DTBL News

Jackalope outfielder Yasiel Puig

Baseball is supposed to be fun.  The first few players taken in the DTBL Draft all seem to understand that.  Besides their prodigious talent, what these guys have in common is a youthful exuberance that occasionally rubs their opponents, and sometimes even their teammates, the wrong way.  But only a curmudgeon who insists that the unwritten rules of the game be followed to a T wouldn’t enjoy watching these guys play.  And when it comes to fantasy baseball, you definitely want them on your team.

The 22nd Annual DTBL Draft kicked off Wednesday morning.  Almost exactly 24 hours later, the first round was complete.  The round featured as strong of a set of young talent as we’ve seen in quite some time.  Perhaps there have been stronger drafts at the very top spot or two, but the number of young superstars taken in this draft so far has been quite impressive, and should keep the draft entertaining for several more rounds.

The Jackalope kicked things off by selecting the Cuban phenom, outfielder Yasiel Puig.  Yes, Puig Mania has made its way to the DTBL.  It took Puig all of about a week after making his MLB debut last summer before he became the talk of the league.  From the monster home runs, mind-boggling throws and blazing sprints around the bases, Puig proved himself to be the definition of a five tool player.  Sure, some of those tools are easier to harness than others.  But there is nothing he can’t do on a baseball field.  Really, the only thing that kept him from being a complete no-brainer with the first overall pick was the Jackalope’s already full outfield and perhaps a small worry about a second year flame-out.  But the decision to take Puig couldn’t have been too difficult.  In just four months in the big leagues, he hit .319 with 19 home runs and 11 stolen bases.  Most years, he would have been an absolute lock for Rookie of the Year with those numbers, but we’ll get to why that was not the case in a bit.  The sky is the limit for this guy.

With the second pick, the Gators took another young phenom outfielder in Wil Myers.  Prior to last season, he was traded from Kansas City to Tampa Bay before making his big league debut, a very rare occurrence for such a highly touted prospect.  Once he got the call to Tampa, he did not disappoint.  He slugged 13 home runs in 335 MLB at bats on his way to winning the AL Rookie of the Year award.  Myers is probably the biggest power prospect in this draft.  He doesn’t have Puig’s speed or flare, but he already looks the part as a middle of the order power hitter.  He will join a Gators offense which has gone through a remarkable makeover the past two years.  He joins Yoenis Cespedes, Starling Marte and Leonys Martin in a very exciting and young Gators outfield.

Trivia question:  which team finished second to the Kings in batting points last year.  Unless your name is Dom, you probably didn’t know the answer is the Demigods.  Only a truly dreadful pitching staff relegated them to an eighth place finish rather than being a title contender.  But was their pitching staff really that bad, or just a bit unlucky?  Well, Johnny Cueto missed a majority of the season with an injury.  Cole Hamels only won eight games despite excellent peripheral numbers.  Doug Fister was his usual solid, underrated self.  And Yu Darvish was one of the best pitchers in baseball.  Enter the third pick in the draft, Jose Fernandez.  For the second straight year, the Demigods acquired the best strikeout pitcher in the draft with their first pick (Darvish last year).  Fernandez had an absolutely phenomenal rookie campaign for the Marlins.  12 wins, a sub 1.0 WHIP, 2.19 ERA and 187 strike outs.  He beat out Puig to win the NL Rookie of the Year award.  The addition of Fernandez could turn the Demigods league worst pitching staff into one of the best.  I know there is a long way to go in this draft, but if you are looking for a sleeper team this year, the Demigods would be a solid bet.

Here are three awesome GIFs of the top three draft choices enjoying their home runs… yes, including the pitcher Fernandez.  Wait, Puig’s was actually a triple, which makes it even better.  Which one is your favorite?

The fun didn’t end with the first three picks though.  With the fourth pick, the Moonshiners elected to go with the best available player, third baseman Josh Donaldson.  Last year, Donaldson pretty much came out of nowhere to become a MVP candidate, or at least he would have been if we lived in a world where Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout didn’t exist.  He hit .301 with 24 home runs and 93 RBI.  Although he figured to be an early draft pick, the Moonshiners are a bit of a surprise suitor since they already have David Wright and Kyle Seager at the hot corner.  But all of them figure to be on their Opening Day roster.  Donaldson should provide a solid boost to a strong core of Moonshiners hitters.

With the fifth pick, the Darkhorses went even younger, taking 21 year old third baseman Xander Bogaerts (he’s a couple months younger than Fernandez).  2013 was quite a year for Bogaerts.  He progressed from highly touted AA prospect, to MLB utility player, to World Series starting third baseman.  Bogaerts is considered an elite prospect because of his bat and his glove.  The former makes him an attractive fantasy prospect as well, especially since he will likely shift over to shortstop next year.  This is the kind of pick that is becoming the norm in the first round of DTBL drafts.  Highly ranked prospects don’t stay on the board very long, no matter how little experience the player has.

The Cougars were the only team to pick a non-DTBL rookie in the first round.  They selected outfielder Domonic Brown with the sixth pick.  Despite only being 26 himself, Brown is actually three years removed from his one year of DTBL experience.  He was a disappointment in that year with the Demigods and was starting to look like a bust of a former big time prospect until his breakout 2013 season.  He slugged 27 home runs with 83 RBI for the Phillies.  In the previous three seasons, he hit just 12 homers while bouncing up and down between MLB and AAA.  But now he appears to be here to stay and should give the Cougars a solid power boost in their outfield.

There was no first round pick with a wider boom-to-bust potential than the Naturals selection of speedy outfielder Billy Hamilton with the seventh pick.  Either Hamilton is going to win stolen bases for the Naturals by himself by being an every day top of the order hitter, or he is going to be too much of a liability with the bat that the Reds will use him almost exclusively as a pinch runner or send him back to the minors.  There’s almost no in between for him.  But if there is a team that can afford to take this gamble, it is the Naturals.  They have guys like Miguel Cabrera, Joey Votto, Andrew McCutchen and Troy Tulowitzki who will pretty much assure them of finishing high in the power categories, allowing them to play a one dimensional player.  But that one dimension could be unlike anything this league has ever seen.  Hamilton has stolen over 85 bases in each of his three full professional seasons and stole 13 bases in his first 13 major league games (with just 22 plate appearances!)  This is going to be fun to watch.

With the eighth pick, the Choppers selected second baseman Matt Carpenter.  He was sort of the NL version of Donaldson, suddenly breaking out of nowhere to become a MVP candidate.  He hit .318 and led all of baseball in hits (199), runs scored (124) and doubles (55).  He doesn’t have great power or speed, but his high extra base totals led to plenty of RBI as well (78), making him an elite three category player.  If some of those doubles start going over the wall, his value could soar even more.  The Choppers were the surprise team of ’13 and appear primed to make a serious run at the title this year.  Carpenter should help them in that endeavor.

The first round ended with two more young pitchers going off the board.  The Mavericks grabbed Gerrit Cole with the ninth pick.  The first overall pick of the 2011 amateur draft, Cole reached the big leagues for the Pirates last summer and pitched extremely well.  In fact, he only got better as the season progressed.  Some were a little concerned by his mediocre strike out rate in AAA, but he was actually more effective in that regard in the majors.  And throwing his fastball in the high 90′s, it is hard to imagine him not continuing that trend this season.  This year, he will try to replace Matt Harvey as best he can for the Mavericks.  But in 2015, a rotation of Harvey, Cole, Clayton Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg and Mat Latos almost sounds unfair to the rest of the league.

Finally, the Kings concluded the first round by taking pitcher Shelby Miller.  For the first few months of the year, Miller was one of the best pitchers in baseball and appeared well on his way to the NL Rookie of the Year award until Fernandez and Puig burst onto the scene and stole his thunder.  Miller faded a bit in the second half and then was almost unheard from in October for the Cardinals.  But that was probably the result of going well past his previous career high in innings and maybe the Cardinals being a little cautious as well.  If he can put together a full season that resembles the first half of 2013, he will quickly become one of the league’s elite pitchers.

For the first time in six years, no first round picks were traded.  On a related note, it was the first year in quite some time that the Mavericks didn’t make multiple first round selections.  But there was one trade completed during the round.  The Kings dealt second baseman Ben Zobrist to the Gators for outfielder Michael Cuddyer.  This was a trade of excess pieces for both teams.  After drafting Myers, the Gators had six outfielders on their roster while the Kings had four middle infield keepers.  So this trade made sense for both sides to fill other needs.  Zobrist has bounced between several positions in recent years, but has returned to the infield this year where he is much more valuable.  He will provide the Gators with solid power and speed at a very thin position.  Meanwhile, Cuddyer returns to the Kings squad that drafted and then cut him just a couple years ago.  Cuddyer is coming off the best year of his career, hitting .331 with 20 home runs in 2013.

The first round was certainly a lot of fun.  Let’s see what the rest of the draft brings us.

Darkhorses outfielder Bryce Harper

Who should the Darkhorses have picked with the first selection in the 2013 DTBL Draft?  That’s a clown question, bro.  With one of the clearest cut decisions in recent memory, the Darkhorses selected 20 year old outfielder Bryce Harper.  The Nationals young phenom burst onto the scene last summer at the ripe age of 19 and proceeded to win the National League Rookie of the Year award.  He bounced back from a mid-summer slump to tear the league apart on his way to a .270 average with 22 home runs and 18 stolen bases.  The home run total was the second most by a teenager in MLB history.

A year after most of the league made the mistake of allowing Mike Trout to slip to the second round, the Darkhorses ensured that the same wouldn’t happen this time around.  Of course, Harper has much higher expectations heading into this season than Trout did a year ago since he has a roster spot locked up and is even expected to hit third in the lineup for one of the top World Series contenders.  Although both are legitimate five tool players, Harper does have a slightly different skill set than Trout.  Harper is projected to be the bigger power threat while Trout has unmatched speed on the bases and in the outfield.  The sky is the limit for Harper, and his bust potential seems extremely low.

Harper is only the second player to become a first overall selection in both the MLB and DTBL drafts.  Alex Rodriguez is the other, which makes it interesting that Harper is entering the league at the exact same time as ARod’s 16 year career with the Kings is coming to an end.  I’m sure the Darkhorses would be happy to get at least a decade and a half of service out of Harper.  I’m 99% positive that Harper was the youngest player to ever be drafted by a DTBL team in the first round (maybe any round), an honor he held for less than 24 hours (more on that later).  The Darkhorses are looking to bounce back from two straight disappointing, injury-riddled seasons.  Harper has the potential to quickly accelerate the rebuilding process, much like Trout did for the Mavericks a year ago.

Last year, the Gators had the tall order of trying to rebuild without the benefit of a first or second round pick.  This year, they held onto those picks and wisely used them to pick up a few of the best young players in the draft.  With the second overall pick, they selected Cuban outfielder Yoenis Cespedes who made an immediate impact in his first big league season, hitting several prodigious home runs early in the season.  He somewhat quietly proceeded to have an outstanding season that surely would have earned him a Rookie of the Year nod if it weren’t for some guy named Trout.  Cespedes slugged 23 home runs with 82 RBI and 16 steals.  Like Harper, he has big time power potential with the ability to add a bunch of stolen bases too.

If Kris Medlen can come anywhere close to matching his 2012 numbers, the Cougars might suddenly have one of the league’s top pitching staffs.  Medlen, a Tommy John surgery survivor, started last season in the bullpen, but then became nearly unhittable after moving into the rotation.  He won 10 games with a miniscule 1.57 ERA and a sub 1.00 WHIP.  The Cougars selected him with the third pick in the draft.  The Demigods then followed with another starting pitcher, Yu Darvish.  Along with Cespedes, Darvish was the other key foreign import to the big leagues last season.  He displayed overpowering stuff, striking out 221 hitters in just 190 innings.  He should help the Demigods recover from a season that was largely derailed by a shaky pitching staff.  The Choppers took the Cubs young first baseman, Anthony Rizzo, with the fifth pick.  Rizzo had been a highly touted prospect for a number of years, before finally breaking through with a solid season for his third MLB organization.  Rizzo figures to be a centerpiece in the Cubs lineup for some time to come.

For the most part, the top five picks were fairly clear cut.  I know those five players were the top five on my draft board, and I suspect I’m not alone.  But I felt there was a significant drop-off in available talent after those five.  Which was kind of fitting because the next five teams all came within an eyelash of winning the championship last year anyway.

For the second straight year, the Jackalope were the first team to select a non-DTBL rookie.  With the sixth pick, they took second baseman Danny Espinosa, who spent the last two seasons with the Kings.  Espinosa spent almost the entire ’12 season on the Kings bench, but only because he was at a log jammed position.  He actually had a very solid year and provides significant power and speed for a middle infielder.  He seems to be getting better each year too.  Next, the Moonshiners selected closer Fernando Rodney, the obvious #1 relief pitcher on the board.  Rodney re-emerged as an elite closer for the Rays, saving 48 games with a ridiculous 0.60 ERA.  Seventh is the earliest a relief pitcher has been selected since 2010.  But the Moonshiners were in desperate need of a second closer and only had two picks in the first rounds with which to acquire one.

For the fourth straight years, the Mavericks had multiple first round picks.  This time, they didn’t acquire the second one until just before they were on the clock with the eighth pick.  They dealt one member of their stable of first basemen, Ike Davis, to the Kings for the ninth overall pick.  So with two consecutive picks, the Mavericks did what has become their trademark:  they selected two young prospects, second baseman Jurickson Profar and third baseman Manny Machado.  Both have big upside, but Machado figures to make a more immediate impact since Profar is temporarily without a position in Texas, behind Elvis Andrus and Ian Kinsler.  Of course, this is a similar situation that Mike Trout was in a year ago.  Profar just turned 20 a few weeks ago, which is notable for a couple reasons.  First, I believe it makes him the youngest player in DTBL history (he’s a few months younger than Harper).  Next, he is the first DTBL player to have been born after the inaugural DTBL Draft in January of 1993.  So he’s actually younger than this league!  (Damn, we’re getting old)

For the second straight year, the Kings used the first round to try to fill their gaping hole at first base.  But this time, they did so by trading their pick for Ike Davis.  Davis got off to a horrific start in 2012, due in part to his slow recovery from valley fever, which he contracted during spring training.  But he rebounded in the second half of the season and turned into one of the leading home run hitters after the break.  He finished the season with 32 bombs.  Finally, the Naturals used the last pick of the first round to re-acquire catcher Victor Martinez.  Martinez missed all of last season recovering from a torn ACL suffered over the previous winter.  The Naturals were clearly reluctant to let him go after holding him on the roster for the entire season.  However, when the opportunity came to pick him up again, they jumped all over it.  Although his catching days may be over, he will likely produce stellar numbers at a position that is extremely difficult to fill.

For the most part, there were few surprises in the first round.  And I honestly can’t criticize any of the picks.  The top five teams went with the best players available, while the second half of the round featured last year’s contenders fill holes and/or proceed with their successful draft strategies.

The pace of the draft has been great so far too.  We’re already into the fifth round at the four day mark, so I’d say we are well ahead of schedule.  Keep up the good work!