At the end of every season I revisit my draft to see if there are learnings and/or takeaways from the season. You can find the initial recap of this draft here.
In this league I came in 1st; 1st in hitting and 7th in pitching. I had 54 hitting points and the second best team only had 45.
At the end of the draft season I wrote that this team would have the highest variance of all my teams and in fact it did, to the upside. The primary difference between this team and the $250 team was my hitters outperformed their ADPs. Below are the hitters who outperformed their ADPs:
- Yainer Diaz
- William Contreras
- Gunnar Henderson
- Elly De La Cruz
- Josh Naylor
- Rhys Hoskins
- Brandon Lowe
- Steven Kwan
Bad Luck
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was doing great before going down with an injury. He hasn’t looked so good in the playoffs; it’s a small sample size but if he continues to look poor he may be a value on draft day next year.
Josh Lowe was a draft day discount. He underperformed expectations and will likely be relegated to a strong side platoon but I think he will perform better next year.
Me Being Wrong
I’ve been a Daulton Varsho fan for the past three seasons. I keep projecting 25/15 with a .230 batting average. His defense is good he’s going to play every day but since he hits so many fly balls his performance will vary greatly month-to-month.
Jhoan Duran, just like David Bednar, began the season with an injury. I thought injuries for both players would be minor and they would bounce back to their 2023 form. I think a takeaway is to not draft injured closers.
I actually avoided Paul Goldschmidt in my prior two drafts but in this draft I thought I was getting enough value for the age-risk I was taking. I’m not totally disappointed with his performance as I only lose a few dollars on him. I think he will likely sign a one year deal with a team like the Rays and probably put up numbers similar to 2024.
