My all-overrated team

[headhunters]

bk- all good by me. just disagreed. kj is one of the funniest dudes on the boards- he was just being funny. your last line was " disagree with mine?" well-we disagreed. Anyone- espn and cbs can say "why draft so and so when you can get so and so 6 rounds later?". hey- we could do that all day. why did anyone draft bautista this year when they could get aviles 50 rounds later? i like the way shawn does it- you get player a in 2 and b in 7 or player c in 2 and d in 7. which is better. pena vs ugla- yep same skill set and we are just drafting stats. for me- one is 2nd base one is 1b and it makes a diff. for others they just see the stats. that is what makes it fun. if we all agreed- where is the fun?

[DOUGHBOYS]

All of us are wrong some of the time. None of us are right all the time.
Sometimes it just comes down to who SOUNDS right most of the time. Some of us are more right than others think we are, but keep it quiet. When Gekko trumpets that he is getting injury money for Pineda, a lot of people think that once again he is right.

But, then again....He drafted Pineda

I put more lists on here than anybody. They're designed for comment. Not to demonstrate how right or smart I am. If everybody agreed on my lists, I'd think they were pretty screwed up cuz I know my percentages ain't that good.

KJ has a wonderful, unique sense of humor. You would have seen it more clearly had somebody else submitted the lists.

A little on topic/off topic...
There were requests for baseball to have more regular double headers. Some folks missed the old days and asked that they make a comeback.
Major League Baseball said that they doubted attendance would be any better for a double header than a regular game. They opined that society has changed. That back in the day, whiling away six or seven hours was a swell way to spend a day. They think now in our 'techno/want it now society' that that would be too much to ask of their fans.
But they did leave an open door. They stated that there would be three double headers made up from rainouts that would not be day/nights, but real doubleheaders.
The first one was this week in Pittsburgh.
The result?
15,000 fans.
MLB may be right.

This story illustrates why drawings and stick figures work so well on the Boards. It took y'all a couple of minutes to read this, stick figures = instant gratification

Buck up BK!

[bjoak]

Lively discussion here. I have to speak up on Uggla. It makes no sense that he goes so high. You can get Carlos Pena who has an almost identical skill set 12 rounds later. Second base, you say? Bah, 2B is not worth much more than OF this year. Hell, my Utility guy is a second baseman.

No, he probably won't hit .233 again, but he probably isn't going to hit much better than .250 either. My system has him at 79/32/96/.253/2. That is a totally fair estimate of what he may do (maybe a bit light on runs, we'll see) and it's just not that valuable of a line. It makes him the 8th most valuable second baseman in my system, just ahead of, yes, Kelly Johnson (13th round), Danny Espinosa (11), Aaron Hill (14), and Jose Altuve (19).

Even worse is Ricky Weeks. I don't have much of a problem with his skills but after you account for injury risk he is not near worth where he goes.

I commented that Longoria is a bad pick on these boards a while ago, but after doing the analysis, I've come around on him. He has mad skills and plays at a weak position.

Finally, imo, the worst way to estimate future ERA is by using past ERA. Greinke had just about the best peripherals of any pitcher last year. You replay the season and give him those same rates, he is going to be an easy Cy Young candidate. I believe his swing-and-miss rate wasn't on par with his K/9 so that's a good argument for regression. I believe in him, but if I didn't I'd dig deep, not shallow.

100% correct on Longoria and Greinke. If you think Longoria is a batting average risk, well....you may want to take another look at the underlying stats. He's more likely to .300 than .260. His K rate keeps decreasing while his BB rate keeps increasing, he hits for power, throws in some steals, and plays a premium position. He's also just entering his prime. I think he's the favorite to win AL MVP this year.

Whether Uggla is a good pick or not depends on how you want to construct your team. He's not the kind of player I generally draft that early, but different strokes....

Why don't you just construct your team around Pena many rounds later? It's like getting a free 4th round pick!

[bjoak]

pena vs ugla- yep same skill set and we are just drafting stats. for me- one is 2nd base one is 1b and it makes a diff. for others they just see the stats. that is what makes it fun. if we all agreed- where is the fun?

I guess my point is that most would agree that Pena and Uggla have similar projections and that most would agree that the positional quality between 1B and 2B isn't 12 rounds apart but yet the consensus via adp is that they should be drafted 12 rounds apart. So we do all agree until we sit down at the table and then some of us make a really mind-boggling move and I've not yet heard a solid reason as to why.

You seem to be saying that you would take the same stats 12 rounds earlier just to get them from second base, which, I guess, is at least an opinion.

[headhunters]

my bad again, "skill set" meant low bat. ave and 30 homer power. i don't do projections but i use masterball and check against stats and espn player raters from previous year. masterball= ugla is a $20 projection and pena $8. the diff over last 3 years has been pena much lower ba= .216 vs .254 and about 14 fewer runs a year. that isn't 12 rounds- but it isn't equal either. i think pena is actually underdrafted more than ugla overdrafted- again according to last years player raters and this years masterball #'s. again for me it is roster construction. if i liked altuve to hit .300 and steal 30 and bonafacio to steal 150 and hit 1 homer i would be thinking i can't get my homers and rbi totals up by drafting pena- because all teams will have power at the corners -so i push ugla to 4th round. i then take lahair in 20th and laroche in 23 and i am all set. again- roster construction. might be dumb, but i just like getting a little power from my middles. so do some other players. might be why you win and i lose.

[DOUGHBOYS]

I'll take a stab at this.....
Uggla does not have anybody like him at 2b.
The only 2b that is close is Ian Kinsler, a back of the first round pick.
If after the first three rounds a drafter feels cheated in power, Uggla is an instant remedy. There is no other 2b who will hit more than 60% of the home runs that Uggla will total.
By fixing the power problem, the drafter is leaving himself open for batting average deficiency, but that can be helped at other positions.

Pena-like 1b are littered throughout the draft. Ike Davis, Duda, Dunn, Smoak and even LaHair and Carp believers. A drafter feels secure that any of these guys can possibly put up Pena type numbers at a later time.
The fact is that Uggla has no equal in terms of power at 2b.

Also, make no mistake, Uggla is a favorite of positional drafters. The drafters that think about filling positions, before filling categories. These are the same drafters who'll tout an infield of Votto, Uggla, Andrus, and Beltre, while slow drafting their pitching and outfields because of perceived depth at those positions.

Does Uggla belong in the fourth round?
Yes.
Bacause adp says so.
It's supply and demand. And the demand is there for guys like Uggla and even Michael Bourn.
Players, who are close to being one trick ponies.....But, it's a good trick.

Just my take...

[bjoak]

Good analysis guys. I still think it is much easier to get those homers elsewhere than to fix the holes you are left with in average and speed but your points are well made.

Here is something else to think about. And I know people aren't into building teams so scientifically but if Uggla were to hit the line I suggested earlier that would give him about as much value (thanks for making me reword everything, Doughy!) as the average player you need to win the 100K (on a balanced team). Which sounds great. Except that it is still only the fourth round. If you actually want to win, you need to load up on potential value early. In the tenth round you can celebrate guys like that. In the fourth you need to build up the kind of credit that will offset your later players (like bad catchers).

Another thing is where is the upside? You can disagree with a Brett Lawrie pick as much as you want but the owner can always say, "If I hit on him he is the key to winning." Uggla, I can see the downside for sure. He maybe hits .230 again with 22 homers. But does anyone really believe that at 32 he has a .300 40 homer season in him?

One last comparison. Mike Napoli. Another 3rd or 4th round pick (I got him in the 4th). Probably a better projection for most. And he's a catcher! While 2B may not have a huge lack of positional depth, catcher is the worst position by a country mile. Headhunters seems to hate on Altuve for some reason but average and speed (Altuve) set against power (Uggla) is not that big of a gap, at least not when compared to the one between Napoli (power) and Chris Iannetta (nothing).

[DOUGHBOYS]

465.
If we total up the rounds from 1 to 30, we get 465.
I had a friend who had a goal of getting of getting 360 rounds worth of talent from his 465 rounds of drafting.
He figured that if all of his drafts picks equaled 12th round performance that he would win most leagues.
Of course, this was the friend who also sent messages to clubs asking for a list of players who had partners that were pregnant.

The answer as to whether he got an average of 12th round talent wouldn't be answered till the next year.
I'm not even sure if he followed up his teams, even the winners, to see if he actually got on average 12th round performance.
I laughed at the idea because of the turnover during a season, but he was a micro-manager and the goal served to give more credence to players with upside.

Some drafters look to get a player each time to outplay that round. Some drafters are happy with the consistency of a player and will accept that that player will probably not exceed expectations for the round taken.
Uggla drafters are in this camp. They know they won't get more than they're drafting, but they probably won't get less either. It's why Hosmer goes in the second and Konerko goes in the fifth. Konerko is a consistency pick. Drafters expect his same numbers year after year. They don't expect more and hope this isn't the year where he begins to give less. Hosmer is the upside pick. He could give first round numbers or fifth round numbers.

Napoli is a good comparison for Uggla. There are drafters who like to stay away from catchers as a whole in the upper rounds because of injury concerns. For the risk averse, Napoli would be the pick over Uggla. And, for me as well.
But, there are 15 different minds trying to build 15 different monsters 15 different ways.
Some will want Napoli as their fourth part like you and me, others would prefer Uggla.
Depending on what we put around them, neither side is wrong or right.
At least until we compare at the end of the year to see who built the best monster.

[headhunters]

i like altuve and i drafted napoli . my pairing was altuve, bono, ugla. like all 3

[bjoak]

You need to average 6th or 7th round value from your starting players to win. 12th round value would leave you average since you only have 23 starting players. I guess if you get 12th round value from all 30 guys you draft that is pretty good, but looking at it this way seems less complicated to me.