My Game Plan for 2022: Draft Like a Football Guy

This article is part of our Baseball Draft Kit series.

You probably know the type. The guy who's a willing participant in your league every year, but he's really more of a Football Guy. He's happy to be part of the group, and you're happy to have him, in no small part because he winds up paying you money most Octobers. (You feel a bit guilty about that, but he seems happy just to play every year, so it seems to be working out fine for everybody.)

Football Guy doesn't read fantasy baseball articles or listen to podcasts. He only catches a small handful of games each year, mostly involving his local team. He doesn't know anything about prospects. He's not tracking the stability of closer roles. He's maybe heard of barrel rate and xFIP once or twice, but he's certainly not using them to dig for sleepers. He's plugged into baseball enough to know the big names, but that's about it. He's just happy to be there.

That guy is going to have the best fantasy baseball season of his life this year.

Why? Because those big names he targets every year just so happen to be exactly the players who are most undervalued this draft season.

The Rising Price of Saves

If you've read or listened to any fantasy baseball content this winter, or if you've done any early drafts yourself, you're probably aware of the unprecedented extent top relievers are being pushed up draft boards. There's some sound logic driving that push. The amount of true closers has been decreasing for years, and there's no sign of that trend stopping anytime soon. With the lockout freezing transactions much of winter, there's significantly more uncertainty at the back end of bullpens around the league than we're used to at this point of the cycle. Especially in the 50-round draft-and-hold leagues that are popular this time of year, there's a real urgency to grab the small number of seemingly guaranteed saves that are available, as you can't add saves via the waiver wire.

But it's not hard to make a case that these top closers have been pushed too far. Liam Hendriks and Josh Hader have ADPs in the late second round of Draft Champions leagues, with Hader going as low as 17th and Hendriks going as low as 14th. Raisel Iglesias, Emmanuel Clase and Edwin Diaz are going in the fourth round, with Aroldis Chapman is in the early fifth. 

The idea that to win an overall contest like the NFBC Draft Champions requires dominance in all categories is correct, but if you're taking big hits in other areas to increase your chances of ranking highly in saves, you're not necessarily increasing your odds. If you're taking Hendriks or Hader in the second round, you're missing the chance to grab the elite bats found in that range. Rafael Devers, Luis Robert, Freddie Freeman, Ozzie Albies, Manny Machado and Starling Marte have second-round ADPs as of writing.

It's also not as if you're avoiding risk by taking a very early closer, either. Pitchers are risky by definition, as their arms can blow out at any second simply because they're pitchers. Relievers are even riskier due to their inherently tiny sample sizes. Hendriks shares a bullpen with Craig Kimbrel. Hader shares one with Devin Williams. It isn't the probable outcome, but it's not remotely hard to imagine Hendriks or Hader looking worse than Kimbrel or Williams the first six weeks and losing his job, in which case you've passed up the chance to select one of those elite bats and got rewarded with a mere eight saves for your trouble.

So far, my approach to saves has been to take shots at relievers who aren't seen as sure closers but clearly have the talent to do the job. Taylor Rogers (13th-round ADP in Draft Champions leagues) and Lucas Sims (15th round) are two of my personal favorites. If those guys do indeed claim their respective closer roles, and I would peg them as clear favorites to do so, they'll post saves totals not far from what you're expecting the likes of Hader and Hendriks to produce.

Relievers like Rogers and Sims do come with plenty of risks, but you have to take at least a few risks and have things go your way to do well in an overall contest, and they represent the exact sort of risk I'm interested in taking. It's far easier for me to envision a successful team where I draft Albies in the second round and luck into 15th-rounder Sims becoming 90 percent of Hendriks than it is for me to envision a team where I take Hendriks in the second and luck into 15th-rounder Gavin Lux becoming 90 percent of Albies.

Expensive Steals and Prospects

While the increased prices for closers represent a new wrinkle for this season, other groups of players are being pushed as well, as they typically are. In particular, speed guys and prospects are pricey as usual. Speed always gets pushed in overall contests for the same reason as saves, as you need a strong performance in steals to compete for the championship. Drafters who reach for speed are taking a hit to the overall value they get from their hitters, however. Here's a look at all the players ATC projects for at least 20 steals this year, comparing their ADP to their rank according to ATC's auction values:

The elite bats who also happen to provide steals seem at most marginally overpriced in the first round, but the likes of Cedric Mullins, Jazz Chisholm, Myles Straw and Tyler Wade appear to be significantly overdrafted according to the projections. (Akil Baddoo, in contrast, is only slightly overpriced according to the projections and is a favorite target of mine in leagues where I refuse to pay the premium for the aforementioned names.)

Pushing speed like this is a common strategy among the best fantasy players, who are confident that they can make up for the value they're losing in other offensive categories with savvy picks late in the draft. I don't mean to be dumping on that strategy, but it's important to acknowledge that pushing up these players necessarily means that other names get pushed down.

Prospects likewise are going quite high in drafts, in many cases contrary to the advice of top prospect analysts. Bobby Witt Jr. is going in the late sixth or early seventh round, and while his 90th percentile outcome may well be that of a second rounder if everything goes his way right away, his median outcome is surely far lower than that of Carlos Correa, who shares his position and is going a full round later.

A similar story can be told about prospects like Oneil Cruz (15th round), Spencer Torkelson (18th round) or Julio Rodriguez (19th round). These guys fit the theory that you need some things to break right if you're going to win an overall contest, and their ceilings are certainly high if things do in fact break right, but they're still being pushed from where they'd be going if drafters merely looked at the most likely outcome.

The Football Guy's Targets

With so many groups of players being pushed this season, that naturally means other groups must be falling down draft boards. That brings us back to the Football Guy we talked about at the beginning of the article. The players falling down draft boards are precisely his guys, the big names that he's familiar with who have been stars for several years.

Unlike any recent season that I can remember, this year's drafts are full of truly elite talents who are available far later than normal. In each case, these players are tumbling for legitimate reasons, typically due to injuries. It's undeniably risky to take a player in that situation, but as mentioned many times, you have to take some risks, or else you'll wind up with a high-floor team that loses to whichever of your bolder leaguemates ends up having his risks pay off. 

Would you rather your risks be players like Chisholm or Witt, who could theoretically wind up looking like Jose Ramirez if you project very optimistically? Or would you rather your risks be players like Mike Trout or Jacob deGrom or Justin Verlander, who merely have to look like versions of themselves we've seen very recently?

Here's a brief list of players Football Guy will take this season, looking at their recent ADPs, their current ADP and their reason for falling. All of these guys spent time as first-round picks in the last three years:

Again, there are real risks associated with all these players. Maybe Trout and deGrom are irreparably broken. Maybe Verlander is simply too old. Maybe Bellinger just isn't the guy he used to be. But if you're looking to maximize the numbers of your draft picks who have genuine shots at first-round finishes, this is the place to look, as they've been first rounders in the recent past. There are always a few players in this category available, but the list is long enough this season that you can pick the handful whose bounce-backs you're more willing to buy into and build your strategy around them.

If you like feeling clever, this probably isn't the strategy for you. For many drafters, hitting on the next top prospect or finding an advanced-stats sleeper has a certain appeal that winning through big names simply doesn't. We play this game for fun, and if your fun comes from taking shots at Chisholm and Witt, by all means, draft the way that makes you happy. But there's more of a chance this year than ever that your Football Guy friend beats you simply by gobbling up all the discounted stars he's heard of.

Consider beating him at his own game, which you should be able to do, as the mere fact that you read all the way to the bottom of this manifesto means you'll likely be pairing those big names with better late-round picks and better waiver pickups than your less plugged-in Football Guy leaguemate will manage.