rburgh wrote:
But the biggest question is, If you see a guy take your favorite top 3 picks with his first 3 picks, why in hell do you let him have #4? Riddle me that, Batman!
This is an excellent question. The answer is because Ive already gone a different direction.
Picks 1-6 are largely pre determined- occasionally someone will grab maddux there, but not often.
As noted Ive picked 8-11 probably 75% of the drafts, maybe more. SO, I was forced to develop strategies for picking there.
Some things might seem really really obvious-- but people weren't doing them.
One small fun anecdote-- Willie Mays. Yeah, hes often picked 7-10. But for whatever reason, few managers thought to play him other than CF, where perhaps his greatest value is. A few managers even assumed I had no corner (RF) in a couple drafts and thought to make me pay high for one in a trade---even asked who I was playing in RF since I had Mays, DiMaggio and Josh Ham on my roster. This happened at least 3 times- with experienced managers-- not newbies.
Simple right?
Now whats important to me here is Mays value, which in LD the ability to pivot gives you more chances to grab someone else like a DiMaggio in round 3 or 4.
There are tons more small ones like this, none of which are rocket science, but each one lets you do something else.
My point is that its not someone grabbing my faves-- which Ive got-- my draft depends on which directions I'm forced to go, but when someone asks you who your RF is and next week they draft Mays DiMaggio and Ham, Yeah its frustrating as hell-- even when I'm drafting completely different guys. (how bout when you ask em-- they say no its just coincidence?)
PS-- of course if you can get Ruth and Arky id expect you to grab lefties-- or you even go lefty or righty and grab guys that go there, no one should bat an eyelash at that.
or even THIS draft when someone grabbed Hughie in the 7th rd before me where I often grab him-- they clearly did it b/c they were building a small ball team, not copying in any way shape or form.