My Take on the First Round

Credit to Sports Talk Florida

      Last time on my fantasy baseball series, I covered a projected first round of the draft. This time around though, I want to give my thoughts on the first round.
     In my opinion, the first round is not exactly a make or break round, but it is perhaps the most important round of the draft since with your first pick, you are essentially deciding who you will build your team around... No pressure, right?  
     Well, not exactly. If you are able to get a game plan going, you can ace your draft. However, this isn't an article talking about draft strategy (I may post one like that for a future article though). This is an article depicting my thoughts on the first round.
     There are a few trends I noticed. One of those trends is that fantasy owners value power just as much as the real-life higher ups do. I don't think I need any stats to back this notion up, but offense is down. So down in fact, that it has been declining dramatically each season.
     In my last article, I covered the projected first twelve picks. Out of those twelve, five of them were among the top ten in home runs last year, and six of those players placed on the top fifteen in ISO last season. Those are quite telling statistics considering when you take out the two pitchers (more on them later), more than half of the position players on the list were among the top power hitters in baseball.
     There is also another trend that I started to notice. Everyone and their grandma knows that Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in the world, but last year, fantasy owners started to value him as much as anyone else in baseball in their fantasy drafts. In my five years of playing fantasy sports, I don't remember the last time a pitcher was not only drafted in the first round in most drafts, but taken with one of the top five selections in those drafts.

Credit to LA Times

      Last year, there was still debate over whether pitchers should be taken with a first round pick, but with offense at a state of futility and with pitching at its best in decades, it has now become accepted for a pitcher to be taken with early picks. Even with the list of throwing arm injuries starting to become a who's who of pitchers, owners still realize that quality pitching can make or break seasons.
     It seems to me that pitchers being taken in the first round such as Felix Hernandez and Clayton Kershaw are not some fad. To me, it is something that will continue to be a commonplace in drafts and perhaps in two or three years from now, we can start to see more than three pitchers taken in the first round in most drafts. Still though, it is highly interesting to see that what value fantasy owners value almost exactly mimics the Major League teams of the real world.