Folks,

So the BLB draft is TOMORROW, FEB 25, at 9 AM MST/11 AM EST. Hopefully all of you knew that but if not, surprise!

Please plan to show up a bit early, like 8:45 AM MST. Usually there’s a bunch of us on there chatting away and this way we aren’t scrambling to email a lot of guys trying to figure out if they are running late.

Note that I confirmed with Fantrax that there is no computer bidder (unlike on the CBS site). You can override the $1 minimum bid for players in your queue so that would be your only hope for winning non-$1 players. The only time your team would bid on a player is when you are nominating. So definitely don’t miss the auction!

Draft Information/Key Links

First of all, here is the link to the Fantrax site (which most of you have signed up for already):

FANTRAX

Second, click below for the final draft list:

blb-draft-list-final-feb-21-2017

For the new guys I wanted to point out a few things as reminders:

• In the draft list above only focus on the AUC tabs – the PROS tabs are the players eligible for the prospect draft, which will occur by emailed picks after the minors draft (see below). Likely this won’t kick off for several weeks so you’ve got time to prepare;
• Please print out the draft list and have it with you tomorrow. Use that list when filling out your queue to nominate players. As a reminder, you will see players in the Fantrax site that are NOT draft eligible. Examples include Chris Carter, Brandon Moss, Mike Napoli, etc;
• As a reminder – you CAN draft uncarded players as long as they are on the draft list. An example of an uncarded (previously carded) player that I expect to get nominated tomorrow would be Eric Thames, but there could be others too;
• I expect the auction to take 4-5 hours based on past experience. We will plan to take a 15 minute break approximately every hour or so;
• The trade freeze will be lifted immediately after the auction;
• The auction is used to fill out the first 25 players for your team. After the auction on Saturday, we’ll take a 1 day breather while I work on finalizing the list for the MINORS draft. The minors draft will kick off Sunday night. Every team will have 10 draft picks, and those picks can be traded as long as each team is still left with 10 picks (ie you can trade a player plus a lower minors pick for a higher minors pick, or you can do 2 for 2 pick deals, etc);
• Though we have a salary cap for the auction ($300), we do NOT have an in-season salary cap. That means if you are a contender you can immediately add salary above $300 in trades post-auction if you want.

Draft Preview

When guys were announcing their moves I was keeping track of how much money/roster spots each team had, as well as the breakdown of hitters/pitchers. I’ll present the following chart:

TEAM	Available	Spots	Ros,H	Ros,P	$/spot
EDM	$134	11	7	7	$12.1
NG	$41	7	11	7	$5.8
RC	$139	12	9	4	$11.5
NEW	$137	15	4	6	$9.1
PAY	$95	12	8	5	$7.9
SHI	$131	9	11	5	$14.5
CIN	$88	9	9	7	$9.7
GC	$168	15	8	2	$11.2
NAR	$104	13	7	5	$8.0
BRI	$33	4	11	10	$8.2
VER	$85	5	12	8	$17.0
ROM	$178	15	9	1	$11.8
OTT	$175	12	7	6	$14.5
RR	$60	7	10	8	$8.5
DAK	$9	2	14	9	$4.5
NAP	$105	6	10	9	$17.5
NIC	$98	15	5	5	$6.5
WOO	$87	11	9	5	$7.9
SUD	$45	10	9	6	$4.5
TOR	$47	2	12	11	$23.5
TOTAL	$1,959	192	182	126	$10.2

A few comments:

• Rome has the most money to spend in the auction at $178;
• Toronto has the highest $/player allowance at $23.5 for the two roster spots;
• The “average” player in theory will go for $10 bucks; however, there are usually a bunch of $1 players and also not every team will spend all their money so I suspect that the average non-$1 player will go in the $12-15 range;
• If we assume that teams will typically carry 14 hitters and 11 pitchers, then this auction could be scarce on pitchers as the breakdown of the 192 picks to achieve the 14/11 split on average league wide would be 98 hitters and 94 pitchers;
• Of note per the above, there are 244 carded hitters, 12 previously carded hitters, 276 carded pitchers and 49 previously carded pitchers in the draft this year.

I don’t have too much else to offer in the way of a draft preview. I will be curious to see how much Kershaw goes for. When healthy, he’s the best pitcher in MLB; however, he’s a lefty (which can struggle in DLB) and he’s got the F this year. How much will that drop his price tag? The bidding on him will be fascinating.  Beyond Kershaw, in my review of the draft list I noted that this would be a great year to be rebuilding. There seems to be way high upside youngsters in the auction this year than in years past. For hitters you have Benintendi, Bregman, Almora, Dahl, Renfroe, Swanson, Margot, and Moncada to name a few and for pitchers you have Gsellman, Cotton, Hoffman, Manaea, Giolito to name a few.

That’s all I have, feel free to leave some of your own thoughts in the comments, and see everyone tomorrow morning!

Mike