Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Royals in fantasy baseball

I nabbed four Royals in my AL-only draft tonight, short of my goal of six but still not bad.

(Ten-team league, 7x7 (standard stats plus walks, OPS, holds and K/9), head-to-head format)
Rd. 1, 8th pick: B.J. Upton, 2B/OF
Rd. 6, 53rd pick: Alex Gordon, 1B/3B
Rd. 8, 73rd pick: Billy Butler, 1B/OF
Rd. 13, 128th pick: Jose Guillen, OF
Rd. 21, 208th pick: Alberto Callaspo, 2B/3B/SS/OF

I think Guillen in the 13th round is a legitimate value pick, and I'm very happy about getting both Gordon and Butler.

Yasuhiko Yabuta and Ron Mahay, both of whom I considered, went undrafted. I would've taken either one of them, except I have a reliever too many. As it stands, Brandon Morrow would be the first guy dropped for either Yabuta or Mahay.

Other Royals, and where they were went:

Rd. 7, 61st pick: Joakim Soria, RP
Rd. 10, 98th pick: Zack Greinke, SP
Rd. 11, 104th pick: Mark Teahen, OF
Rd. 11, 105th pick: David DeJesus, OF
Rd. 15, 146th pick: Gil Meche, SP
Rd. 16, 156th pick: Brian Bannister, SP
Rd. 19, 185th pick: John Buck, C
Rd. 20, 198th pick: Joey Gathright, OF
Rd. 21, 205th pick: Mark Grudzielanek, 2B
Rd. 22, 214th pick: Ross Gload, 1B

I'm a little surprised Bannister went so high, considering this is a K/9 league, but don't let anyone tell you the guy isn't popular, especially among the statistically-inclined crowd. I badly wanted to own Meche, except a friend of mine IMmed the guy picking two slots ahead of me and slipped him some insider info. My reaction of "noooooooooooooo," pounded out in the chat box, was repeated three times and with more O's, more profanity. That's 160 strikeouts in the 15th round of a deep league ("deep" is an understatement... Joey Gathright and Ross Gload are both owned, for crying out loud).

One more note: as I was actually trying to draft Royals players, I was pretty surprised to find that I don't actually own the most Royals. Someone else also has four (DeJesus, Bannister, Buck and Grudzielanek).

I'm not certain I can make this argument yet -- I'd need to break it down more -- but I think it's a decent sign that all told, there were 14 Royals taken in a 214-pick draft. If you're wondering, that's slightly below average (an even distribution would have 15.3 players from each AL team), but you have to take into account that teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Tigers are overly represented (to give you an idea: Edwar Ramirez is owned, as is Fernando Rodney, who's on the DL, and Joel Zumaya, who's also on the DL). I know for a fact that 14 Twins didn't get drafted.

The first round broke down this way, in case you were wondering (and if you want to make fun of my Upton pick): Alex Rodriguez, Miguel Cabrera, Carl Crawford, David Ortiz, Curtis Granderson, Grady Sizemore, Ichiro Suzuki, Upton, Magglio Ordonez, Victor Martinez.

POSTSCRIPT: Few links to pass along: first this, a Billy Butler feature -- the Legend of Billy (the Kid), indeed (HT to The Dugout).

And... if you haven't been reading Rany on the Royals, why not? This post explains the current economics of baseball in a way you won't find many other places, and this tells you what we've always known: that the K is a darn fine place to watch baseball. Everything else on that site is worth checking out as well.

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