We’re still mocking here at Fantasy Alarm to fine tune our draft approach this fantasy season and you should be doing the same. If you didn’t catch the first piece of this series last week then here is the run down. Every week we’re doing mock drafts over at RealTime Fantasy Sports and trying out different strategies in each one. Last weeks piece featured drafting bats early and often in one mock and going heavy on pitchers in another. We break down the good and the bad of each strategy and analyze what we could have done differently to give you an idea of the risk or lack thereof in each situation. This week we focused on drafting power potential hitters and steady workhorse pitchers in one mock draft and a balanced approach towards hitters and upside potential pitching in the other.

The team to follow along with is team FA – @ChrisBouv14

Power and Consistency

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This approach had one goal in mind, load up with power bats and take the consistent pitchers. In this twelve team mock we landed the the fourth selection in the draft. After Trout, Altuve and somewhat of a surprise selection of Charlie Blackmon were drafted with the first three picks it was a no brainer taking a four-category provider and power threat in Nolan Arenado with our first pick. When the second pick came around at 21st overall the target was J.D. Martinez and his 45 home runs from 2017 but he was snatched a couple picks before we had the chance. It came down to Anthony Rizzo, Freddie Freeman and Aaron Judge here and going with the surest of bets is what decided this pick. Judge had an outstanding season but has been mentioned as a candidate for regression with his astronomical numbers just being too ridiculous to duplicate and Freeman does indeed have a little bit of risk being in a sub par lineup compared to Anthony Rizzo. Rizzo was the selection here due to his 600-plus at bats in five straight seasons and 30-plus home runs or 100 RBI’s in four of those five seasons.

In rounds three and six, we landed two middle infielders with 30-plus home run potential in Francisco Lindor and Jonathan Schoop. These selections gave us exactly what we had hoped for as we now have four players, one at each of the infield positions, that have the ability to hit over 30 home runs and have somewhere around 100 RBI’s. Sandwiched in between, in rounds four and five, we landed our 200-inning/200 strikeout pitchers in Chris Archer and Jose Quintana. We grabbed a few more of those same profile of pitchers in rounds seven, eleven and fifteen with the respective selections of Dallas Keuchel, Gerrit Cole and Gio Gonzalez.

Through seven rounds we had yet to take any outfielders or catchers so that was the focus in rounds 8-16. Outfielders went back to back to back for us here in rounds 8-10 as we selected Adam Jones, Jay Bruce and Steven Souza Jr. in those respective rounds. Rounds 13 and 16 offered us a ton of power and value at the catcher spot with the Mike Zunino and Wilson Ramos selections. All in all, a starting roster that includes a 30 home run potential from every position and four or five starting pitchers that can get to the 200 inning threshold with 200 K potential was the goal and was very attainable. The success of this strategy is even easier to attain when ignoring steals altogether. Doing so here allowed us to find upside power and strikeout potential later in the draft as well as we didn’t have to chase steals late. Another observation is that it is much easier to chase power later in the draft than it is to chase steals so if pure power is the goal early, be prepared to lose steals in a category format.

Balance and Upside

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From a pure “fun” standpoint, this approach takes the cake. The idea here was to take as many power/speed combo hitters as possible and alternate power and speed selections around them with the goal being to win every offensive category. As far as pitching went, the mindset was to lean towards upside potential and ignore the safety of the position when choosing between a few players. This strategy as a whole provides a huge amount of upside as a unit and gets the adrenaline pumping! In this mock we ended up with the very last selection in the first round.

Getting the last pick is a great spot to draft from because you get the turn as well. Also, if a couple teams reach on their selections it puts you in a great position to get a ton of value with those selections. That is exactly what happened here as both Charlie Blackmon and Trea Turner fell to me at my selection. Taking these two players gave us 48 home runs and 60 steals ( 2017 statistics ) to start our draft and that is the perfect way to start with this strategy in mind. Rounds 4-7 left a surprising amount of players that fit the bill for our roster build and we pounced. Andrew Benintendi, A.J. Pollock, Starling Marte and Andrew McCutchen were the selections here giving us a projected 100 home runs and 138 steals from our first five hitters using ESPN projections.

Filling out the rest of the hitters, we took Jake Lamb, Buster Posey, Ryan Zimmerman and Ian Kinsler giving us another ESPN projected 85 home runs and 26 steals. These totals add up to 185 home runs and 164 steals from our starting roster. In regards to our initial goal, it’s safe to say the draft was a success. Drafting pitchers with high upside and taking on risk meant we were able to wait a while when filling out the pitching staff. Aside from the third round when Madison Bumgarner fell to us, we went with an exciting young pitcher named Aaron Nola from Philadelphia in the eighth round and two more similar pitchers in Lance McCullers and Luke Weaver in rounds eleven and twelve. We rounded out the rotation with the selections of Jon Gray and Jimmy Nelson in the 19th and 20th rounds giving us well over 1000 K upside as a staff. Even with the idea of taking on risk with pitching there were plenty of opportunities to land a couple better pitchers and that is the only hiccup with how this turned out.

Passing on Buster Posey could have landed us Luis Castillo. Taking Justin Verlander or Noah Syndergaard instead of Starling Marte would have also been ideal since we already had several outfielders. There’s always something you look back on and wish you’d handled differently and that is exactly what these mock drafts are all about. Seeing who is typically available in each round when you are selecting and remembering those names can be largely significant in the value of your selections and the roster balance that comes from it. Practice makes perfect FANation so get in there and mock and try things you wouldn’t normally try. Reach for pitchers, reach for your guy and punt different categories. Now is the times to see how different strategies can work or how they can blow up in your face. Do not wait until draft day to learn the hard way.

Stay tuned next week as we analyze a couple more different draft strategies and fine tune our draft day approaches. Be sure to email mockdraftarmy@yahoo.com and be a part of our mock drafts up until the start of the fantasy baseball season.