It is amazing how much time we take preparing to draft our team(s) in fantasy baseball. We use all the projections, previous year stats and all the expert opinions on who should go where.
WE ARE ALL WRONG!!
Here are the Top 20 point leaders and how the First Round should have been drafted as of Monday.
- Max Scherzer – 390
- Chris Archer – 362
- Paul Goldschmidt – 360
- Bryce Harper – 340
- Dallas Keuchel – 337
- Zack Greinke – 328
- Sonny Gray – 324
- Todd Frazier – 322
- Giancarlo Stanton – 321
- Clayton Kershaw – 315
- Jacob deGrom – 315
- Nolan Arenado – 307
- Madison Bumgarner – 306
- Gerrit Cole – 305
- Mike Trout – 304
- Chris Sale – 302
- Miguel Cabrera – 300
- Felix Hernandez – 300
- Josh Donaldson – 299
- David Price – 294
For those counting at home that is 12 pitchers and eight batters. But go 10 deeper and the split is 15-15.
So the chance that any league drafted in this order is Zero! But it did make me want to compare the CCO league drafts to the utopia list above. Not a pretty sight! Only three picks in each league were better picks than the Top 20 list. Three! Everyone else lost points, with the biggest loser being 258 points by taking Anthony Rendon in the 13th round. But let’s face it the first round is about getting the safest elite player available. So I don’t see taking Mike Trout first as a bad pick just because it was 84 points less than Max Scherzer. Trout has been a good player on your team and was about as safe of pick to be an elite player there was in the draft.
So who were the good picks? Max Scherzer with the sixth pick (+62) and the 17th pick (+90), Paul Goldschmidt with the sixth pick (+32) and the eighth pick (+38), Madison Bumgarner with the 17th pick (+6) and Chris Sale with the 18th pick (+2) and were positive picks, which is actually a tough thing to do as there were not many options that could be a better pick than the utopia Top 20.
How many picks lost a 100 points? Ten! Think about that for a minute. That is 25% of the picks lost 100 points. This is with what should be the best bets for your team this year. So much for all that homework we all did.
Here is the chart with both leagues and the Top 20 points in the middle.
CCO Fans Trades last week
• Stu’s Studs traded Danny Salazar to Team Vaughn for Mike Fiers and Logan Forsythe
• Team Doughty traded Michael Brantley to Dock Ellis D for Yovanni Gallardo
Trades for pitching! Gallardo is averaging 15.0 points per game and brought back and brought back Brantley who is averaging 3.2 points per game. Pretty good return for Gallardo. Then we have Danny Salazar and his 16.2 points per game bringing back Mike Fiers who is replacement level at 11.1 points/game and Logan Forsythe who is averaging 2.8 points/game. I have to say this was not giving up all that much to get Danny Salazar, but a good example of needing a position player and trading from strengthen.
CCO Trades last week
• Clark n Addison traded Chase Anderson to Chris K’s Crushers for Jung Ho Kang.
• Good trade as I needed a bench player and Chris needed a sixth starting pitcher.
MLB Best of Last Week
Each week we will review the best performances of the week in all of MLB.
Nolan Arenado has been known for his glove in previous seasons, this year he is showing off his bat and ran away with this week’s honors with 57 points after a seven home run week. Brett Gardner hopefully gave us a preview of what we will see once Donnie Dewees makes it to the majors. Maikel Franco continues to hit and added three more home runs to his tally. And coming in fifth this week is the guy who has people asking, “Who is Matt Duffy?”
Some big name arms on this list, but sitting on top is a guy who was getting cut in leagues and struggling. But last week he had two good outings, picking up wins in both games. Madison Bumgarner, Zack Greinke, and Stephen Strasburg are regulars at the top of the pitching ranks, but fifth this week is Ubaldo Jimenez who finished off a very good June, picking up two wins.
Chicago Cubs Batters
Not much good going on with the bats right now. Only one player over 16 points last week and he only had five hits. The offense stopped hitting home runs and without the long ball, wasn’t very effective at generating runs, scoring only 13 runs all week. Hopefully the day off on Monday helps.
Chicago Cubs Pitchers
The starting pitching struggled with Tsuyoshi Wada only going two innings, Jon Lester only going four innings and Donn Roach in his Cubs debut only getting into the fourth inning. That led to a 4.91 ERA for the starters this week and to a losing week going 2-5. The bullpen had a 2.17 ERA even with Travis Wood being left in to pitch batting practice over the weekend. Two bright spots were Jason Hammel getting 31 points over two starts and Jake Arrieta putting up 22 points in his one start. Jason Motte picked up a win and a save as he pitches later in games. Tough to rely on any relief pitcher for the Cubs right now in normal formats.
CCO Fantasy Leagues – Two more weeks to the All-Star Break
CCO League
Nine wins is now sitting on top of the league by CubfaninSeattle, with since_2015 Castleworld leading the Waveland division with eight wins. Daverj’s Batsmen is in third with nine wins and Varmit Cnty Ninji Walkers rounds out the Top four teams with eight wins.
Four teams are not at seven wins and round out the playoff teams. Five teams have six wins and three more have five wins. That is 16 that are in the playoffs are within two games of the playoffs.
CCO Fans League
We have a team that has now reached 10 wins as Dock Ellis D is out on top of this league. Team Vaughn is leading the East division with eight wins, while Calicubs is the third seed with nine wins out West. Team Doughty is in fourth place riding a four game winning streak. SIX teams have a 7-5 record which is where the playoffs are at with two teams on the outside looking in right now. But there are five more teams within two games of the playoffs which mean there are 15 teams within two games of the playoffs.