Team Name: Jumanji!
Owner Name: Trace Wood
Home State: Oceanside, CA
Baseball Web Site: Longgandhi.com
Personal Bio
I'm Trace Wood, and my website is Longgandhi.com. It's not a fantasy baseball site per se, but I believe there's a lot of information there that is useful for fantasy players.

Pre-Draft Strategy
I've never played a fantasy game like this one before. I've played mostly standard roto and ultra, but I have enjoyed playing head-to-head and simulation games before. I don't have much to go on here except theory. But I looked at the data and here's what I found:

First baseman are the most overrated commodity in the game. Of the top 100 point producers last year, 11 were first baseman. 3 in the NL, 8 in the AL. With only 10 teams in the league, it's pretty easy to get a good first baseman without much sweat. Even then, the best first baseman last year using this point system, T. Helton, Col, scored just 734 points, more than 200 points less than the most valuable player in the game. And that was Helton having a career year. The average "elite" first baseman scored around 600 points, only about 150 points better than an average first baseman. So it should be possible to get a quality player at the position after round 5.

Catchers, third baseman and shortstops were quite valuable. Those 3 positions combined for just 9 spots in the top 100. And the difference between the elite players at these positions and the average players is quite significant: A. Rodriguez, Tex was close to 300 points better than M. Bordick, Bal.

Starting pitchers who post good strikeout totals have the greatest potential. Thirteen starting pitchers posted 600+ totals last year. No other position had more than 6 such players.

However, it seems that more new starting pitchers and outfielders showed up in the top 100 by percentage than any other position, so there seems to be a great deal of volatility in those positions from year to year.
My conclusion: it's most important to use the early rounds to fill the SS, C and 3B spots with top players and find your sleepers in SP and OF. And although it'd be nice to grab P. Martinez, Bos or R. Johnson, Ari, I don't believe it's a requisite for having a dominating pitching staff. In fact, there are a number of really good young starters that have tremendous potential, who have been used conservatively to minimize injury risk, that should be available through round 15.

Drafting #3 is not really where I'd like to be, but it's not bad. There's a big drop-off in production after the top 2, and another one after #7 spot. But only 9 points separate #8 to #14. So I think it's better to get 2 of the top 14 than to get 1 of the top 5, unless you're drafting #1 or #2. Regardless, after the 3rd round, I'm not sure it matters much.

As for my sleepers and overall strategy, I'm calling my effort the "Ellis Burks plan", as I plan on focusing on high talent guys, especially starting pitchers and outfielders, who are considered high risk because of injury histories. The reason I think this strategy will be effective is 1) if they stay healthy, they'll produce monster numbers, and 2) if they don't, they won't be clogging roster spots and using up games with crummy ones as they'll be DL-ed.

In addition, I'll try to grab guys who have not yet lived up to their minor league hype and ones who look to haven't produced a whole lot because of AB constraints, but who now have an opportunity for an expanded role. Conversely, I'm gonna try to avoid players who seemingly came out of nowhere last year, especially young pitchers who had very high workloads, like R. Dempster, Fla, as they are more prone to injury and decreased effectiveness. And if my plan fails, I'll simply rename it the "Benji Gil plan".

Post-Draft Analysis
Did you get the team you envisioned?
All in all, I really like how my team came out. Basically all I wanted to do with the draft is come away with a very good hitting team and a good number of pitchers with a lot of upside. I feel comfortable that I did.

What worked and didn't work in your strategy?
I wasn't able to draft as many recovering injured players as I would have liked - largely because other people were taking the guys I wanted before I could get to them - but I still think I got plenty of good value. I modified how I evaluated hitters, due to the anticipated effect of the new strikezone, but I don't think that radically changed who I wanted or who I eventually got. Except for maybe a couple of picks, I don't think I would have done anything differently.

What were your best picks?
I think my best picks came in rounds 9 and 10 when I got J. Rocker, Atl and B. Wagner, Hou. Both of those guys are 3rd or 4th round talents and for them to be available after I had assembled my infield and a good portion of my outfield was mana from heaven.

What were your worst picks?
I'm not as thrilled with my G. Rusch, NYN pick in round 15. He's a good pitcher, and might be the Mets second best starter this year, but picking him when I did cost me a chance at acquiring 1 of 3 really good young hitters who were gone by my next pick.

Who did you forget about?
I didn't get some of the players I really wanted, but it wasn't because I had forgotten about them. I simply didn't expect them to be so high on other people's list.

Who were your sleepers?
Of the guys I did get, [Kerry] Wood, [Matt] Morris, [Vinny] Castilla and [AJ] Burnett have the highest upside compared to what is commonly predicted for them.

What was the strangest pick you saw?
I can't say that I saw any really strange picks, although seeing D. Jeter, NYA going 4th overall and J. Cirillo, Col going in the second round did catch me off guard.

If you could swap teams with one person, who would it be?
Like I said, I really like my team. I have a lot of guys who are good, but are young enough to get even better (V. Guerrero, Mon; J. Vidro, Mon; K. Wood, ChiN; J. Morris, StL; J. Rocker, Atl; B. Abreu, Phil; J. Vazquez, Mon; ...A-Rod). And I think I picked up enough veterans to provide some stability.
If I had to choose another team, I'd probably go with Sean's squad (Basbeall HQ) as they seem to be built similarly to mine. My second choice would be the Creative Sports squad, largely because they took more of my sleeper picks than anyone. :^)