The only one that made me chuckle was Joe Morgan. But that may be more of a personal bias of mine. : )

Morgan seems to be one of those guys that the sim hates. He never seems to live up to his stats but maybe thats a ballpark thing.

I used him once, back in DEAL 2 or 3 and he hit about .282 for me with less OBP & power numbers than I was counting on.

You NEVER know what you're gonna get with newbies in this league lol. Check this out....

I had Magglio Ordonez targeted as my last starting OF for a particular reason, along with 3 other guys who I was pretty sure would NOT be drafted or at the very least, drafted very late, so that I could load up on pitching in the middle rounds. After all, I didn't remember Magglio being picked before maybe round 15 at the earliest so I thought he was a safe bet.

Now I just did some checking, and would you believe that Magglio has NOT been even DRAFTED in this league since DEAL TWO and that was when Rattlers picked him with pick 374 in round 15.

Of course, wouldn't ya know it....je3rd takes Magglio from me in ROUND TEN and pick 220 LOL Proving that you can't take ANYTHING for granted in the DEAL.

An aside....I am SHOCKED by everyone's lack of interest in Magglio quite frankly. That one year where he hit .363 with pop is worth drafting. Maybe not pick 220 worth, but still....

If anyone wants to pass a couple hours....do an advanced search in the baseball theme league forum and put "amerk1180" in the "author" field and "all" for timeframe.

All the DEAL drafts should pop up. VERY interesting how some names have floated up and down from draft to draft and how relief pitching was drafted SOOOO much lower in earlier DEAL drafts among other things.

I had hoped to hold off on relievers for a couple more rounds, for sure. Then the run started and I got caught up in it for fear of losing out on at least 1 or 2 of the better choices. I did look back on the previous two drafts, and I saw some owners really load up the pen with studs. Lots of approaches to this league, which does add to the fun. I have no illusions about having done a great job drafting so far, as clearly there are people with a lot more experience at these who will draft far more wisely.

amerk - thanks for the tip on how to find prior drafts. It does speed the search up some. I knew they were there and I have been going back and looking at some of the drafts I missed. This helps that process.

Regarding having targeted players selected before you can get to them, yesterday, round 10, I watched 7 targets go away. I did not expect too get them all but I was surprised at a couple of the "early" choices.

That is the conundrum of this draft, isn't it? Target guys, try not to take them "early", and then watch 'em go to someone else.

I've only seen a couple of choices that looked like they were significantly early. As i recall, one year someone took Mike Donlin in the first couple of rounds. Don't think that worked out.

I have seen that, when the prior season's stats are still up, the players who did well in the prior season are drafted earlier. So there are guys who go late one year, or not at all, and then perform well. Then they get taken early, don't do well or as well, and drop the following year. The past doesn't guarantee future results. And other than the handful of super studs that always seem to perform, production varies from season to season.

I took Edd Roush earlier than I wanted this year. He didn't go til very late last draft. But where we were, I wanted a centerfielder with great range, and since he has performed well for me in other leagues, i grabbed him over another pick I wanted, Paul Waner. (Turns out that Waner was available and luckily i got him too.) Was it "too" early, maybe. If he gets the gold glove in CF, even if he bats .260, i will take it.

I think it always comes down to the Old WIS battle. Is it a computer program or a baseball game?

So no matter how much the Stats tells us something, we all have our own personal biases.

Do you always listen to the stats? Whip#, HR/9#? past performances? Or whatever stat makes your leg tingle? Or do you sometimes just go with a guy you like? Do you take a guy you never heard of if the stats tell you he's worth it? Many do not.

All in fun.

I don't buy that the picks listed are reaches. I wouldn't be surprised if Ordonez is drafted from here on out. I've seen guys that weren't drafted in seasons past that have performed well enough to be drafted in the middle rounds now. I drafted two guys early that went between 1 - 3 rounds earlier than last season but they fit what I'm trying to do. I also grabbed some that dropped much lower than past years. It usually averages out.

Also, past results aren't all that accurate. They give an idea but don't take into account the ballpark factor. Pitching is especially inaccurate due to owner preferences. Some have had success with sacrificing offense for better defense which can lower ERA but others have had success with offense over fielding. I also like to look at past results to get an idea of when players are drafted but not to gauge where I should take him.

This is just my thought process for drafting. Some are close but everyone has their own way.

I'm building my team as I go and I've filled all 25 roster slots with players I've drafted and available targets. What's interesting if I had the current roster I've built so far I would be a little over $3 mil from exceeding the cap. In the past has anyone had any cap issues?

My first 11 players average about $10M each. I'm pretty sure that won't keep up, but there also seems no reason to come up short on PA or IP in a league like this either. I would imagine I'll have plenty left to fill the last few spots with some decent salary seasons still.

I was hoping everyone forgot about Johnny Mize. Was going to take him this round.

Time for Plan B. Darn.

I went off script with my last pick and took a chance on Elvis Andrus' 2017 season. Figured this is the place to discuss it.

With so many innings from deadball pitchers, I figure all these stud hitters putting the ball into play is something to try to slow down, right? I hadn't noticed until researching RF stats yesterday quite how much better Andrus' 6.24 was than anyone else I was looking at to play SS. His hitting was decent for most leagues, but he'll be a weak spot in this one. He has enough speed and contact to be helpful, I think. But I'm mostly counting on an epic amount of + plays and very few errors.

I'm in one league where he's being used, and through 86 games he has 26 + plays and 7 errors (.985). And that's all 2013-17 players and therefore a much, much larger amount of Ks per game. So I figure in the DEAL league, he might be seeing 4-5 more plays per game. So 50 + plays seems possible even.

By the way, Is there going to be a new Theme league # being entered soon?