2017 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep Strategy: Emphasizing infielders and stolen bases in the Tout Wars draft

Our Scott White used infield depth to his advantage in his first crack at the most vaunted of industry leagues.

It wasn’t part of some grand plan.

I didn’t go into my first Tout Wars experience thinking I would build the most fearsome infield the league has ever seen (if you’ll excuse the hyperbole). But I did go in aiming to maximize the value of each and every one of my picks, and with the standard Rotisserie lineup, which requires six infielders in all, it just so happened to mean drafting infielders over and over again.

Which is illustrative, in a way. This year is one of unprecedented infield depth, with shortstop actually offering enough talent to go around and second and third base lapping the always-deep first base. When drafting with a group of owners who are intimately familiar with the player pool and the quirks therein, the adjustments for those quirks are widespread and exaggerated. 

I got some bargains, in other words, just because we’ve all trained ourselves to wait on infielders.

Of course, it’s only illustrative if you think my team is good.

A couple things to keep in mind before I unveil the roster: This is a 15-team league and not the 12-team variety that we most often feature on CBSSports.com. 

So what does that mean? 

Well, the deeper you get into the draft, the greater the disparity becomes. While a seventh-round pick in a 12-teamer becomes a sixth-round pick here, a 17th-round pick becomes a 14th-round pick and so on. It also changes the complexion of certain positions -- most notably first base, shortstop and relief pitcher -- since the drop-offs are more pronounced when the pool is stretched three teams deeper.

Basically, this team should look worse than the typical 12-team squadam. I’ll let you decide if it does:

Starting lineup

	Position	Round selected
Tony Wolters COL C	C	26
Chris Iannetta ARI C	C	29
Matt Carpenter STL 3B	1B	3
Dee Gordon MIA 2B	2B	5
Jean Segura SEA SS	SS	6
Manny Machado BAL 3B	3B	1
Todd Frazier CHW 3B	CI	7
Aledmys Diaz STL SS	MI	8
A.J. Pollock ARI CF	OF	2
Michael Brantley CLE LF	OF	11
Jay Bruce NYM RF	OF	12
Yasiel Puig LAD RF	OF	16
Mitch Haniger SEA CF	OF	17
Shin-Soo Choo TEX RF	UT	18
Justin Verlander DET SP	P	4
Rick Porcello BOS SP	P	9
Rich Hill LAD SP	P	10
Sean Manaea OAK SP	P	14
Aaron Nola PHI SP	P	15
Jordan Zimmermann DET SP	P	24
Brandon Finnegan CIN SP	P	25
Jim Johnson ATL RP	P	13
Brandon Kintzler MIN RP	P	19

Bench

	Position	Round drafted
Dan Vogelbach SEA 1B	1B	28
Joe Panik SF 2B	2B	22
Michael Conforto NYM LF	OF	21
Aaron Judge NYY RF	OF	23
Jason Hammel KC SP	P	27
Carter Capps SD RP	P	20

First, let’s make sure we’re all the same page with the rules. While most Tout Wars leagues are auctions, this one, as you can plainly see, was a draft. In addition to it being 15 teams deep, its other quirk is that it uses on-base percentage. So standard 5x5 Rotisserie, but with OBP instead of batting average, which explains the upcharge for Matt Carpenter. I picked 11th overall.

There it is, that Rembrandt of an infield. As it goes, I’ll go, and seeing as I wrangled a high-end player for each of those six spots, it should go far. Investing so much in it would be a misallocation of resources if every team was assured a stout infield, which is largely true for leagues two-thirds this one’s size or leagues that use only the traditional four infield spots. But with 15 teams and six infield spots, that’s 90 infielders being drafted to start in this league (assuming none for the utility spot), which means, on average, we’re going 22 deep at first base, second base, third base and shortstop.

Shortstop especially can’t handle that, and I’ve exacerbated the problem by drafting three -- Manny Machado, Jean Segura and Aledmys Diaz -- of the very best. But that’s everyone else’s problem, not mine, and make no mistake: It is a problem. The end result is players like Jose Iglesias, Ryan Schimpf and Matt Duffy occupying starting spots -- ones whose best-case scenario is nothing more than passable.

Compared to that, my outfield doesn’t look so bad. It obviously suffered from the investment I made in the infield, but every team suffers somewhere. The reliable players run out before all the spots are filled. It’s the nature of the beast.

And frankly, those latter stages are where outfield is at its deepest, offering no shortage of upside picks, and I was in a position to take advantage. Shoot, three of my starters -- A.J. Pollock, Michael Brantley and Yasiel Puig -- were consensus second-rounders at some point in the last three years, and if you haven’t taken note of my infatuation with Mitch Haniger yet, you’re obviously just now tuning in.

They won’t all work out, of course. Brantley may never return to the Indians’ lineup, and Puig may continue giving the Dodgers reason to keep him out of theirs. But between Shin-Soo Choo in my utility spot and up-and-comers Michael Conforto and Aaron Judge on my bench, I like my chances of securing five competent outfielders.

I like my pitching staff, too, for not having invested much in it. Justin Verlander and Rick Porcello are both regression candidates coming off (arguably) career-best seasons, but regression for them is still must-start production. Likewise, the concerns for Rich Hill are more health- than performance-related, so I feel like the floor for my pitching staff is pretty high, at least in terms of ERA and WHIP. Meanwhile, Sean Manaea and Aaron Nola are two of the trendiest breakout candidates you’ll find, and Jordan Zimmermann and Brandon Finnegan will both appear in my Sleepers 2.0 (spoiler alert). Bottom line is I’m not exactly lacking in upside either, and this particular staff is perfectly tailored to my sensibilities.

Catchers and closers are the two areas where I most clearly sacrificed, but at least I got some saves. Among “bad” closers, Jim Johnson and Brandon Kintzler might have some of the best job security since there is no obvious fallback in either Atlanta or Minnesota, and if Carter Capps inherits the job sooner than later in San Diego, I’ll be ahead of the curve in a 12-team league.

With 30 catchers required to start, most teams will have at least one lousy one, so having two isn’t such a failure. If neither Tony Wolters nor Chris Iannetta turns out to be his team’s primary option, I may have to swing a deal, but hopefully I’ll have some outfield excess at that point.

If I’m going to fall short in any category, it’s home runs, with Machado, Todd Frazier and Jay Bruce representing my only big boppers. I feel like after the year we just had, though, home runs will be a disposal commodity for many owners, making them easy to acquire via trade. I really didn’t want to have to chase after stolen bases, the scarcest of the hitter categories, and took deliberate measures to avoid it, first by reaching for Pollock early in Round 2 and then by departing from my rankings to draft Dee Gordon ahead of the unfairly maligned Segura knowing I could probably get Segura a round later in a league full of industry types.

Obviously, I’m new to this league, so I won’t understand all of its idiosyncrasies until I’ve gone through it a time or two, and as with any league this size, a critical injury could doom me from the start. But considering I was genuinely nervous to take part in this draft, I came out of it feeling like I set myself up for success.

Now if only Matt Carpenter would start swinging a bat ...