Chachi's 2006 Fantasy Baseball Draft Observations

On Saturday Shark, myself and 10 of our friends drafted our Fantasy Baseball teams. Of course right now everybody's team looks pretty solid (things tend to not unravel until the injuries and slumps hit), but here are my current thoughts on the results and some predictions. Anybody involved in a FBL will certainly have seen a couple of these things in there own drafts.

• Adrian Beltre could quite possibly go from late round steal to first round bust to late round steal again in just 3 years. (Top 10 overall in our league last year, 10th round this year)
• On a similar note, my first round pick last year (Beltran) dropped to the 3rd round this year, and I think that's about where he should have always been.
• Damon went ahead of Crisp even though almost every talking head is predicting Crisp to have a better offensive year. I think you'll find this in most leagues and I think it comes down to name recognition and two common beliefs: Damon will continue to be Damon (ignoring age) and Yankee-hating stops at the Fantasy Baseball Draft door.
• My All-HR-team-with-a-.260BA goes to the '75 Reds (Sanders team) in our league. Look at this lineup: Soriano, Thome, M. Cabrera, A. Jones, Griffey, Mench, S. Green, and Barajas. Outside of Griffey and Cabrera there isn't a .300 hitter among them. Good thing he has Casey on the bench to try and raise the collective average occasionally.
• My Least-Intimidating-O goes to the Xenia Tornadoes (Greg R.). No offense, but Hernandez, Hillenbrand, Hall, Wright, Tejada, Beltran, Berkman, Ordonez, and Rowand just don't strike fear into my heart like some of the other teams. There are a lot of question marks in this lineup.
• My Pitching-staff-that-could-win-him-the-league goes to the '75 Reds (double winner, congrats!). He's sporting Oswalt, Willis, Johnson, Schilling, Lowry, and Contreras. This staff could just be crazy good.
• My Sporting-two-Tigers-so-it-must-be-the-worst-pitching-staff goes to Leyland's Losers (deal with it Den). A staff boasting Webb, Bedard, C. Young, Bonderman, Weaver, and Verlander (never mind the roll of the dice on Clemens) is just begging for a high ERA and WHIP. Hey Den, go all the way, Maroth and Rogers are still out there on the waiver wire.
• The Homer Award goes to Wedge's Wallbangers (Greg S.). Not only did he take 3 Tribe players over a 6 round span ( Cliff Lee, Wickman, and Westbrook) and Andy Marte in the 20th round (even though he may not start in the majors till later this year), but he also took former Indian Crisp. (Evan and Denny are somewhere preparing waiver moves and trades that will make them the end of year recipients of this award)
• The All Injury Team goes to Ted's Frozen Head (The Shark). As Shark pointed out at the end of the draft, he may have more question marks then anybody due to many players on his team having injury issues to get pass. Shark is sporting atleast 7 players coming off an injury last year or in the last couple years including: Vlad, Sexson, Rolen, Foulke, J. Lopez, Brian Roberts, and Hunter. If they are all healthy and productive, he'll have a good squad, but there is also the possibility he'll have few healthy players left by the end of the year.
• The biggest reaches I saw this year: Soriano #9 in round 1, Weeks in round 5, Iguchi in round 6, Barmes in round 7 (I think this was just a matter of most of the top SS already being off the board), and my biggest reach of this years draft is Johjima going in the 8th round ahead of Posada, Pudge, Lopez, and Molina. I just think that was a bit high for an unproven guy.
• The picks I really liked this year: Colon in round 5 (latest I've seen a Cy Young winner in awhile), Gagne in round 6 (if he's back to form, then the best closer in the game just went in the 6th), Schilling and Beltre in round 10 (a possible Cy Young candidate and dark horse MVP candidate in the 10th, WOW!), Brian Roberts and Biggio in the 14th (Biggio was still really good last year and if Roberts plays like last year this may be the pick of the draft), Wilkerson in round 15, Renteria in round 17 (huge steal if Renteria's return to the NL helps him out), Preston Wilson in round 19 (he's in a hitter's park and we know what he did at Coors), and I like the pick of Danny Kolb in round 22 (he's returning to Milwaukee where he made his name as a closer).

There you have it, let the smack talk from my league poor in from everyone I just pissed off. Honestly though, it is extremely difficult to predict what will actually happen this year and who will win. All I have to say is that until someone knocks me off, I'm still the reigning champ and I'm picking myself to repeat. Come get some!