Found it out, disregard the above.

Higher seed wins, which in this case, as the #1 seed I win!

Well, most of those guys you list as busts were relatively extremely good. Yeah, you want a drop dead perfect ace and those are very few and far between. Pitching was horrible this season but relatively guys like Arrieta, Darvish, Hendricks, deGrom, Archer, Maeda etc. put you well ahead of the competition. This season EVERYONES pitching was a mess because all the numbers were bad. So if you had a few of the busts you listed you were likely well ahead of the pack.

It seems to work out every year? What a coincidence!

so what you're saying is, with everyone's pitching being a mess, lots and lots of pitchers drafted later were just as good as "aces" being overdrafted in the early rounds?

hmmm, interesting.
almost like you could still have good pitching without taking any pitchers in the first few rounds!

That's just it though you couldn't. It's all relative and they weren't just as good. The guys you listed (deGrom, Arietta, Darvish etc.) were way better than those undrafted lotto tickets. And especially with closers. A lot of it comes down to managing and filling in with as many quality RP innings as you can get. Guys like Devinski, Minor, Bradley etc. were a great boost to ratios.

But in roto you need INNINGS. As many quality ratio and K innings as you can get. To get those quality innings you need guys who (RELATIVELY) won't blow up your ratios. If you rely on undrafted for that you will likely not do well at all. Productive hitters are much easier to find than pitchers who won't absolutely ruin you.

I mean I'm glad you did well...

....but this was a bad draft at the time and the results are objectively horrible

And I say that knowing my villar mancrush blew up in my face pretty badly

His only good picks in that draft were 1,2, and 6. Amazing

Villar was bad I used 3 of my 4 3rd round picks on him. This particular team finished in second place. Kinda nice when you end up with the #1 hitter Blackmon and #2 starter Scherzer according to the player rater.

But the draft doesn't really matter after the first couple of rounds. It's all about pickups. But back to the point most of the pitchers stuck all season and most of the hitters were dropped. I dropped them all but Blackmon, Abreu, and Nunez. I did add Kiermaier back after the injury but I dropped him well before it and dropped Nunez at end when he got hurt at the end.

Replacing those hitters was simple. Finding good pitching after the draft is much harder.

i think the point is more, who could you have drafted instead of lester at 4 and hendricks at 5? or in 8/9 for that matter? and would they have been a more stable and productive hitter? the answer is likely yes.

also you cant make the statement "drafting doesnt really matter after the first couple rounds" in an argument about draft strategy...

If Lester and Hendricks even came close to their 2016 performance they would have been the absolute bargains of the draft. Hendricks actually wasn't bad other than missing some time. Point again is most of the pitchers weren't dropped. As disappointing as Lester was he was very difficult to replace. And the closers were absolutely unreplaceable. Hitters are a dime a dozen. Fantasy baseball is much more about managing well than drafting well. And my strategy is a strong core of pitching both starting and relieving as I know there will always be productive hitters appearing all season long. Villar was easily the worst pick.

In roto if you ignore pitching and draft all hitting in the first 10 or 11 rounds you will suck. After 3 rounds pretty much everyone is coin flip and I want to make sure I get a core of both starters and relievers. The variance of pitching means a few of those guys will miss. And that is okay if you stay active and alert to who and what is available. But to compete you need 3/4 solid closers and 6+ starters who don't destroy you. You aren't gonna get that if you don't at least try to draft them.

This. This convo is getting awfully dumb awfully fast.

"If Lester and Hendricks even ca,e close to their 2016 performance they would have been bargains of the draft"

"Drafting doesn't really matter"

Man think of how nice it would have been if you got JDM and ozuna at 4/5 instead of two ****ty pitchers. And you say Lester wasn't replaceable??? Wtf are you smoking? He sat on waivers for weeks in my highest buy in most active and competitive league.

The fact you finished 2nd with that lineup leads me to believe you just played in a bunch of free leagues where no one paid attention after the draft

And dude no one is advocating taking hitting in your first 10 rounds, we are trying to tell you how ******ed it is taking 3 SP and 2 relievers in your first 8 rounds

SRM said it but I'm not going to go back and find it. Pitching is way too important to ignore. If you don't have 2 solid closers and 2 solid starters by round 10 you will suck in ROTO. Hitting is just too plentiful and pitching too scarce.

To each his own though I guess. I'll keep playing the way that has been successful for me for years.

Have a great off season. I will check back in the spring.

I feel like having a bonafide ace (one of the big 4) on the pitching staff positions you extremely well. The rest is searching for value in different rounds. If there are hidden gems in the 16-20 rounds, great, get them. If there are undrafted gems like Godley, fine, go for them. But having a ~250K ~15W 3.00/1.00 type guy as your backbone will benefit you massively, and you can always trade pitching.

After drafting an elite SP, the monkey is off your back for SPs essentially for the rest of the draft, as a competent player can fill out a pitching staff with late rounders or pickups. You can then focus on drafting as many 30/100 hitters as you possibly can in every subsequent round.

I took it to an extreme this year drafting Scherzer/Bumgarner 1/2. I managed to win despite punting batting average, which I ultimately failed to punt--I ended up with 7 points in the category and would have lost without those points. Not really sure what the takeaway is for next year, besides I guess don't punt anything in roto lol.

it's useful to discuss macro-level strategies (take a top x SP or wait until very late middle class, get +SB stud early, position scarcity etc.) to an extent but at the end of the day the most important thing is player selection. Any reasonable strategy can succeed if you pick the right players for it, just like any hedge fund strategies can succeed with the right picks.

And there's so much variance mid season that a lot of your macro-level predictions get debunked anyway. Example: Stanton actually staying healthy, some saying 1B wasn't as deep as it was in the past years but there were 9 1Bs that provided top 100 value with a pre-season ranking of 200+ (Bellinger, Zimmermann, Gallo, Shaw, Reynolds etc.)

tldr just draft good players

Sure, but its a crapshoot predicting which aces, will get hurt, which ones will just suck, and which ones will actually return top 5 SP value.
This year half the top 12 were garbage/hurt. Another 3-4 were underwhelming and didn't provide much value. Targeting the 2-3 SP who were phenomenal is almost impossible, and even if you somehow knew ahead of time who they were going to be, its like "targeting" Trout or Goldy .... you have to get lucky with your draft position to even have a shot at them.

Heading into this year the logic was that the elite hitters were standard deviations above replacement level to the point where passing on one for a pitcher was sacrificing too much. Replacement level went way up so that's simply no longer the case imo

One more strategy thought before I retire to the offseason.

The catcher position is always a pita. If you only carry one which I generally do you will miss 25+ games of production a year. Something I did on 2 of my teams in the last 2 months was carry BOTH catchers of the same team. I think it worked out well enough to try across the board next season.

The 2 pairs I had were Flowers/Suzuki and Pina/Vogt. Together these guys add up to a respectable batting slot where most will trail relatively. For the full season Flowers/Suzuki added up to 79 runs/31HR/99 rbi/.282 and no steals.

With only one catcher you leave too much production on the floor. But with 2 (unless they are on the same team) you will still lose lots of production. But with 2 from the same team you should gain it all. Also I want it from east coast or Midwest team since you need to know who is starting each day.

It has cons as well. You lose an important roster spot. I typically only carry one bench hitter and load up on as many solid ratio/K relievers as I can and in particular those with SP/RP designation to fill all spots when I don't have a starter going that day. Losing that solid 70ish innings will hurt but maybe not as much as that 25+ games of hitting production will add?

Thoughts? Obviously you need a solid catching pair but I think this will leave less production on the floor by being able to get all or most of 162 games in at catcher. Injuries will play a role too as most of these guys get dinged from time to time. I still think it is better than getting no production from 30 game slots even if it is "catcher" production.

I didn't even carry a C in one of my leagues post AS break

How does that improve your team?

I lost my roto league by 1.5 points and I came up 28 GP short at catcher.

I didn’t have a ****ty waiver C killing my avg and OBP

And used it to roster an extra SP/RP holds guy inxoumd slot into my SP slots

That is the trade off for that extra valuable RP. But a lot of 50/50 split catchers put up respectable BAs and power numbers but since they are 50/50 guys nobody rosters them. But if you roster both you get a solid line for the season.

I am still debating it in my mind. I think it depends on how the rest of the team is doing. If your starters are killing it you can afford that loss of 70 good ratio RP innings. And if your batters are killing it you can afford to lose those 30 games of catcher batting.

Just a thought I would like to hear opinions on. I am a HUGE fan of those extra RPs to add Ks and smooth ratios. Not to the point where I wouldn't roster a catcher at all though.

I was winning almost every hitting category so no reason to roster one