Mike Trout and the Price of a Pick
By the time this post publishes, my partner and I will have selected Mike Trout first overall in the new Dynasty Guru Experts League. Participating in this league is going to be a challenging ride. In fact, challenging describes the process through which our team got the #1 pick in the first place. To put it simply, each team will have a 40-man roster of both major and minor league players. The default number of keepers each year is 35, but since this is the inaugural season, teams were permitted to “bid” on draft positions by sacrificing a certain number of keepers in a blind auction. Our bid of 15 keepers did the trick for the #1 spot. Bret spelled it out in more detail on Tuesday. In this post I’ll try to lay out our thought process in our bid for the first pick.
I should probably introduce my co-owner, Paul Clewell. We’ve been playing fantasy baseball together for years, and he’s one of the reasons I started writing in the first place. After countless conversations about baseball on the phone, we decided one of us should write some of it down. We even pipe-dreamed about playing in an experts league one day. Well, here we be. So how did we arrive at the number 15, and what were we thinking? It really boils down to 5 points…
1) Mike Trout.
This is kind of obvious, but when we were thinking about the #1 pick we were thinking about a player named Mike Trout. At 22 years old he’s already the best player in baseball and barring a major injury, we believe he’ll be the best player in baseball for quite a while. We love Bryce Harper, Clayton Kershaw, and Paul Goldschmidt just to name a few others. We bid on more than just the first overall pick. But to us Trout is in his own tier. There is nobody we would rather build our new dynasty team around with the opportunity. That’s what this was — an opportunity.
After we sacrifice our 15 keepers next year, we’ll be down to 20 players kept. That’s still half of our 40-man roster. The players we’ll be cutting will be in the #400 – #800 range since this league is so deep. In our minds Trout is worth that, and we’re confident in our ability to find values in next year’s player pool despite the penalty.
2) We didn’t want to draft outside of the top ten.
To us it was really important to be in the top ten picks, and more specifically the top seven based on some of our biggest player targets and where we thought they would go. We’re starting a franchise, and we want to build around the best possible player from day one. On Tuesday, Bret pointed out the value of the higher picks in a league this deep: “In a 20-team league, the emphasis on those big, high-end superstars is more prominent because there’s a much bigger difference between the #1 pick and #16 pick than there is between the #25 pick and #40 pick.”
Our bids actually descended in value from picks 1-10, but we even placed some small bids on picks 10-15.
3) It’s a one-time penalty, but Trout is a multiple-year investment.
Yes, next year we will only be keeping half of our 40-man roster and that will sting a little. I’d imagine it will be a bit like ripping off a Band-Aid. As I mentioned above, we’ll be throwing back players and prospects in that 400-800 range. In 2016 the penalty lifts and it’ll be business as usual. And well…we’ll still own Trout.
4) We like having back-to-back picks at the turn.
This will be a slow draft. With up to 4 hours between draft picks, we like the idea of being able to pair our picks at the turn. We’ll be able to watch how the draft progresses 38 picks at a time and then draft two targets at once.
5) We wanted to be bold.
Let’s face it. For Paul and I, this is really our first experts’ league. We didn’t necessarily want to barge through the front door and pee on the rug, but we also didn’t want to come in all shy just because of how much respect we have for our competition. I originally suggested that we go 8 picks. Then the conversation turned to “someone will go double digits”. Then it became more of a guessing game. Would other teams wager in the teens? Was this method as new for them as it was for us? Without much to reference for a new system like this or even much knowledge of what the other owners’ styles were like, it was really tough. 15 felt high enough to give us a chance to land the pick. It felt solid. We wouldn’t be leaving anything on the table and 20 keepers would still be a lot to build from. Honestly, a part of this decision was about the fun in taking a risk and not being afraid to put ourselves out there. After all, if I was afraid to put myself out there, I wouldn’t be in this league or writing this post in the first place.
Footnote: There was another bid of 15 keepers, but we won the pick based on how that team prioritized their picks (5-1 instead of 1-5). There was also a bid of 13 keepers for the top spot and in all there were four bids in the double digits. Looking in the rear-view mirror, we feel as though we bid exactly what we needed to in order to get the job done. No more, no less.
In case you’re wondering (I was), if we hadn’t placed any bids at all and everyone else made their same bids, we would have ended up with pick 12. Not terrible, but not what we wanted. If it were based solely on the computer’s random draft order and had no other teams placed any bids, we would have ended up with pick 3. Go figure!
Follow all of the league’s action on Twitter using #TDGX
Mike’s on Twitter: @643ball …So is Paul: @chuckles643
The Author
28 Comments
Great job and excellent explanation especially where you figure the guys you drop rankings will be. I am following this via twitter but as some other people have noted, it gets kind of confusing. Is there going to be some type of list put together (with hyperlinks to each of the GM’s thoughts? That would be great!)
Thanks! There is the Twitter hashtag, and Bret is working on getting the results page viewable I believe. Definitely going to be lots of posts like this one here at the site. The goal is to make this as transparent as possible. Through 3 rounds our team has Trout, Heyward, and Castro, with two more picks coming shortly…I believe there will be draft reflections/analysis here at TDG from the writers, and other writers have posted on their respective sites as well. Mike Newman wrote up his first three rounds…
http://rotoscouting.com/tdgx-experts-league-draft-rounds-1-3/
Great job and excellent explanation especially where you figure the guys you drop rankings will be. I am following this via twitter but as some other people have noted, it gets kind of confusing. Is there going to be some type of list put together (with hyperlinks to each of the GM’s thoughts? That would be great!)
Thanks! There is the Twitter hashtag, and Bret is working on getting the results page viewable I believe. Definitely going to be lots of posts like this one here at the site. The goal is to make this as transparent as possible. Through 3 rounds our team has Trout, Heyward, and Castro, with two more picks coming shortly…I believe there will be draft reflections/analysis here at TDG from the writers, and other writers have posted on their respective sites as well. Mike Newman wrote up his first three rounds…
http://rotoscouting.com/tdgx-experts-league-draft-rounds-1-3/
What were your bids for each of picks #2-#5?
I completely agree with point #3. The landscape of baseball changes so much year to year that losing a large chunk of your roster once with no further penalty is a price I could live with. And frankly, I’d be tempted to further mitigate the damage by making a number of 3-for-1 deals or trades where you get the best player but give the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th best players in the deal.
Thanks Doog…we bid 12, 10, then 9, 9 for 2-5. Thanks for reading 🙂 Agree with you that trades are another layer in this that can be explored in the future.
Draft update…took Pujols and Rendon with our next two picks.
Was your top five different than the way it went down?
nope. it went the way we thought it would. only difference was we had Stanton at 7. He was kind of our mark for why we really preferred to be in the top 7
What were your bids for each of picks #2-#5?
I completely agree with point #3. The landscape of baseball changes so much year to year that losing a large chunk of your roster once with no further penalty is a price I could live with. And frankly, I’d be tempted to further mitigate the damage by making a number of 3-for-1 deals or trades where you get the best player but give the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th best players in the deal.
Thanks Doog…we bid 12, 10, then 9, 9 for 2-5. Thanks for reading 🙂 Agree with you that trades are another layer in this that can be explored in the future.
Draft update…took Pujols and Rendon with our next two picks.
Was your top five different than the way it went down?
nope. it went the way we thought it would. only difference was we had Stanton at 7. He was kind of our mark for why we really preferred to be in the top 7
Mike I was shocked when I saw how high the bids went. Wow! After reading your explanation I can see the smart logic in your strategy. I decided not to bid because I didn’t want to give up any keepers and I think I will be glad next Spring. I was happy with my #12 draft slot. With a deep experts’ league like this one there are bound to be all sorts of differing strategies employed. Can’t wait to see how it all shakes out in the long term.
Thanks Nick…it was definitely tough to judge how aggressive the bidding was going to be. I’d imagine there are going to be a lot of solid picks all the way to the bitter end, so we’ll have to see how bad this hurts us next year. Either way it’s a blast to be a part of something like this. The idea to bid on the draft like this in the first place was genius IMO as it had all of us thinking straight from the get go.
Mike I was shocked when I saw how high the bids went. Wow! After reading your explanation I can see the smart logic in your strategy. I decided not to bid because I didn’t want to give up any keepers and I think I will be glad next Spring. I was happy with my #12 draft slot. With a deep experts’ league like this one there are bound to be all sorts of differing strategies employed. Can’t wait to see how it all shakes out in the long term.
Thanks Nick…it was definitely tough to judge how aggressive the bidding was going to be. I’d imagine there are going to be a lot of solid picks all the way to the bitter end, so we’ll have to see how bad this hurts us next year. Either way it’s a blast to be a part of something like this. The idea to bid on the draft like this in the first place was genius IMO as it had all of us thinking straight from the get go.
[…] anticipated. You can read about the bidding guidelines for purchasing draft slots here, along with some stellar analysis for the staggering 15-keeper price paid by winning bidder Mike Buttil for the right to draft Mike […]
[…] anticipated. You can read about the bidding guidelines for purchasing draft slots here, along with some stellar analysis for the staggering 15-keeper price paid by winning bidder Mike Buttil for the right to draft Mike […]
No Man, Wu peed on my rug.
love that handle
much better than Eaton Pujols
No Man, Wu peed on my rug.
love that handle
much better than Eaton Pujols
[…] at it as no big deal, since half of our team will be cut heading into 2015 anyway. More on that here. Enough chatter, let’s get to the […]
[…] at it as no big deal, since half of our team will be cut heading into 2015 anyway. More on that here. Enough chatter, let’s get to the […]
[…] Mike Buttil at TDG wrote about his team’s decision to bid 15 keepers for Trout […]
[…] Mike Buttil at TDG wrote about his team’s decision to bid 15 keepers for Trout […]