nope not in it, gl

Yes, although you have to watch matchups since some teams dont draft/start SP's and just use RP's

Man I need to start drafting some YPros.
How many you guys doing this year?
Anyone going to break SRMs record?

no way in hell i'm breaking SRM's record, but at least doing 10 again this year

bump, potentially looking for one more owner. If you were to step in you would be inheriting a LOT of premium talent across all 3 sports. see below

If you are interested or have questions about the roster/rules please PM me and danvh. Cheers guys

Been doing a lot of Yahoo mocks this weekend and I'm liking the way things seem to be playing out. Seems to be tons of (hitting) talent at the back end and undrafted. I love the teams I have been getting. Of course they would be reviled here since I have an other than main stream strategy I especially like being at the end (10th, 11th or 12th) rather than being early or in the middle.

I join free public leagues on ESPN when I want to practice my drafting for my important leagues.

I make sure to get mostly different players, because there's that many guys I feel like I need to own in some capacity or I'm missing out when they break out

I did 5 a week ago... one of my 2 important drafts is tomorrow.

Couldn't help myself and drafted 2 more, now I'll be in 2 important leagues and 7 free public leagues. I'll be playing them all out.

Now I can draft the guys I want in my important leagues, which require more of my fantasy bandwidth, without FOMO.

...I think I have a problem

Who are some late round/FA SP's you guys are targeting?
Also, thoughts on Lewis Brinson? Rumors of him leading off for MIA, hitting well in spring, could be a steal at end of drafts/FA

AJ Puk
Sean Newcomb
Joe Musgrove
Blake Snell
Walker Buehler
Drew Pomeranz
Alex Cobb

I like that list. I would add Daniel Mengden as well.

Those are all great names, I'd just add...

Musgrove might start the year on the DL. They won't need a 5th starter until April 8, so he may be more of a stash play.

I've watched a lot of Sean Newcomb last year... if he can ever figure out how not to walk a ton of guys, he'll be great. As it is now he's got a great fastball and a true 80 curve, but there's rumblings that he may need to learn a changeup to get righties out. But so have lots of exciting young pitchers at this point in their development.

Bottom line, if he trims the walk rate and learns a changeup, the sky's the limit, because we're talking a legit 10-12 K/9 true talent level just on the stuff.

Another young Braves pitcher we're excited about is Luiz Gohara, but he's gonna be out until May with groin and ankle injuries.

And if you're speculating on minor leaguers, out of the tons of great pitching prospects Atlanta has, I think the highest upside guy is Kyle Wright

There is no chance Wright makes it to the majors this year right?

Non-prospect guys I like taking a chance on at the end of drafts, more for rotation depth/streamers in deeper leagues:

Chad Kuhl
Anthony DeSclafini
Nathan Eovaldi
Jose Urena
Daniel Norris

Mike Leake is unremarkable but consistent.

Marco Gonzales could be interesting.

Porcello basically goes undrafted and won a CYA a few seasons ago pitching in the ALE.

Did my first 2 real drafts. The first one was a mistake I did it Monday and signed up for a cheapo Yahoo $20 league as a warmup but I accidentally signed up for head to head rather than rotisserie. I hate H2H. The strategies for the 2 formats are totally different and H2H involves more luck than skill (my opinion!). Anyway the H2H draft went okay but I have no real interest in that format.

The rotisserie draft today was an eye opener. Nothing like the H2H or any of the mocks I had done to this point. Mocks on Yahoo suck because I think it is mostly H2H players and it makes it easy for a roto player to draft exactly what they want.

I put way more weight on pitching than most of you on this board because nothing sinks a roto team faster than bad pitching while in H2H you can just stream pitchers and probably do okayish. Anyway in the roto draft all of the big 4 SPs were gone by the 8th pick (so much for hoping for a late pick! I was in the 4th spot) and every closer of note was gone by the end of the 9th round. This surprised me as pitching isn't typically at this much of a premium. I still got my 2 aces (Kershaw and Syndergaard) and 3 reasonable closers and 2 of the most valuable roto back enders (Devinski and Green). On the other hand I have a very speculative offense. But last season I had 2 seconds and a first with basically waiver wire offenses. Good hitters pop up all year long but a genuine ace or closer is hard to find. As always my strategy is to dominate the pitching categories and get enough offense to be at least average on that side of the ledger.

2 more drafts this weekend and after seeing how things played out today I may rethink a few things. Would have definitely taken my first closer one round earlier if I figure they would go so fast and early.

Just some things I've noticed to keep an eye on

-Flowers is going to hit cleanup behind Freeman it seems like. Nice possible punt C going at the end if you're desperate.
-Winker seems likely to start in OF, not sure if full time yet, but is blowing up in ST, hitting over 400. Homered 7 times in only 137 AB last year, and hit .298. Could be a breakout guy.
-All the hype is on Castillo, but Mahle could make the rotation with injuries. Had 8.6 K/9 last year, looked decent in his cup of tea last year in majors, and has a 0.661 WHIP (!!) in ST so far, looks pretty good.
-Brinson seems to be the leadoff guy for MIA, and that could be some real value. Definitely struggled in his short appearance last year, but dominated in AAA hitting .331 with .400 OBP, and is doing similar in ST (hit a HR off Strasburg!!). Could be a 15/15 guy this year, or maybe even 20/20.
-Conforto has scared everyone off coming off shoulder surgery, and was rumored to be out until May 1st, but seems like this will be pushed up a lot with how good he's looking in games. He's still a bit away, but they're being cautious and slow with him, and if he really is back into last years form, he is a steal going late in drafts.

I feel like there was a pretty big shift this year in the industry leagues with how pitching was valued and that has filtered down through the other leagues as time has passed.

I didn't change my normal strategy at all for my more financially important leagues, and spent heavily on offense and avoided closers. I am doing two smaller leagues that I tried some different things with though, and I started with Scherzer, Bumgarner, and Jansen early in one of them. I'm not very confident in the HR/RBI categories, but was surprised how well the offense turned out. I'm really interested in how the numbers will end up in all the leagues I'm in since I took some different strategies this year.

Fangraphs thinks he'll be up in 2018 at some point... maybe September, maybe sooner

Offensively, Flowers is fine, but defensively, he had the worst pop time and worst velocity on the throw down to 2nd out of everyone that qualified. He's very good at framing and his hit tool is good enough for a catcher, so he'll still play, but the Braves also have Kurt Suzuki who was serviceable and will get a lot of starts. Hard to project either of them for much more than 300-350 PA.

My favorite "always there at the end" catcher dart throw is Robinson Chirinos. He's had a lot of catcher-type injuries, concussions, etc, but the power is legit, the average has shown incremental improvement, he's still young-ish, and he should get the majority of the starts in Texas.

A strategy I toyed around with in the last month or two last season in roto was grabbing both catchers from one team since you leave much on the table since most catchers aren't full timers. If I do it this year I will target Flowers/Suzuki. Together they put up a pretty good stat line and you get all of your catcher games played. The downside of course is burning a perfectly good and scarce bench spot to a second catcher.

The question is, is it worth it to get full time production from the catcher spot and miss on a maybe more valuable bench player? Since I only play yahoo pro leagues and you only get 5 bench spots it makes it tough to seemingly waste one on the catcher spot when you could have a guy that can fill in for position players on off days who is probably better than the catcher spot you are filling. Position management is important in roto and I am still weighing the cost vs. reward in this strategy. I typically only carry 2 bench bats as I like to keep the 4 P spots full of low era/whip relievers meaning I need bench room for non starting SPs. With an extra catcher I only get one bench bat which probably isn't enough. Decisions decisions

I have a long standing (league is 31 years old) AL only league that drafts next week. I have Judge, Correa, Ramirez, Buxton as keepers each at about half their value. I've been toying with the idea of making a run at Sale and Kluber.

Normally, I would take those keeper savings and shoot for Trout, Altuve or Stanton and fill my pitching staff with mid level guys. But with innings in the AL at such a minimum locking up those two guys could be huge.

Granted in this competitive of a league your plan, no matter how great and well planned, is almost always gone midway through the draft. The fact the thought is even in my head is foreign to me.

Well? It makes sense because there is just so much offense at the tail end of the draft and undrafted. Pitching is almost always a crap shoot but the difference between top end pitchers and dregs is far larger than the gap between top tier hitters and undrafteds. Last season my offensive core was around waiver wire guys like Shaw, Merrifield, Pham, A. Garcia etc. and then there were the real stars like Judge and Zimmerman who got no love on draft day.

Those guys will be drafted this year but others will take their place as elite but ignored because almost everybody in the major leagues hits but pitching is always sketchy. If you don't get aces and closers early in the draft you won't get them and blowing up your pitching ratios with bums is a sure fire way to finish out of the money in roto.

Every season about 2 weeks in I look at the over rated hitters I took in rounds 5 through 10 and pretty much universally would trade any of them strait up for a solid closer or starter. So this year I cut out the middleman and just go very heavy pitching very early. Will some of them miss? Absolutely! But the hitters in those rounds can easily be replaced or replicated from the wire. You can build a decent lineup after round 10. But after round 10 your pitching will be extremely speculative.

I really don't want to go down this rabbithole again, but I still think you really overstate the offensive production on the wire. You listed a half dozen guys and I could probably come up with another 15-20 that were really productive cheap/waiver wire guys in 12-team leagues; it's really hard to see getting the right guy everytime in competitive leagues without hitting landmines. Nobody was drafting Aaron Judge in the 24th round because they had any idea he was going to have the season he did; it was because they were taking a shot in the dark and didn't end up with Travis Jankowski or David Dahl. And there were teams that picked up Matt Davidson instead of Travis Shaw, or Chris Owings instead of Whit Merrifield.

Clearly your strategy is successful for you, but I think it's a lot harder to pull off than you're willing to let on, and it's certainly not "THE WAY" to win roto leagues.

Back to my original observation, I don't think the relative value of a fantasy ace has increased much year-over-year, but there has been huge inflation on their price since last year that began at the industry league level. I was just thinking out loud about the need to adjust draft strategy in response.

Chirinos is a good catcher to play against LHP.

Yea i don't wanna go down this again either, taking closers is mind numbingly dumb.

In my 6x6 league, half the top 15 RPs went undrafted

Knebel
Rivero
Devinski
Hand
Swarzack
Reed
Madison
Holland.....