A link to my Tout Wars Review.

A link to my LABR Review.

*NOTE: The FSTA Draft was held in Dallas during the final week of the month of January.

THE SETUP

13 team mixed league.

5x5 roto scoring

The league included 29 rounds with 14 hitters and nine pitchers starting (six bench spots). Pitchers can be any combination of starters and relievers. Hitters include the following: 2C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, MI, CI, 5 OF, UT

THE DRAFT

Here is the team I put together (round taken in in parenthesis). 

C: Miguel Montero (16), Derek Norris (18)

1B: Miguel Cabrera (1), Joey Votto (3), Pedro Alvarez (29)

2B: Dustin Pedroia (11), Howie Kendrick (23)

3B: Kyle Seager (4)

SS: Asdrubal Cabrera (20), Javier Baez (22)

OF: Starling Marte (2), Ben Revere (8), Shin-Soo Choo (9), Gregory Polanco (10), Mark Trumbo (13), Gerardo Parra (17)

PITCHERS: Johnny Cueto (5), Sonny Gray (6), Danny Salazar (7), Hector Rondon (12), Dellin Betances (14), Andrew Cashner (15), Jake McGee (19), Aaron Nola(21), Trevor Bauer (24), Drew Hutchison (25), Fernando Rodney (26), Erasmo Ramirez (27), Jason Motte (28)

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Cabrera was who he always is – a flat out star. One of the best right-handed power hitters, ever. He went .316-38-108-92. Same as always.

Not many were huge fans of Votto in the third round. He was dreadful for two months, people were literally panicking if they owned him, doing whatever they could to dump/trade him, but he hit over .400 in the second half on his way to another HOF worthy line of .326/.3434/.550. He has a .961 OPS in his career that is the 18th best in baseball history.

Pedroia can just hit, period. Folks that doubt each year are just wrong. He finished the year on an insane pace after being moved to the leadoff spot and he ended up with his best effort in years as he hit .318 with 15 homers, 74 RBI, 105 runs and 201 hits.

I was made fun of for taking Seager in the 4th round. Called out as it being a bad pick actually. Guess the Oracle had this one right as Seager had the best season of his productive career as he set career bests in average (.278), homers (30), RBI (99) and runs scored (89). His .859 OPS was nearly .070 points clear of his career mark.

ACab (.280-23-62-65) and Baez (.273-14-59-50-12) weren’t great, but given the cost there were no worries at all with their production. In fact, given the cost they were fine adds.

Marte hit .311 and was second in baseball in steals (47).

Polanco had an uneven season, but in the end you can’t look down your nose at a guy who hit 22 homers, stole 17 bases, drove in 86 runners and has scored 79 times despite a mere .258 batting average.

Trumbo was one of the best 13th round draft picks in the game. He didn’t hit his weight in the second half but he had the best season of his career batting .256 with 47 homers, 108 RBI and 94 runs scored.

Cueto was as good as ever in his first season with the Giants with 18 wins, a 2.79 ERA, 1.09 WHIP and 198 strikeouts.

Betances was a star out of the pen. What raw stuff (15.53 K/9).

Bauer? I’ll allow it given the cost. He won 12 games with a 4.26 ERA, 1.31 WHIP and 168 strikeouts over 179 innings.

Rodney saved 25 games, nearly one for every round it took into this draft for Rodney to be rostered.

WHAT WENT WRONG

My catchers stunk.

Revere hit .294 with at least 22 steals in 4-straight seasons heading into the 2016 campaign. He hit .217 with 14 thefts this season.

Choo simply couldn’t stay healthy. For the first time in five years he played less than 120 games hitting .242 with seven homers and six steals over 48 games.

Kendrick qualified everywhere, but the guy hit .255. He’d hit .285 for 5-straight seasons coming in and is a .289 career hitter.

Parra was a total disaster in his first season with the Rockies. He hit seven homers, stole six bases and posted a .671 OPS over 102 games.

Gray – flat out disaster. For more see Pitcher Wrap Up.

Salazar had all those strikeouts but a 7th round draft pick needs to bring more than 11 wins, a 3.87 ERA, 1.34 WHIP and 127.1 innings.

Rondon was supposed to close for the Cubs… until they dealt for Aroldis Chapman.

Cashner is the definition of league average.

McGee had 15 saves, but he was injured and just bad.

Nola had a solid rookie season but a couple of bombings led to a 6-9 record, 4.78 ERA and 1.31 WHIP.

Erasmo, Motte, Hutchison… what great picks Ray.

TRADES/WAIVERS

No one trades in this league.

I added Melvin Upton Jr. off waivers. He had 20 homers and 27 steals this season.

Ervin Santana was scooped off waivers May 23rd. I dropped him for CC Sabathia a week later. CC was good for about a month. It would have been better to have held Ervin of course. I picked Ervin back up on July 11th actually to rectify my mistake.

Tim Anderson was a nice add off waivers in mid-June.

Grabbed Brandon Maurer off waivers July 4th, the same time I added Cameron Rupp to bolster a sagging backstop situation which was sorely needed.

I added Jim Johnson but dropped him for Ryan Dull a week later. Dull, a much better pitcher, had three saves. JJ racked up 20. So much for saves telling the whole story.

I picked up Kelvin Herrera August 1st. I got 11 saves out of that one.

Speaking of boosting my catcher spot… I added Gary Sanchez August 8th. He hit .299 with 20 homers and 42 RBI in 53 games. He had just about the most amazing run a rookie catcher has ever had his first 53 games.

At one point I seemingly had every 9th inning arm with the D’backs after the trade deadline. They all stunk.

Two final adds from September 12th. Andrew Bailey added three saves. The other was Carlos Gomez who, over his last 16 games, hit four homers, stole two bases, drove in 12 and scored nine times. He also hit .328 with a .969 giving folks some hope that he might be back to contributing next season.


CONCLUSION

I finished 4th out of 13 teams.  

The offense was pretty good but other than my ability to find saves, my pitching staff just didn’t come through. Too many guys ended up hurt or simply underperformed when given a shot on my team. Granted, the team ratios of 3.73 in the ERA column and 1.24 WHIP weren’t terrible, but the 66 victories was just awful, ditto the 1,111 strikeouts as I tried to protect my ratios with relievers.