H2H Auction League

Stephen Drew

2011 Goose Joak Original

My strategy in this draft was:

1. Target elite pitchers instead of elite hitters

Reason: Analyzing the last three years of data suggests that top ten pitchers are just as safe as top ten hitters.  Plus, they are cheaper and unlikely to emerge out of nowhere.

2. Target an unbalanced team

Reason: Head to head leagues like this one use a playoff system to determine the winner.  That introduces a lot of luck into the final outcome.  To combat this, I wanted a team that was more likely to overload on specific categories every week.  I may not win as many categories every week, but I should be winning the same categories most weeks.

3. Draft hitters between ages 26 and 31

I believe that all my hitters except for Mike Stanton are in this age range.  I tend to believe that if you're cutting costs, this is the age range that gives you the most upside (see Robinson Cano and Josh Hamilton last year).

Based on these principles, I feel happy with my draft.  Napoli was a plus (I expected Posada), and so was Cliff Lee (I was thinking of Josh Johnson).  

I didn't realize that Kubel was in a time share with Thome, but hopefully he gets some AB in the OF.  I also didn't realize that Aardsma was going to start the year on the DL, but he was my 7th closer.  So I'm not too worried there.