All-Star Draft Value Review (Part 3 of 3)

Continued from Part 2. No kidding.

#3 Legends (-211 Average Player Value)

Aramis Ramirez, Dan Haren, Jermaine Dye and Jason Bay. 4 players drafted that are ranked in the top 50. That’s tops in the league, and the reason Legends grabs the #3 ranking. (Keep in mind that these numbers are as of the All-Star break, so the fact that Ramirez doesn’t have a hit since the all-star game and is now ranked 59 is irrelative.) Troy Glaus has also ended up being a very valuable pick in the 19th round, even though he got whacked pretty early. Here also is another weird yahoo ranking quirk. Kelvim Escobar, taken in the 10th round, is done for the year without throwing one pitch, yet his value is only -572?!? I don’t get it. Poor Jason Varitek at least had a dinger or 2, yet his value is -901!! That Eric Byrnes pick in round one was brutal too, continuing the weak first round that this league had overall, but Phil Hughes wins ‘worst value pick by Legends’ as he posts a solid -805. Go Yankee Youth Movement!

#2 Regulators (-132 Average Player Value)


In keeping with his record this year, Regs had a very average draft. He only took 3 guys who have rankings above 500 right now, and that is the reason the Regs are #2: not because they were that good, but because they were not that bad. Look at all the average pitchers taken in the middle of the draft. Booooring. Between the 9th and 20th rounds, Regs took 10 starting pitchers. He connected on 2 of them. that’s some lousy drafting right there. Why Weaver, Perez or McGowan instead been Lee, Volquez or Dempster? Sigh… The Ian Kinsler pick was really brilliant, considering that there were 29 (!!) players taken over the #2 overall ranked player (Hello Fausto!). Blog of course has no idea how Andrew Millers value (-737) is 500 points worse than Homer Bailey’s (-281). Is it because, even though they both stink, Bailey stinks in fewer starts? Sure… At least, it now cannot be said that Regs didn’t draft a closer. Thank you Takashi Saito!

#1 Jobu’s Hats for Bats (-128 Average Player Value)


Pretty much hands down, Jobu had the best value draft this year. 12 value picks. 6 over 50. 4 over 100. 6 players drafted in the top 100 rankings. Only 7 non-value picks. There was one team to have less than 12 non-value picks. Jobu only had 7. The only reason Jobu didn’t lap the field was because in those 7 non-value picks were some doozies. Jobu made most of his $$ grabbing closers: Cordero, Soria, Ryan, Wood and Lyon are all in positive numbers. Lyon and Soria are both over 100. Even Heath Bell posted a 131 value number from the 19th round (of course, his 2IP, 7ER since the AS Break may have adjusted that number south). As for the mistakes, Smoltz, Neshek, and Pedro have dealt with booboo’s, and well, we all know Khalil Greene sucks by now. Liriano was a bit of a gamble in the 3rd round, but Blog doesn’t think he’d have lasted much longer. Corey Hart was a solid first rounder, and Matt ‘the running fool’ Kemp’s a steal (get it?) in the 4th round. Even Jim Thome’s been productive. To top it off, grabbing a rookie catcher in the 15th round who ends up the potential ROY in the NL is never a bad thing. Blog highly recommends it. Basically, it’s not a huge surprise that this team hasn’t lost since April.