K+) rating, but the (inj-) liability scared me off. Next on the list would be my target.

I’ve been a Mets fan since the first moon landing, but my home-town faves have rarely made it onto my roster over the years. I think it’s partially because the few stars that have passed through Flushing tend to get overpriced by the New York-leaning crowd I’m often drafting against. Also, I think that owning Mets has a negative influence on my objectivity.

Still, I really wanted Jacob deGrom (E+,KK) to drop to me. And given that his current NFBC ADP is #12, there was at least a chance.

He did.

Sale was snapped up next. Then at the wheel, Fantistics’ Anthony Perri eschewed the uncertainty of the times by picking both Manny Machado and Bryce Harper. After Paul Goldschmidt was chosen, it was back to me.

What did I say about 5-category players earlier? Pretty scarce, right? In BABS’ parlance, she sees them as triple-asset threats – positive ratings in all three of power, speed and batting effectiveness – and there are only 11 of them. Mookie Betts and Mike Trout are at the top of the list, but the third player is one who currently has an ADP of 19 – after lesser BABS picks like Francisco Lindor and Nolan Arenado.

So I was pleased when Trevor Story (P+,s,a) was there for me in Round 2. In truth, BABS sees Story pretty much on the same level as Jose Ramirez and Christian Yelich (both p,s,A+), who were long gone. She gives Story’s extreme power a bit more weight, but really, they are all in the same class of star-caliber player.

From that point on, my goal was to roster as much early speed as possible, knowing that there is a ton of power available late in the draft (there is a 25-HR player lurking in ADP Round 32, for what it’s worth) as long as I was willing to sacrifice some batting average, which I decided I was. But this draft was not about planning – it was about letting BABS make the decisions for me. BABS would be drafting the rest of this team.

The BABS spreadsheet is an excellent tool for this purpose. By plugging in the far end of an ADP target range, it immediately identifies players who might not be available if I let them pass. As my pick came up at the tail end of Round 3, I entered “70,” which ticked off all the players through the 5th round. A string of closers was on that list, but it was too early for that. The next reasonable name was Rhys Hoskins (P+,a).

I do not have any particular affection for Hoskins and his .250ish batting average, and he did not fit my focus on grabbing speed. But this was BABS’ draft; he became my 3rd rounder. Fearing that stolen bases might completely slip away if I didn’t intervene at least a little, I took Cody Bellinger (PW,SB) five picks later. But BABS drove me back to the (P+,a) group in Round 5, and I was not disappointed that Matt Carpenter was still there.

At this point, I wanted another starting pitcher. Twenty-two were off the board already, obliterating the “F”ull-timers from the top five asset groups. The marketplace and BABS are in lockstep here. In this changing climate, I wanted at least two starters who were nearly assured of 180 innings, so I dipped into the (e,KK) group to grab Jack Flaherty ahead of a slightly higher-skilled “M”id-timer like Charlie Morton (ER,k).

As players were drafted, I deleted their rows in the spreadsheet, allowing the remaining top-skilled players to bubble to the top. As the draft wound around to Round 7, there were two big names still sitting there waiting for me – Dee Gordon (S+,AV) and Justin Turner (PW,A+). Just beneath them was the nearly-as-juicy (S+,a) group. Long-gone Trea Turner had been the top ADP there, but Mallex Smith and Amed Rosario were still waiting.

Gordon got snapped up a few picks before mine, but my need for speed pushed me to temporarily pass on Justin Turner (and his INJ risk) and take Mallex Smith at pick 7.

I was going to take Turner next, but three of the four picks before mine were closers, making six drafted in all. Given the volatility of that role at this early date, BABS only rates 11 relievers as full-time (25-plus saves) closers. Sensing a run, I grabbed Brad Hand, who was only one of two remaining in the elite (E+,K+) group. Injury-prone Sean Doolittle was the other.

BABS wanted Amed Rosario (S+,a) in Round 9, which potentially gave me two one-dimensional speed-only players. I can rationalize the possible power/BA upsides of both he and Smith, but this was still a potential hole. Then I remembered that these players are just buckets of numbers for our purposes. Look at these two projections, from BaseballHQ.com:

Player           AB    R     HR   RBI    SB     BA
=============   ===   ===   ===   ===   ===   ====
Rhys Hoskins    549    90    38   103     4   .254
Mallex Smith    542    78     5    43    48   .282

If we combine these two lines, we get two roster spots that generate these numbers:

Player           AB    R     HR   RBI    SB     BA
=============   ===   ===   ===   ===   ===   ====
Hoskins Smith   545    84    21    73    26   .268

No current player projection comes close to that (Ian Desmond used to), but it’s potentially a 3rd-round caliber line – twice – drafted from two players with ADPs in the 4th and 7th rounds.

So, there’s that.

In the final pick of the live portion of the draft, covered by SiriusXM, I took Aaron Hicks (p,a). As the drafts proceeds, dual-asset commodities will dwindle so ya gotta get’ em while you can.

The rest of the festivities will be completed as a slow draft over the next few weeks. (You can follow along at https://rtsports.com/siriusxm.) More dominoes will likely fall during that time, and it’s also likely that we’ll have another database update as well, so it will be interesting to see how BABS’ handles her remaining picks.