Mock Draft Army: I Fought the Lawr

As you’ve probably heard me say far too many times, mock drafts are one of the best educational tools in the world of fantasy baseball prep. Your participation in even just a small handful of mocks could give you a huge leg up on your competition. You can test out a variety of strategies, learn the public perception of numerous players and, something I love to do, try to draft from a number of different positions. While some leagues will have assigned draft positions to make your life easier, many do the ol’ shuffle the order one hour before draft time. Now if you’ve done a bunch of mock drafts, you probably have a good idea as to what strategies work best from each of the draft positions. If you haven’t, then you’ve got one hour of crunch-time to get your ducks in a row and far too many people end up with the “fly by the seat of my pants” strategy which, for those who don’t eat, sleep and breathe fantasy baseball drafts, can be extremely difficult.

We talk about draft position quite often during these mock drafts and one of the things many people say is that they love to draft on the wheel. They love that double-tap of picks and it affords them extra time to prepare for their turn each round. The Mock Draft Army soldiers have said, I’ve said it and one of the most loyal experts to the Army, Mastersball’s Lawr Michaels has said it. But which end of the draft do we like best? Does having the first pick overall give you an edge?

Well, as one night would have it, Ray Flowers and I headed out to a bar in Hayward, California to see Lawr and his band, The Biletones, play and after a fantastic cover of Bobby Fuller’s “I Fought the Law,” I was inspired. What better way to settle the debate of first pick versus last pick, than to have Lawr and I at both ends of a 15-team mock and see who drafted the stronger team? You know – I Fought the Lawr, But Did the Lawr Win?

We know that one draft won’t settle the dispute and we’ll probably do this a few more times before the season opens, but I think this first go-around was a pretty strong start to the experiment. The 15-team draft, I thought, was incredibly competitive and a good representation if you play in a super-competitive league. If you catch Lawr’s write-up over on Mastersball, he thought so as well. In addition to the two of us, we had Dave Kerr and Greg Jewett, both from Fantasy Alarm, Brian Brickley from Baseball HQ, Doug Moore from Razzball and a slew of Mock Draft Army veterans who can throw down with the best of them. The crew of guys we bookended in this draft just rifled through our player queues all night long and really put us to the test with our picks.

I never really know how you folks out there reading prefer to view a two-team comparison, so I'll just go round-by round here. Also included here is the link to the draft board.

I don’t necessarily think a pick-by-pick comparison is the way to go here as we met most of our needs in different fashions and at different times, so I’ll just share some thoughts as I look up and down each team’s roster.

Right off the bat, I thought that, through the first three rounds, the advantage definitely shifts to the guy picking first overall. For starters, he’s got three top-30 picks to the other guy’s two. Next, I feel the 15^th pick becomes more reactionary while the guy picking first continues to set the tone. Trout is a no-brainer and when it came back to me for picks two and three, I was able to grab elite starting, immediately putting the rest of the room on the “pitching defensive” in the Round 3. Six of the next 13 picks were starters which left Lawr with the decision of grabbing a second or third tier pitcher or to continue building on offense as he grabbed a pair of outfielders to open.

But then Lawr tried to turn the tides over the next few rounds. While I was “forced” to take offensive players in rounds 4 and 5, Lawr double-tapped the elite closers and tried to start a run of his own. Unfortunately for him, only one team bit and I was not only able to grab a high-end closer myself (Wade Davis), but also continue to build my offense. The wait between picks is brutal, but with so many other ninth-inning specialists still on the board, I wasn’t worried.

It’s actually pretty crazy how long that wait between picks is and it can often be incredibly frustrating. You just sit there watching pick after pick and every time you tweak your strategy/game plan and add a new player to your queue, someone snakes him from you. That’s why, and I found out that Lawr does this too, I always try to make my picks in pairs. This round is a pair of starters. The next round I’ll double-tap the middle infielders; then the corners. I actually didn’t even realize I was doing it until Lawr pointed out how he puts pairs of guys into his queue and then drafts the best pair remaining after the rest of the league has had its turn. I don’t follow exactly the same path as I will rarely pass up on a pick I really want just because his “draft partner” was already taken, but after a few rounds, I was encouraged to see that he and I were like-minded in our methods.

Again, kudos to everyone else in the draft room as these guys did not make this draft easier for either of us. No one seemed to get caught up in any sort of run and if there were any true reaches, none of them were glaring enough to criticize. In the end, I feel like I may have the edge over him in this one as I believe I have a bit more power and better starting pitching. Both teams seem to be built for speed and average, and while he may have an advantage over me in both of those, I believe my advantage in power and pitching trumps his. Yuuuuuuuugely? No. Not at all. But enough.

With the Mock Draft Army running a number of drafts each week, Lawr and I are going to tackle this debate again and again. Next time we’ll swap places and see how we fare and after that, maybe we go back to the original positions but take a different approach. The options, are borderline limitless.

I have yet to place either team into a projections model, but our friends at Real Time Fantasy Sports do have a deal with Fantasy Pros and there is a draft analyzer. Now, in truth, I don’t hold much stock in the analyzer for a number of reasons and we’re drafting with the intention of also having a bench and the ability to trade. But for the sake of this experiment, we’ll take a quick peek.

He may feel differently, but to me, it looks like I fought the Lawr and I won.

Here's also a look at the latest Mock Draft Army ADP as of February 23, 2016:

Asa always, if you'd like a copy of the ADP in a color-coded, sortable Excel format, just email me at MockDraftArmy@yahoo.com