Its my gift to you, some of my thoughts on this season’s fantasy draft, and I only post this because I have to assume that since no one visits this site it also includes the members of our upcoming blogger baseball league. If they do visit, I’m kind of screwing myself over here, but what the hell, it will make it more of a challenge.

The easy part of every draft is the first five rounds: no matter who you take they are good. The best managers are the ones who still know what is left on the board in the 20th rounds and can get value out of their late-round picks. I’ve looked back quite a few times and seen who the top teams took in late rounds, and taking last season for example, I was able to grab Hanley Ramirez, Ian Kinsler, Justin Veerlander, and Joel Zumaya in the last four rounds of a 30 round draft. If you know who to look for (and of course your opposition does not), you can do quite well once everyone else has checked out. If I had to field a team with only players taken in or after the 15th round, here is the team I would like to put together (with rough average draft pick taken):

C-Russell Martin, LAD (190)

1B-Adrian Gonzalez, SD (225)

2B-Ian Kinsler, TEX (204)

3B-Mark Teahen, KC (213)

SS-Troy Tulowitzki, COL (230)

LF-Craig Monroe, DET (233)

CF-Milton Bradley, OAK (235)

RF-Jonny Gomes, TB (268)

Okay, so in the end it wasn’t a major fantasy epiphany, but I still think that if you want to win your league, these are the most important picks, because although you have studs, so does your opponent, and when your studs are hurt or have an off day you are going to need someone to step in, and often it is these guys who mean the difference between victory and horrible, horrible defeat.

I did not broach pitchers, because pitchers can be easily had late in drafts.  You should be able to grab some riskier pitchers yes, but high risk high reward is what its all about.