Draft Revisited Hi. My name is Lori and I have been allowing my life to get in the way of my fantasy team. If this were a fantasy anonymous meeting, now is when you would all respond, “Hi Lori.” So here is my confession: I have been working round the clock the past few months. I got an opportunity to do sports talk radio as a fill-in host with WFAN.
For those of you who don’t live in New York City, the FAN is the original sports talk radio station. They invented the format twenty years ago. It’s also the station that fired Imus, but that’s a topic for another day. So it’s been a great opportunity for me to do what I love, to talk sports for a living. They gave me shifts all summer on weekends, often working overnights from 2 am to 6 am.
But here is the rub. I also have a full-time public relations job. I’m sure most of you have demanding jobs so I expect no sympathy. I guess all of this is a pathetic attempt to explain away the poor showing of my fantasy baseball team this season.
I confess I have not been able to devote nearly as much time to the team as I wanted to. Okay, now is the part where I exhale and feel better. The first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem. And my resolution is to correct the problem. I will spend more time on my fantasy passion in the upcoming football season. And, with this baseball season a wash for me, I will start working with an eye for next season. With that in mind, I thought it was a good time to take a look at this season’s first round draft picks.
I was curious which first round picks panned out, and if there was a decent correlation between a great first round pick and success during the season. So here are the first round picks from NFFC Fantasy League 5, and also where they currently rank in overall player rating.
Draft Order NFBC Player Rating 1. Albert Pujols 53 2. Jose Reyes 3 3. Alex Rodriguez 1 4. Alfonso Soriano 44 5.Carl Crawford 10 6. Johan Santana 25 7. Chase Utley 48 8. Ryan Howard 42 9. Miguel Cabrera 40 10. Vladimir Guerrero 51 11. Carlos Beltran 21 12. Grady Sizemore 14 13. David Ortiz 29 14. Carlos Lee 37 15. David Wright 4 I drafted last in the first round with pick #15. I selected David Wright. To be frank, I was considering guys like Sizemore or Travis Hafner with the last pick in the round. I never thought that David Wright would drop to me. I confess to being a Mets fan, but I don’t think this was a homer pick.
Obviously, David Wright has had a terrific season. He joined the 30/30 club, hitting over 30 home runs and stealing more than 30 bases. He is only the third player in Mets history to accomplish that milestone, along with Howard Johnson and Darryl Strawberry. Turns out, David Wright was a good value pick. So there goes one of my excuses for why my team is bad.
Looking at the other players drafted in the first round, it’s not worth talking about ARod. He is having a season for the ages. I think it’s interesting that Jose Reyes is currently ranked third in fantasy ratings because he is not having nearly that good a season in “real” baseball terms. That’s an interesting lesson in perception versus reality. If you asked me which player would be rated higher, Jimmy Rollins or Reyes, I would have said Rollins unless I had looked at the fantasy ratings. Reyes just kills in terms of steals and runs scored. As for the other players on the list, the most noteworthy is Albert Pujols. Prince Albert was the popular choice for the overall #1 selection. He was the chalk pick. But he is also the lowest rated player of all first round draft choices in our league.
As for correlation between performance of first round pick and success during the fantasy season, there is not much of a relationship. The team ranked first in our league is Guess Who. He drafted sixth and selected Johan Santana. The second ranked team, Incredible Hulking Us, drafted fourth and chose Alfonso Soriano. And the third place team, TOWNIES, drafted third and picked ARod. By the way, those three teams are not only leading our league, they are all ranked in the top eight overall out of 375 teams in the NFBC. Not too shabby. Bottom line is that there is not much of a relationship between the success of your first round draft pick and the success of your fantasy baseball team. In football, a bad first round pick can kill you. In baseball, that’s simply not the case.
On a final note, I offer my condolences to all Milton Bradley owners. If you were counting on Mad Milty to help you finish in the money in your NFBC league, and had $5,000 riding on it, then I feel for you. I can honestly say I have never seen anything exactly like his meltdown in my years watching baseball. My advice to Bradley owners is to file a class action suit and see if you can recoup some of your winnings. Have a good off-season. And feel free to drop me an email at lori@creativesports.com.