The Call to the Pen fantasy baseball league has completed the first 15 rounds of its draft. Here is how each team stacks up so far.
As the calendar turned to February, the action in the Call to the Pen fantasy baseball league has picked up as we have completed 15 full rounds. On Monday Jason Reed walked through the first 10 rounds on a round-by-round basis. Now we will take a team-by-team journey to see how each squad is stacking up as we start to approach the halfway point of the draft.
To recap, there are 16 teams in the league, with each team owned by a Call to the Pen writer. We are using players from both leagues and employing the standard 5×5 rotisserie format: batting average, home runs, RBI, runs and stolen bases for hitters; wins, saves, strikeouts, ERA and WHIP for pitchers. The active roster consists of 13 hitters (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, corner infielder, middle infielder, five OF, utility) and nine pitchers (either starters or relievers), while the reserve roster includes eight major leaguers with two DL spots and 10 minor leaguers.
Because we at CttP take up residence all across the country, and because there are 16 of us in the league, we have been conducting our draft in a slow live format. We started in early January and should be wrapping up round 40 around late March. Each owner has eight hours to make a selection, with the clock not running from 11 PM-7 AM ET. The draft snakes, so the team with the first pick in odd-numbered rounds has the last pick in even-numbered rounds, and the team with the last pick in odd-numbered rounds has the first pick in even-numbered rounds.
This works best for our purposes, but if you’re conducting your own fantasy draft, I would highly recommend a faster live draft format where each team has 60-120 seconds to make a selection. Beyond that, having the draft in person does an even better job in building league camaraderie. Finally, if you can set aside a larger block of time, try out an auction format instead of the turn-by-turn draft settings that we’re using. I participated in my first auction draft in 2002 and find it to be a vastly superior format.
As you will see, the strategies each team has employed thus far vary wildly. Some have focused on pitching, while some have focused on hitting. Some have selected the best player available, while some have tried to focus on creating more well-rounded teams. Some have made youth a priority, as we intend this to be a dynasty league with rosters carrying over from season to season without limitation. I have seen these tried to varying degrees of success, so hopefully we at Call to the Pen will be able to keep this going for years to come.
Full disclosure: I took over for an abandoned team that had been autopicked for the first 11 rounds. Every other owner has been at the helm for the duration. My strategy wouldn’t have varied too much from that of the selections made by our league host at Fantrax, so my earlier presence would not have varied others’ strategies too much.
I have heard it said that there is nothing more interesting than your own fantasy team, and nothing less interesting than someone else’s fantasy team. With that being said, join us on a tour of the first half of 16 someone else’s fantasy teams. Squads are presented in first-round draft order.