An Introduction to the Twins Daily Writers Fantasy League

[Matthew Lenz]

A few months back, well before COVID-19 became an international pandemic, a group of 16 Twins Daily writers committed to starting a fantasy baseball league. Despite no guarantee that there will be a 2020 Major League Baseball season, we decided to move forward with the draft on Sunday night.This article will look to give you the details of the league and, more interestingly, provide an analysis of the draft. This piece will be, at times, objective using FantasyPros as a reference to assess how teams drafted. At other times, you will see “Commish Commentary” which is more subjective and my opportunity to rip some of the other teams. You can also follow this live tweet thread from draft night if you would like more subjective analysis influenced by a couple Ruby Grapefruit White Claws.

 

League Details

The name of the league, as proposed by an anonymous member and voted on, is “Twins Daily Tournament of Death”. It’s a 16-team league, head-to-head (H2H) “each category” which means teams will earn a single win, loss, or tie at the end of the week. It’s a free, redraft league that only allows the top-six teams to make the playoffs, and has the following categories:

• Hitting Categories: Home runs, Total Bases, OPS, Net Steals, and Strikeouts (less is better)
• Pitching Categories: Strikeouts, Quality Starts, K/BB ratio; Net Saves + Holds, OBP Against

The goal was to pick categories that relied on luck or teammate performance (i.e. runs scored, runs batted in, etc.) as little as possible while also picking categories that weren’t too redundant. Keep in mind, we were limited by the options that Yahoo! provided us.

 

Draft Analysis - in order of FantasyPros Power Rankings

1. “Andrew Thares” (Andrew Thares)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: Thares’ team is solid in every category with the exception of quality starts. He has one of the best relief corps in the league headlined by Josh Hader, arguably the best reliever in baseball, and 2019 breakout Ian Kennedy. The league letting Yordan Alvarez drop to him with the 38th pick and a bounceback season from Marcell Ozuna will be the reason his offense outperforms FantasyPros expectations.

 

2.“The Funkadelic” (Matthew Lenz)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: With eight starting pitchers and only one relief pitcher (Kenley Jansen) he’s either really locked in on Quality Starts and Pitcher Strikeouts or is stocked up to make a move to a team that needs some starting pitching. The offense will likely depend on the development of Kyle Tucker, Scott Kingery, and Willie Calhoun.

 

3.“Bellingham Bells” (Matthew Braun)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: Um, he didn’t take his first offensive player until the 8th round. I’d leave it at that but I also want to point out that he drafted Scherzer, Verlander, and Greinke with three of his first four picks who have an average age of 36 years old. If those three continue their dominance, he has set himself up with other nice pieces (Paddock, Boyd, Rogers, and Lugo). Not surprisingly, FantasyPros has him with the lowest rated offense but the highest rated pitching staff. I think his season relies on the veteran presence guiding the youngun’s...if that’s a thing in fantasy baseball.

 

4.“The Patrick Dobniaks” (Patrick Wozniak - not on Twitter but says he’s available by carrier pigeon)

Full Team

Commish Commentary:On FantasyPros, you can select options that show “reaches” (players drafted two rounds earlier than their ECR) and, unfortunately, The Patrick Dobniak’s lead the league with seven reaches in his draft. He must know something big about Drew Pomeranz, the 384th ranked player, by drafting him as the 157th player off the board. FantasyPros isn’t overly high on any part of his team, but I like the upside of Statcast Superstar Charlie Morton, new Twin and full-time starter Kenta Maeda, and Jose Urquidy who made a splash for the Astros last season.

 

5.“The Evil Mauers” (Cody Pirkl)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: The longer Major League Baseball delays the start of the season the more Pirkl benefits. He’ll be hoping to start the year, whenever that is, with healthy versions of Aaron Judge and James Paxton as well as a version of Yasiel Puig that’s on a 26 man roster. The late start, and possibly fewer games, also protects aging stars like Clayton Kershaw and Shin-Soo Choo from wearing down more through a six month, 162-game grind. He also took Bieber...lol.

 

6. “1979 Mike Marshall” (Tom Froemming)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: Thanks to auto-draft, he was the beneficiary of Mike Trout as the second overall pick. Honestly, Tom used my preferred strategy had I not been trying to live tweet the whole thing. Load up on hitting early (Trout, Alonso, Blackmon) and relief pitching late (Pressly and Pettit), although I wasn’t a fan of Kirby Yates in the fifth round. The risk with this strategy is if one or two pitchers have a bad outing, it can cost him the week.

 

7.“Steve’s Team” (Steve Lein)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: Followed Tom’s strategy but mixed in a little more starting pitching for balance sake. His offense is well-balanced with a mix of base stealers (Turner, Merrifield, and Villar) and power hitters (Springer, Suarez, and Urshela). FantasyPros and I agree that nabbing Verdugo, Urshela, and Myers in the last three rounds of the draft were an absolute steal. A Myers re-birth in a revamped Padres lineup and Verdugo building off 363 successful at-bats in 2019 could catapult him into the playoffs.

 

8. “Rena’s Team” (Renabanena)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: The world learned a lot about Rena on this fateful day...she was the first to pick a Yankee and never selected Greg Bird. It’s fair to question whether her love for the Twins and Greg Bird is legit. Okay, that’s too far...I’m only kidding. She made up for it by nabbing Luis “Ted Williams” Arraez as her starting third basemen (whaaaa????). She’s got a lot of young talent (Albies, Robles, Biggio, and Kopech) that she’ll need to live up to their prospect hype if she wants to make the playoffs.

 

9.“Seth’s Team” (Seth Stohs)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: He had my favorite spot in the draft…the last spot in the order. I’m still not excited about Flaherty at 16 but maybe his second half was legit. What I do love is the dedication to drafting players related to the Twins:

• Current Twins: Berrios, Donaldson, Sano
• Former Twins: Hendriks, Gibson, Goodrum
• Twin Killers: Gregorius

Somebody more creative than me needs to come up with a team name that

reflects this theme.

 

10.“Metrodome Milk Jugs” (Nate Palmer)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: In a close competition with JD, I vote Nate Palmer having the best team name. According to FantasyPros, that might be the only award Nate wins this year. Personally, I don’t hate his team but other than maybe his first five picks his players have a limited ceiling which I think is reflected in FantasyPros ranking.

 

11. “Matthew’s Team” (Matthew Taylor)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: Will he ever live down being the guy who drafted Acuna over Trout? Honestly, he probably will...using a consensus ADP from six of the most popular fantasy platforms it seems that Acuna over Trout is more likely than not. Unfortunately, he got bad news on Tuesday that his 4th round pick, Noah Syndergaard, will not pitch in 2020. Luckily, he stocked up on mostly relief pitching to help him win three of the five pitching categories.

 

12. “Buzzer Beater” (AJ Condon)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: If you needed proof that he auto drafted then look no further than how his draft ended up. He utilized the anti-Bellingham Bells strategy by drafting eight position players in the first eight rounds followed by nine pitchers in the following nine rounds. FantasyPros has him with the most powerful offense in the league which is how he ended up eighth in the power rankings.

 

13. “Nash Walker’s Team” (Nash Walker)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: Basically just copy and paste what I said about Nate’s team here. He’s not projected to be bad at anything but also not good at anything. I do love that he got Buxton with the 134th pick...yea, yea I’m a homer.

 

14.“The Mor you Neau (JD Cameron)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: JD might not have won for best team name, but it sure was close and it’s definitely creative. Whether it be intentional or not, I think his issue was that he had a penchant for drafting guys from teams in the midwest but none of them are on the Twins. That’s going to be a lot of games where he will either be cheering against the Twins or his fantasy team. Luckily for him, FantasyPros says his fantasy team won’t be contending for the playoffs so it should make that decision easy.

 

15. “Cooper’s Team” (Cooper Carlson)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: FantasyPros may not like his team, but I think it’ll be fun to watch. Names like Tatis Jr., Guerrero Jr., Gallo, Kepler, Escobar, and McKay give him so good games to tune into. If nothing else he’ll lead the league in bat flip highlights.

 

16. “Andrew’s Team” (Andrew Gebo)

Full Team

Commish Commentary: The best thing about Andrew’s Team was that he drafted Trevor Bauer one pick after Max Kepler was selected. Outside of that, FantasyPros and I agree that it’s hard to find something to love after the first five rounds from a fantasy perspective. Bauer has never been that good. David Price isn’t the workhorse or as good as he used to be. His offense looks average in most spots but not great in anything in particular.

 

And all of this may be for naught

 

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[Tom Froemming]

Here's my breakdown of the winners and losers, based on my very scientific formula, as well as some other fun stuff I recorded during the draft: