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2024 Straight Draft Guide

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Ray Murphy

Mar 15 2024 3:14am

2024 Straight Draft Guide

Ray Murphy

Mar 15 2024

How we got here

Happy 20th anniversary, Straight Draft Guide! For the long-time readers, thanks for sticking with us. For the newcomers… welcome! We have tinkered with our approach quite a bit over the years. Some of that work is best left to the archives, but in the spirit of "showing our work", we present the (nearly) full archive of prior SDGs anyway:

History: 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005

(We're thrilled that our full history has migrated over from the old site… although the 2022 edition is apparently still in transit somewhere!)

Straight Draft Rankings (updated 3/14/2024)

Mixed | AL-only | NL-only

The 2024 plan: Building from the middle out

The central tension of the straight draft format hasn't really changed over 20 years: you just can't cover all of your draft-table priorities as early in the draft as you would like. You might sketch out a priority list for your first 10 rounds that looks something like this:

two big bopper bats at any position
a pair of ace/near-ace SP, plus a reliable #3 guy behind your aces.
two established closers
at least one catcher if not two
all four starting IF spots
at least two OF

Even if your “two big boppers” fit perfectly within the positional coverage in the last three bullets, you just listed 12-13 priorities for your first 10 picks. Sadly, the rules don't allow you to roster 13 guys through round 10; the game would be far easier if you could do that!

So, in figuring out which of those priorities you can defer to the middle phase of the draft, perhaps the most important piece of pre-draft planning you can do is to figure out which of those priorities are more abundant in that middle third of the draft, and use that knowledge to shape your plan for the top-third.

The good news is, this year there's a lot of talent in that middle third. Consider:

A “big bopper” bat south of round 10 is a lot to ask, but there are some different profiles you can target: if you build an early BA cushion, you might chase a low-BA power source like Max Muncy or Jack Suwinski. There are “what if they stay healthy?” targets like Byron Buxton, Kris Bryant, or Eloy Jiménez. Post-hype prospects like Jarred Kelenic or Nolan Gorman. And of course, the always-tantalizing rookie class, full of high-risk/high-reward targets like Jackson Holliday, Jackson Chourio, Colt Keith, Wyatt Langford, etc. If you want to take big swings, you can't complain that there are no targets.
Similar, ace-starters in this tier may be hard to find, but there are tons of pitchers we like. In tag-teaming a number of drafts with my co-GM Brent Hershey this winter, we have fallen in love with the round 10-15 SP tier: Nick Pivetta, Bryan Woo, Bryce Miller, Ryan Pepiot, Cristopher Sánchez, Gavin Williams, Reid Detmers, Bryan Bello, Griffin Canning… and more.
The closer carousel presents massive profit opportunity in the middle tier of the draft. If you have a strong read on Robert Suárez vs. Yuki Matsui vs. Woo Suk Go in San Diego, or Kyle Finnegan vs. Hunter Harvey in Washington, Carlos Estévez vs. Robert Stephenson in Anaheim, or Jose Leclerc vs. David Robertson in Texas, reading any of those situations correctly can net you 25+ Saves at a significant discount from the draft capital others are paying for those same Saves up in the top one-third of the draft.
By ADP, there is a giant run of interesting catchers in the round 9-11 range. But if you are willing to wait, there are catchers in the discount bin who might provide equivalent production: Ryan Jeffers, Danny Jansen / Alejandro Kirk, Connor Wong, Jake Rogers, Shea Langeliers.

The above are all potential compromises, to be clear. But compromises inevitably need to be made in your draft plan, so the trick is figuring out which ones you can most readily accept. As mentioned above, Brent and I have really been drawn to that middle pitching tier, to the point where we have shaped our plans for the top-third of the draft around the idea of coming out of the first 10 rounds heavy on bats, well-positioned to pound that tier of mid-draft pitching.

The same concept can extend to each of those bullets: it's way less expensive to get just one closer early, and come back with one of those more speculative Saves options in the middle. Same with catching: it's nice to have catching locked up early, but you can free up a top-10 pick for another need by planning to settle for one of the just-above-end-game-tier catchers mentioned above… especially if you have a favorite target or two within that group.

Spinning the concept around a little bit, there are also choices made at the beginning of the draft that can close or open more options for this target-rich mid-draft range. I love Freddie Freeman as a first-round pick. The only bad thing I can say about choosing him in round 1 is that there are other 1Bmen I like at their relative price further down the draft board: Paul Goldschmidt, or the Tristan Casas / Josh Naylor / Spencer Torkelson tier, or a still-later shot at the Anthony Rizzo rebound.

Sure, you can grab Freeman and then another one of those guys for your CI spot, but there's an opportunity cost to filling those “extra” hitting spots too early. In the FSGA industry draft earlier this week, Brent and I filled all 3 MI spots in the top 10 rounds, and then ended up lamenting the mid- and end-game MI targets that slid by us in the mid- and end-game.

To summarize:

Build your draft plan from the middle, then up to the top.
Try to maintain roster balance: having an MI, CI, OF, and UT spot open for as long as possible means you can always fit whatever is falling to you, or address any category shortcoming as you identify it.
Your end-game is dart-throwing time, especially the earlier in the month you're drafting. Think that longshot rookie is going to make the team? Think you know which Brewer reliever is going to pick up for Devin Williams? The final one-third of the draft is the time to shoot those shots.

Annual disclaimers

1. First and foremost, the attached rankings are meant to be general, not specific. Treat the player rankings as tiered—it's completely meaningless that (in the mixed league rankings) Yordan Alvarez is #20 and Pete Alonso is #22. They're very similar players and obviously fall in the same tier. If your plan, your preference, your gut, tell you to to take Bo Bichette (#30) over Rafael Devers (#24), or anything else that these rankings don't support, that's fine. It's your draft. Own it.

2. Remember that your draft is just a starting point: stay mindful of Todd Zola's research into the impact of stats you draft vs. those you acquire in-season. You never win your league on Draft Day.

3. The ranking lists also include ADP data, from the National Fantasy Baseball Championship. ADP data is eye candy, but you must not become a slave to it. In particular, the NFBC data set has grown to a large size at this point in the spring, which creates a large denominator effect—the data is no longer quick to react to changing spring situations. Use ADP as a reference, but don't overdo it... and actively discount it for players who have seen their outlooks (health, team/role, lineup position, etc) evolve in the past few weeks. And if you go directly to the NFBC'S ADP tools, they provide date filters, so you can pull ADPs from, say, drafts from just this month, or even last night.

4. Do not take this list into your draft and just start drafting straight from the top. This list needs to be paired with some assessment of the market. You know your own league better than than anyone. You know your opponents, their tendencies, the round that the closer run tends to happen every year. You also know what you're good at in-season, whether it's churning two-start SP, mining for closers-in-waiting, or finding that bench bat with skills before it gets thrust into a full-time role. Trust that knowledge above all, particularly when it conflicts with anything that we have written here.

5. These values are generated from our Custom Draft Guide, but we also throw in a little bit of risk calculation here: it's why, for instance, Ha-seong Kim (AAB reliability grade) sneaks above Corey Seager (DAF) in the rankings. Their projections are within a couple of bucks, but if you run the Custom Draft Guide, Seager would rank higher in the dollar values. Again, per point #1 above, the point is that they're basically interchangeable anyway.

Happy drafting!

Required reading (we'll add to this list over the rest of March)