Tag Archives: Miguel Cabrera

Drafting a Dynasty League Roster: Major League Draft, Rounds 1-3

by The Dynasty Guru

For those of you who’ve been around these parts for a while, you may remember the initial dynasty league I agreed to participate in at the beginning of the off-season for the purposes of writing up a full draft (and the thought process that went into it) on this site. We had the minor league draft through the boards back in November, and I wrote it up in a few different posts (Rounds 1-3, Rounds 4-6, Rounds 7-9, Rounds 10-12, Rounds 13-16, Rounds 17-25), but now this past Wednesday night was the marathon major league portion of the draft.

The draft started at 9:30pm ET, and by the time 1am rolled around, I still had a spot or two still left to fill. On top of this, I was running a fever the whole night and it ended up being the start of one of the worst viruses I’ve ever had in my life (that I’m just recovering from now). So by the end of the draft, I was mildly delirious and my gchat words were being used as internet fodder by a fellow TDG writer.

Over the course of the next week or two, I’m going to write up the entirety of the 25-round major league draft and then examine my full team at the very end. But from the outset, I will say that I’m very happy with how this whole draft turned out – and though my team certainly has some weaknesses, it’s a 20-team league, and that’s bound to happen. My strategy from the outset was that I was going to secure the offense first with firepower, and then build my pitching staff with depth. And in the end, I stuck to that plan exactly.

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The Top 50 Dynasty League Third Basemen

by The Dynasty Guru

The theme continues as we make our way to the final infield position – the right side of the infield is getting weaker from a fantasy perspective, as the left side of the infield is getting stronger. With Miguel Cabrera and Manny Machado joining the ranks, along with breakouts from Chase Headley, Will Middlebrooks, Todd Frazier and others, the third base position is primed for a run of quality and depth that hasn’t been seen in a long time. Even the top-10 only has three members over 30 years old (and David Wright just turned 30 last month).

The trend continues on the minor league side of the equation, as six out of my top 50 prospects are third basemen. This includes potential high-end talent in Rendon, Castellanos, Sano, Olt and more. In addition to that, there’s a whole wave of SS prospects that are unlikely to stick at the position long-term, and may end up at the hot corner. In fact, it’s not a stretch to say that four to five more top-50 prospects have the potential to end up at the position.

I think we’re pretty close to a renaissance for the position, and the biggest difference between the growth at shortstop and third base is that the revolution isn’t just approaching on the horizon, it’s here now. The position is deep and getting deeper, although it’s still impossible to touch the guy at the top.

And now your top 50 dynasty league third basemen, with commentary:

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The Dynasty Guru’s Crystal Ball: 2017′s 5×5 Category Leaders

by The Dynasty Guru

This is a fun exercise I’ve wanted to do for a while now. Right now, Opening Day 2017 is four and a half years away, but there’s absolutely no reason I can’t start speculating about who will lead the standard 5×5 rotisserie categories that season. Who knows if the 5×5 format we use now will still be the most commonplace scoring system that far into the future anyway? Maybe a standard ESPN league will be using OBP and QS instead of AVG and W. For the purposes of this post, we’re going to assume that the categories are remaining the same.

Now, this isn’t an all-prospect list – although there are some prospects on here. And if you think I’m understating the impact of prospects in this exercise, here’s a fun fact for you. If we did this exercise after the 2007 season, looking at the 2012 category leaders, guess how many of the categories would be led by players who had not played a game in the majors at the time? The answer is 5 out of 10. And if you expand out to the top-3 in each category (including ties), you get 13 out of 33, which is 39%. Of those 13 top-3 category finishes, 7 were from players that debuted in 2008, 2 were from players that debuted in 2009, 2 were from players that debuted in 2010 and 2 were from Mike Trout, who was a junior in high school when the 2007 season ended. In fact, Trout and Buster Posey were the only two players who finished in the top-3 of any 5×5 fantasy category in 2012 to be drafted AFTER the 2007 season.

Anyway, that’s enough of an introduction – let’s go to the Future Dynasty Guru for the breakdown of what happened in 2017:

Batting Average: Miguel Cabrera (.341)

It feels like Miguel Cabrera’s been around forever, but he only turned 33 on Opening Day 2017. While his power has started to wind down (this was his first season with under 30 HR in over a decade), Cabrera continues to maintain a high batting average. The two main reasons for this are: 1) he’s still a fantastic hitter to all fields and 2) by the laws of physics, it’s been impossible for him to get any slower than he was back in 2012. Runners up: Oscar Taveras (.334), Starlin Castro (.328)

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