I have been playing fantasy baseball for 15 years, but up until recently, it was mostly beating up on friends, co-workers, or complete strangers on the internet. And, to be honest, occasionally I was the one taking the beatings.
I play in a variety of leagues - roto and points, dynasty, keeper, redraft, and best balls, but last year my favorite fantasy baseball format by far was created - The Dynasty Baseball Championship, or TDBC. The basic summary is that it is a dynasty best ball with 50 man rosters that run over five years with yearly and overall prizes with various buy-in levels. Every year of the five-year window has a 10-round supplemental draft and then a 10 man cut-down. You can check out the full details here and/or listen to Smada and Eddy Almaguer discuss it in podcast form here.
TDBC Year 1
In the first year of TDBC (2020), I jumped in late, but still got into four leagues. And boy did I learn some lessons in my first draft. Seeing how others drafted and then evaluating my team post-draft was a real eye-opener. I had a lot of adjustments to make.
Lesson 1 - Get enough hitters and pitchers to score on a weekly basis - 10 hitters and 9 pitchers count for your point totals every week.
Lesson 2 - Get more relievers than you think you need, even if they aren’t in late inning roles. Getting those extra incremental points and then the surprise points through the random win or save from these guys were more important than I realized.
Lesson 3 - Be careful with drafting too many prospects with ETAs more than a year or two out - this could be a lesson I have to unlearn as we get closer to the end of these leagues, but we got a lot of guys that came up to provide points last year, unexpected or not, that likely helped push them into winning or close to winning positions. And those were guys with near-term ETAs.
TDBC Year 2
All of that is the preamble for how excited I was to get into the first 2021 TDBC drafts happening just after the end of the 2020 season. I smartly avoided the first draft which contained at the very least Smada, Ralph Lifshitz, and Joe Drake and joined the $50 30 team League 2. I still somehow ended up with the 2020 NFBC Draft Champion, Rob DiPietro (@deadpullhitter on Twitter), among others in my league, but it’s hard to avoid all the sharks in a 30-team league. I did my best to advertise what easy money this league was by sending out this tweet:
Draft Recap
I am going to recap my first five picks, a couple of highlights further down, and then my overarching thoughts on my overall roster and approach.
We began drafting the league on Nov. 1 and I was picking 11th overall - not exactly where I wanted to be, but it could easily have been worse.
Round 1
Trevor Story - With the 11th overall pick, I debated between Trevor Story, Trea Turner, and Gerrit Cole. While it seems like redraft fantasy is heavily trending towards taking pitching early, I still feel like hitter is where I am going in round 1 other than deGrom in the 5 - 10 range in both redraft and dynasty. I decided to go Story with this pick, but I think 5 times out of 10 I go Turner here. It’s literally a coin flip for me. (Cole went next at 12th overall and Turner went 18th overall)
Round 2
Tim Anderson - After seeing Nolan Arenado falling like a rock and irrationally getting my hopes up that he would make it to pick 50, he went off the board four picks early at 46 overall. Not having a solid backup plan here, I was going back and forth between Tim Anderson and Yu Darvish. I decided to go Anderson and plan to take either Clayton Kershaw or Zach Plesac in round 3. Narrator Voice: He should have drafted Yu Darvish.
Round 3
Michael Conforto - Welp, neither Kershaw nor Plesac made it back to me at pick 71. Oops. Kershaw went at 67 and Plesac went 70 - ouch. Panic set in again and I did not like any pitchers on the board at that price point (Sixto, May, Paddack, Berrios, Soroka, Urias, etc.). I went back to the hitters and grabbed Conforto, someone I have always believed in and the 2020 breakout gave me a reason to grab him higher than I ever have in the past.
Round 4
Kyle Hendricks - At this point, I needed to get a starting rotation anchor at pick 110, if one even existed. Strasburg, Scherzer, Lynn, and Sonny Gray were all on the board as it turned the corner to the fourth round. I would have been pretty happy with any of those four, but 18 pitchers came off the board before it made it back to me, including that quartet I was targeting. Looking for a floor pitcher here to baseline my pitching stats, I went with Kyle Hendricks (I may have set the high pick mark on him in 2020 TDBC to a fair amount of ridicule in our league discord channel). Probably a bit high, but I valued the floor here more than the ceiling given how much risk would come with the majority of pitchers remaining on the board.
Round 5
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. - With pick 131, I was surprised to see Lourdes Gurriel Jr. still on the board. I really should have gone pitcher again with Civale, McCullers, Hader, Corbin, Carrasco, and Montas all available and at the top of my pitcher queue. But I have heart eyes for Gurriel Jr. and couldn’t resist clicking the Fantrax draft button on his player profile.
Favorite Picks after Round 5
Mike Yastrzemski - Round 7 pick 191 - even if he costs than 100+ picks more than he did in last year’s TDBC, I still think this is great value. A 2019 breakout, he backed it up in 2020 in every single category ending with a 160 wRC+, increasing his walk rate from 7.8% to 13.3%, decreasing his K%, and finishing with a .297/.400/.568 triple slash.
DL Hall - Round 10 pick 290 - a LHP on the cusp in the prospect pitching rich Orioles organization, with almost no one blocking his path to a future starting role, he throws gas along with three quality to plus off-speed offerings. I have a hard time containing my excitement for his potential ceiling.
Favorite Pick after Round 40
Connor Cannon - Round 45 pick 1331 - A high risk high reward choice and a bit of a Giants fandom selection, if the DH comes to the NL or he gets traded to the AL, Cannon has 80 grade raw power and that is something I am happy to roll the dice on this deep into a draft.
Summary
From a roster construction standpoint, I was targeting two things: A balanced roster between hitters and pitchers, which I accomplished on the dot with 25 hitters and 25 pitchers. More importantly, I was attempting to get 15 hitters and 15 pitchers that were likely to get MLB playing time in 2021. I feel like I hit the mark here as well, with 15 to 16 hitters and 14 to 15 pitchers falling in that category. Myles Straw, Chas McCormick, Tony Kemp, Tim Lopes, and Hanser Alberto at this point all stand to prove this assumption wrong on the hitter side. On the pitcher side, Miguel Yajure is the main one I have ticketed for the “MLB innings assumption” that could prove me wrong.
On the other hand, there are 20 prospects I have on the roster where just a couple jumping into big league roles could give me the needed push to cover any potential gaps in the early portion of the 5 year window. Hopefully I have the Luis Garcias and the Brady Singers of the world lurking on my roster.
The Verdict
I am pretty happy with my hitting, but it came at the expense of my pitching. Having a staff with Kyle Hendricks, Justus Sheffield, and Brusdar Graterol at the top is not ideal (that’s an understatement). If I had taken Darvish over Tim Anderson in Round 2, I would likely feel a LOT better about my team. I have a fair amount of relief pitching accumulators and a couple of prospect pitchers that I am hoping can make the jump to bolster my staff like DL Hall and Jhoan Duran, but I feel like Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumber in regard to my chances of success in this league.
As with last year, I learned a lot in my first TDBC draft that I will apply to future 2021 TDBC drafts. When all is said and done, I will likely look back on this draft as my worst team, but worth it for the experience gained. And I will make sure to tweet out when I join my next TDBC draft so you can come get the easy money and beat the baseball card guy.
If you want to see my tweet thread of each draft pick as it happened, start with the first one here:
And here is the final roster for my team:
Pitchers (Round/Overall)
Kyle Hendricks (4/110)
Justus Sheffield (6/170)
DL Hall (10/290)
Brusdar Graterol (11/311)
Cade Cavalli (15/431)
Jhoan Duran (16/470)
Miguel Yajure (18/530)
Alek Manoah (19/551)
Steven Brault (20/590)
Zack Thompson (23/671)
Rafael Dolis (25/731)
Thomas Szapucki (26/770)
Scott Barlow (27/791)
Ryan Rolison (28/830)
Jose Alvarado (32/950)
Jorge Alcala (36/1070)
Michael Grove (40/1190)
Jasseel de la Cruz (41/1211)
Trevor McDonald (43/1271)
Camilo Doval (44/1310)
Caleb Thielbar (46/1370)
Kyle Finnegan (47/1391)
Justin Topa (48/1430)
Joe Kelly (49/1451)
Keegan Thompson (50/1490)
Hitters (Round/Overall)
Trevor Story (1/11)
Tim Anderson (2/50)
Michael Conforto (3/71)
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (5/131)
Mike Yastrzemski (7/191)
Gio Urshela (8/230)
Austin Hays (9/251)
Luis Garcia (WSH) (12/350)
Edwin Rios (13/371)
Hanser Alberto (14/410)
Isiah Kiner-Falefa (17/491)
Michael Busch (21/611)
Bryson Stott (22/650)
Myles Straw (24/710)
Chas McCormick (29/851)
Tony Kemp (30/890)
Tim Lopes (31/911)
Travis Blankenhorn (33/971)
Austin Shenton (34/1010)
Jerar Encarnacion (35/1031)
Ezequiel Duran (37/1091)
Chase Strumpf (38/1130)
Cole Roederer (39/1151)
Tyler Callihan (42/1250)
Connor Cannon (45/1331)