Expert Draft Recap

My man Adam Filadelfo is back to recap his NL Only Expert League draft last Thursday.  He's looking forward to an AL-Only one tonight as well...  Good luck, Adam.  Way to represent the Brain!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday was my first experts league draft and it was a 12 team NL only auction draft. I have to admit I was a little nervous before the draft began but I knew all my preparation was enough to get me through. Once I bought my first player, my nerves steadied and I was ready to hang with the big boys. My first player I bought was Andrew McCutchen. Having McCutchen on your team is enough to steady any fantasy baseball player's nerves. I went into this draft knowing I wanted to make a big splash right away so I could have a marquee player to build my team around but also make sure I still had a balanced team when the draft was over. Once I got McCutchen, I waited on the outfield position so I didn't have too much money invested in one position. I knew I had to have a balanced team if I was going to be successful.

I was surprised by two things that happened in this draft. The first was a lot of players were going for more than what they had been "worth". Now like I mentioned in my last article, each draft is different and each owner has different values for players but I was a little surprised owners were willing to spend a little more to get a player they felt was vital to their team's success. The other thing that surprised me a little was that some of the early nominations were not the marquee players. While that didn't come as a shock to me, I did think more stars would be nominated earlier but again, each draft is different and every owner has their own strategy.

The biggest difference that stood out to me between playing in my home leagues and playing in an experts league was that in this experts league, nobody was going to be given a player. What I mean by that is if you wanted a certain player, you were going to have to pay for that player. In my home leagues, owners are little more reluctant to give up on the bidding when they feel the price was too high. Although that obviously did happen in this draft as well, I knew I wasn't walking away with a steal. These guys know what they're doing and if you wanted to acquire a player, you were going to have to earn that player. With that said, I do feel like I got a few bargains later in the draft. I also feel like I did well early on in the draft based upon the fact I bought players for less than I what I expected them to go for. This helped me a little later in the draft when the budgets were winding down and the player pool was becoming thinner.

All in all, I feel I came out of this draft with a balanced team and I was able to stick to my plans going into the draft. I stuck to my tiers that I spoke about in my last article and made sure the draft didn't get away from me at any point. The draft took almost four hours to complete and although the 3 hours of sleep I got before I had to wake up for work wasn't fun at the time, I can't wait to do it all over again on Monday night when I have my experts league AL only auction draft.