DME's Expert Draft Team

Here is my roster from a 12-team experts draft with deep, weekly rosters (5 OF, CI, MI, 2 C, etc.) post-trade I just made (I traded Carlos Santana ($25) + Carlos Carrasco ($1) for Shin-Soo Choo ($23) + Kyle Drabek ($3)). My team should be really good in June...

C-Joe Mauer ($30)
C-Brian McCann ($24)
1B-Freddie Freeman ($1)
2B-Chase Utley ($31)
SS-Hanley Ramirez ($49)
3B-Adrian Beltre ($24)
MI-Mike Aviles ($4)
CI-Chipper Jones ($1)
OF1-Shin-Soo Choo ($23)
OF2-Carlos Beltran ($4)
OF3-Franklin Gutierrez ($1)
OF4-Johnny Damon ($1)
OF5-Dustin Ackley ($1)
UT-Mike Moustakas ($3)

SP-Ubaldo Jimenez ($17)
SP-Mat Latos ($19)
RP-Jonathan Broxton ($9)
RP-Brandon Lyon ($3)
P-Luke Gregerson ($2)
P-Rafael Soriano ($2)
P-Jonny Venters ($1)
P-Brandon Webb ($1)
P-Mike Minor ($1)

BN-Kyle Drabek ($3)
BN-Joba Chamberlain ($2)
BN-Michael Pineda ($1)
BN-Dallas Braden ($1)
BN-Juan Francisco ($1)

As you can probably tell, I'm not exactly proud of this roster. Certain major buys of mine (Beltre for $24, Latos for $19, Broxton for $9) felt really stupid in hindsight when guys like Ian Kennedy went late for $2, only three other closers went for $9 or more, and Michael Young went for a measly $8. My "get elite catchers, shortstops and closers" strategy also went limp...this is a poor stars and scrubs team, but it projects for elite batting average, which will give me waiver wire flexibility as I try to Frankenstein together a team.

Stolen Goods: Comparing Draft Picks And Prospects

In a piece that is less than a year old, Sky Kaulkman of Beyond The Boxscore analyzed the value prospects versus draft picks. Of most interest to me was the exponential disparity between the top 10 draft picks of the first round and the bottom 10 (pictured below).



As Kaulkman observes:

"the top picks are extremely valuable, and expected value drops quickly after the first ten or so picks, so that the value of a 16th-30th pick is closer in value to the 500th pick than the first pick."

For those interested in how much of a "bargain" prospects are for teams, generally, Victor Wang broke it down as follows:

16th-30th Surplus Value: $5.2M (late first round)
31st-45th Surplus Value: $2.6M (supplemental)
46th-60th Surplus Value: $0.8M (early second round)

The article is most certainly worth a full read (at the very least a glance), but if you want the short in simple answer, Kaulkman concludes that "while free agent compensation picks aren't worth giving away, a package of decent prospects will almost always be more valuable."

Bears Give Up Their Second Round Pick in 2010

Tampa Bay Bucs traded former first round pick and bust DE Gaines Adams to the Bears for the Bears 2nd round pick next year. So next year Bears fans again won't pay attention to the draft in the first day again because Denver has their first round pick from the Cutler trade. Although, the draft is boring anyway and no one should ever watch it to begin with...

But seriously, how many DE do the Bears need? The have Wale, Brown, Anderson, the dude they drafted with their first pick last year that can jump out of the water from a swimming pool and now Gaines Adams.

But as a Bears fan, as long as we have Cutler, I could care less what Angelo does.