Add to the underrated team:

Cano (NFBC ADP 33) - should be in the top 20.

DJ LeMahieu (88) - I know its primarily batting average but still. And hes got some SB upside.

Marcus Semien (200) - gets no love and I am not sure why. I realize he hit .240 but he was 30+ points below his career BABIP, hit 27 homers and stole 10 bases at SS. Oakland seems to not give two craps about defense so he should stay on the field.

Cano went 23rd in my mock, and avg spot around 24. Weird that NFBC is slightly lower on him, but they tend to value huge upside more so not surprising.

DJ went 56th in my mock which is definitely early, averaging 65th, but Pedroia falling to 129 is crazy low.

Semien definitely is too low, but he's always too low/overlooked, a good fallback at SS.

Agree on Pedroia 100%, I think he can provide more value than Kinsler and Kipnis who are both being drafted well ahead of him. Basically the same player as DJ except I think DJ might hit 5-10 points higher (variance at that point) and can more reliably steal 10+ bases

6x6 with OBP and Holds.

Last keeper is between

$22 Posey who can be kept for two more years ( I have no other C )
$1 Carrasco who can be kept for two more years ( My only pitcher keeper thus far)
$15 Hanram who can be kept for 4 more years

Keepers are max 4 years, 10% over $10. For under $10, goes $1, 2$, $7, $8.

Same league that I have Donaldson, springer, altuve, arenado, JD mart, Pollock, and Machado all for $10 or under.

Obviously will be trying to package these three guys for another stud but thoughts? I really hate posey, hanram could be in for a big year in boston with that lineup?

Don't see how you can pass Carrasco at $1

That's what I was thinking, although posey would really round out my hitting nicely.

The $22 for Posey and $15 for Hanley seem to be about market value (maybe they go for a few more bucks given inflation).

Agree with Donk its gotta be Carrasco there

Especially when you're already keeping 7 hitters, 4 of which are 1st rounders, you're gonna need pitching, it's a good start

To piggy back off this: say kershaw gets thrown back into the daft (he's $40 to keep in his final year) and I've got $200 out of $260 after keepers, how much am I spending to land him? $50?

Think it depends on what other SP's are "thrown back". If it's Kershaw, but none of the other top 10, I'd likely go 50, maybe more (and doubt you'll need to go that high). If there's a lot of top 10, I'd be more laid back and trying to get a couple

Strass
Kershaw
Price
Cole
Madbum
Lester
Scherzer

Should all be available, scherzer went for $44 last year FYI. Might try and get Scherzer and bum

Keep Carrasco, and in your situation I would get 2 of Kershaw, Max, Bum at basically any cost. Thats the whole point of stacking up dirt cheap stud keepers.
And then I'd spend another ~$40 to fill out the rotation. That will still give you $70-80 for your last few starti g hitters and RP corps. Throw in a couple $1 bench fliers and you're set. No reason to follow the traditional 70/30 hitting/pitching split in this situation.
Obv do NOT leave any money on the table in your draft.

Don't think that's a little overkill to get both scherzer and kershaw for 90-100? I really wanted to grab marte (since I'm light on steals) to round out my OF.

And in this league we have 5 RP slots and 4 SP slots. I've always found it better to just get 5 $1 holds guys and punt saves in these types of leagues cause most people hover around 10-14 total roto points for both saves and holds points. Thoughts on this strategy?

I dont think its overkill at all. No better way to build a dominant rotation imo


Didn't realize its roto - in that case you won't need as much SP depth as I thought and top end starters are even more important since basically all pitching stats become rate stats. How much do you think Marte will go for? $25ish or do you think more in this league? I think you could probably land him even spending spending 80-90 on your top two SP and still have enough left to get a pretty solid bat all your other spots.

Not a big fan of outright punting any stats in roto, but its more appealing in 6x6 than 5x5. If you think you can guarantee yourself 12-14 points in holds then it's probably a good play. You can always stumble into a few closers throughout the season and maybe het acouple roto points in saves as well. And spending only $5-8 on your RP is pretty nice.

Got it, so focus on a few elite pitchers + Carrasco, then go for the $1-3 sleeper types later to round it out?
Marte will probably go for 45-50 if I had to guess. Not expecting any top bats to be thrown back because I have almost all of them lol. Trout, E5, miggy, marte will probably be the top 4 available off the top of my head.

So let's say that's $150 on 3 players, I'd have $46 to spend on a catcher, 1B, 2b/ss, and two utilities on offense and the rest of my starters and relievers.

If I only went after holds guys I would def get 11 or 12 points from that, and once teams start rebuilding for next season I could probably get 2 or 3 from saves. It just doesn't seem worth it to me to spend 50 in the draft on two elite closers and an elite holds guy or two when I'd be giving up 2-3 points at most if I get lucky and happen to pick the closer who gets 50 saves.

Hmm, if Marte goes for anywhere close to $50 I might look elsewhere. That seems awfully expensive. In my 12 teamer with $300 cap hes gone for $24 and $28 the past 2 years so I thought he might be around that price. But we have fewer keepers so less auction inflation.
Anyway I wouldn't get too too focused on Marte specifically. Altuve and Pollock are a pretty solid foundation for steals, and with your keeper hitters you can get away with using a guy like Jankowski, Perez, Dyson, Rajai, or Nunez in a UT slot. At catcher a guy like Realmuto can help with his sneaky steals and hes cheap and wont kill you anywhere.
Just look at last years league totals and see how many steals it took to get 10 roto points (or whatever number youre looking for) and use projections to plan accordingly.


Not sure if you'd have to spend 50 per player on your top 3, but however you do it your team should end up totally stacked. If you get Kershaw and Bum for 90, and then a $30 bat you're in terrific shape

It's certainly possible I'm overstating the coors edge, but considering you guys are saying 20-25 homers instead of a floor of 25 homers I'm certain you guys are underestimating it

There was 1 regular in the Rockies lineup who hit worse than .310 at home. Lemahieu of all people hit 7 homers in Colorado

Desmond averaged 22 homers a year his last 4 years in Washington playing in a cavern. He's hitting 5th in a loaded lineup in front of him with a potentially loaded lineup behind him. He's in a prime spot to put up godlike numbers

Also the list of 1bs who can go 90/25/90/25 this season are:

Goldy
Myers

I'm confident with him as a first round ADP in a correct ranking

Just want to remind people that Fangraphs has an awesome auction value calculator that it totally customizable for almost any league settings.
http://www.fangraphs.com/auctiontool.aspx
For people who are not familiar with the tool here are a couple tips for H2H that have given me pretty good results

- for SP and RP enter the numbers that you will actually roster, and not the number of starting slots your league uses. For example if you have 5 SP slots, but most teams carry 8 SP, then enter 8 as the number of SP. Same for RPs.

- And if your league uses only the generic P designation, and not SP + RP, still enter how many SP and RP are typically rostered by each team, rather than enter a number in the P slot.

- Bench spots...
once you have entered all the numbers for hitting positions, add up your starting hitters + however many pitchers you entered. Subtract that total from your total number of roster spots to get an effective number of bench spots.
Enter "0" for bench and then in the budget slot, subtract $1 from your auction budget for each effective bench slot. Ive found this reflects valies much more accurately than using your leagues actual number of bemch slots (remember, you want to spend the vast majority of your budget on starting players, and almost nothing on your bench hitters)

- if your league uses Saves+Holds only choose saves as a category, not both. Then use the little box underneath "Starts to Qualify at a Position" in order to artificially decrease the value of RPs. I use 35% but it could be more in your league. This does a good job of more accurately valuing closers, and then I just mentally calculate the value of Middle Relief/Setup holds guys by valuing them at about 75% of a comparable closer (as in comparable ratios and K totals) to compensate for the fact that closers generally get more saves, than setup guys get holds. But thats just to gauge value; don't actually pay tjat much in the auction. keel in mind that in Saves+Holds leagues elite set up men are almost always severely umdervalued, and closers are waaay overvalued.


Not sure how well all the above stuff works in roto leagues. Inning cap is one thing. And It's definitely a bit different than H2H because you are using far fewer pitchers on average and your bench hitters are much more important in roto (in order to max out games played per position)

1. Myers has only recorded over 370 PA's once in the past 3 years.

2. Last year he did better than that line you just posted (he went 99/94/28/28 , and according to Yahoo still finished outside the top 40 overall. Playing for SD crushes his R and RBI value. The top ~20 hitters either accumulate 220+ R+RBI (he has no chance at this with that lineup) or post Myers-like R+RBI with a .300+ average, or post truly elite totals in either HR or SB along with a similar line to Myers everywhere else.


I smell a prop bet...

It feels incredibly unlikely Myers is going to steal 28 bases again.

Glad you mentioned the Padres lineup cuz I had forgotten to mention renfroe and Dickerson as guys I was big on this year

Yahoo's ranking algorithm gives an unreasonable amount of weight to average, which would be reasonable in Myers' case if he had an average below .240 that was actively hurting you but he doesn't. Ya, he's not great as far as average but he's average to above average while putting Brantley prime numbers everywhere else (sidenote: if he's healthy (lol) Brantley is going to be the steal of the draft)

Another thing the ranking doesn't factor which you should factor is again, positional scarcity relative to steals. A 1b that gets you 20 steals puts you in tremendous shape to lead your league in steals being as how that and catcher (a reason why realmuto will be underrated relative to his ranking/ADP) are devoid of speed. Maybe Myers doesn't get 28 steals. Maybe he only gets 20. That still puts him with goldy as the only 1bs doing it. It makes building a team much easier having an asset like that

Myers was a top 20-25 hitter last year (at least per FG). I think everything Myers did with the bat (putting aside the SB for a minute), even 90+ R/RBI is repeatable. Nothing seems too out of line with what we thought Myers could be and if you adjust some of his crap seasons for injury. The Padres lineup actually has some upside all over the place to get him the counting numbers. Their problem is they have a historically LOL rotation.

I can't take him before pick 40 because you'd need him to steal 20+ to justify that price, but anything after that seems ok to me

I too am on Team cs3's plan of paying $100 for Kershaw and Scherzer. If you have 8 stud keepers costing you $60-$70 or whatever it is, don't eff around. You can have a few donkeys or one-trick ponies on offense to get you the numbers you need, and with Kershaw/Scherzer/Carrasco at the top of your pitching staff I would just ignore all the sexy upside guys. Just get reliable dudes to give you innings, some Ks and wins.

Just too many good cheap SB options to grab since you have such a huge hitting foundation imo.

The main problem I have is he seems to have been going downhill from 2013->2014->2015, and started very hot in 2016 and fell off a cliff in 2016. Will he hit 25 HR in Colorado? Probably, but I also expect a .250 average