In happy news for the league, we have added a manager who has taken over one of the vacant teams. We are all happy to have Joe aboard and he has now survived his first draft.
My team coming back has some very, very good parts and a number of parts that could be better, but not a *lot* better based on what was there to be found in the draft this year. I was drafting fourth despite having made the playoffs last year, because last year was just weird. And there were a number of starting pitchers available to draft, so when it came down to me, I decided to snag Garrett Crochet. I am hoping that he lives up to all of the hype.
I had wondered if there was any chance that I would be able to snag one of the two young outfielders of note in this class, Chourio and Merrill. There wasn't, unless I'd been willing to pass up a pitcher. And I wasn't. The two outfielders were gone by the end of the first round. But I have a great many outfielders, even if a few of them had lesser seasons due to injury, so I'll get by.
I *did* need to do something about catcher. Catcher was very thin on the ground in the draft, so I used my second pick to grab Ivan Herrera. This means that I will barely have to play Keibert Ruiz, who had a bad year, but who I am loathe to let go. Herrera can back up Moreno instead.
I was going to need three new relievers behind Clase and Helsley, so I started with Griffin Jax in the third round.
In the fourth round, I wanted something better and younger than Dansby Swanson to back up Carlos Correa for half the games, so I collected my fifth Cardinal with Masyn Winn, joining the aforementioned Herrera and Helsley along with Sonny Gray and Brendan Donovan. This is a lot of Cardinals. At the moment, they are still in first place.
The fifth round took me back to a relief pitcher dive with Edwin Uceta, who had been recommended by MLB Network. We will see how good a recommendation this was. :)
The sixth round let me lock down the last of the bullpen with A.J. Puk.
In the seventh round, I had to make a hard choice. Did I want to hold onto Luis Severino, who is a starting pitcher who has been good in the past, but who was not good this year? And who is going to be pitching half his games in a AAA part in Sacramento? Or did I want to trade him in for something else?
I decided to trade him in, picking up young outfielder Dylan Crews, who comes highly touted. And that was the end of my draft.
My drops this year included a bunch of players that I drafted last year (mostly relievers) who did not pan out this year, along with the longest tenured member of the team, Clayton Kershaw, who I originally drafted in 2009. But he has been injury prone lately and will not be starting until some time this summer and *someone* has to go.
So around the field, we are looking at:
C: Moreno, Herrera, Ruiz
1B: Harper, Freeman
2B: Albies, Donovan
3B: Machado, Bregman
SS: Correa, Winn, Swanson
OF: Soto, Rodriguez, Buxton, Acuna, Chisholm, Crews
DH: Ohtani
SP: Crochet, Fried, Greene, Darvish, Gray, Gore, Buehler, Woodruff
RP: Clase, Uceta, Jax, Puk, Helsley
We'll see how it goes.
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