(*) MASTER NOTES: Tout Wars-Mixed recap: Where OBP is king
Mar 13 2015
This week, Tout Wars held their annual mixed league draft event. BaseballHQ had a couple of representatives in this draft. I picked from the #8 spot in the 15-team snake, and my HQ co-General Manager Brent Hershey sat in the #2 spot. (Dr. HQ, Rick Wilton, also participated).
As a reminder, Tout Wars now uses OBP instead of BA in all of their leagues. Last year, I built my entire draft strategy around that change (as I wrote here). Loading up on OBP studs in the first five rounds of that draft netted me Joey Votto, Shin-Soo Choo, Joe Mauer and Carlos Beltrán—you can imagine how that team turned out.
Actually, it wasn't that bad. The injuries and underperformance from those top picks put me in an early hole, but a couple of trades and some helpful pickups got me back into the mix, and I made a big push late in the year to finish 4th. (Brent was in a tight race until the end, eventually finishing 3rd behind winner Tim McLeod.)
Reflecting on my finish last year, I took it to be an example of "bad outcome" rather than "bad process." Conceptually, loading up on OBP still seemed like a good approach entering this year. But as it turned out, this year the league seemed to value OBP differently, so I was forced to adjust on the fly.
It was clear right in the first round that OBP was being highly valued: typical (BA-league) first rounders like Adam Jones, Anthony Rendon, and Jose Altuve fell out of the first round altogether. They were replaced by OBP assets Robinson Canó, José Bautista, and yes, Votto (who went #11 to Paul Sporer).
I had a roadmap in my head where, from the #8 spot, I wanted to target the top OBP guy at each position in the first couple of rounds. I had a good idea that Carlos Gómez would be my best option in the first round, and it turned out he was my pick. If he had been gone, I would likely have turned to either Edwin Encarnación or Cano. In the 2nd round, my pre-draft hope was to see Hanley Ramírez fall down to me, with Votto as Plan B. As it turned out, Hanley came closer to my pick than Votto did, but neither had any real chance. So, taking what the draft was giving me, I took a falling Jose Altuve at pick #23.
Two picks in, and I had two average-at-best OBP contributors on my roster; this was not the start I had planned. One element of my pre-draft plan did materialize in round 3 (pick #38), where I took Carlos Santana, my first legitimate OBP stud. I had been weighing Santana vs. Matt Kemp with that round 3 pick, and was pleasantly surprised to see Kemp fall all the way back to me with my 4th pick (#53 overall).
In last year's draft, building that massive (projected) OBP cushion early allowed me to eschew OBP for counting stats later in the draft: I picked guys like Billy Hamilton, Pedro Álvarez, and JJ Hardy without any concern about the OBP drag that they brought to my lineup. This year, I ended up in the opposite position: without any early OBP insulation, I kept one eye on OBP with each hitter pick right through the endgame.
Pablo Sandoval is a decent OBP source at 3B. I added Chris Carter in Rd 7, mostly to wash away the power deficit that came with taking Altuve early. And he is less of a ratio drag in OBP leagues than he is in BA leagues. Jhonny Peralta brought at least an average OBP at an SS position that is an OBP-wasteland. I took Yadier Molina over Brian McCann as my top catcher, due to OBP considerations. Holding no grudges, I brought Beltran back from last year's team, 10 rounds later than a year ago. Jed Lowrie made for a nice OBP-protecting MI option in the end-game.
The lesson here, in terms of my own drafting mindset, is that I almost certainly paid more attention to my OBP than I would have paid to BA as a category. Even in a BA league, my preferred approach is to insulate BA early, and then spend some of that insulation later in the draft by targeting BA risks who offer power and/or speed. But I've recently wondered if that approach is flawed, as a low BA from a pick in the end-game hurts my team's overall average just as much as a bad BA from an early pick would. If I'm taking the effort to build a BA advantage in the first place, why should I be willing to squander it in the end-game? This time, I protected my OBP all the way through the end game. We'll see if it yields better results.
One final note: drafting against Brent and Rick was an interesting wrinkle. I had purposely selected the #8 spot in the snake draft because I wanted to move away from Brent once he got the #2 spot. In preparing for my first pick at #8, I correctly predicted that José Abreu wouldn't be available to me because Rick would take him at #6. And throughout the night, Brent and Rick each took a number of players that I was considering in similar spots: Brent got Gio González, Russell Martin, Travis d'Arnaud and Mike Moustakas right as they were near the top of my list. Rick beat me to Abreu, Chris Sale, Addison Reed, and Clay Buchholz. I found this funny, because it's long been an irritant to us at BaseballHQ when a reader says "you're my secret weapon, I never tell my leaguemates that I use your service." That's a marketing nightmare. But on this night, at least, I got reminded of how irritating it can get when your leaguemates are working from the same source material that you are.
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