My First Fantasy Baseball Slow Draft Is In The Books

My first fantasy baseball slow draft is complete. This is a 5×5, 12-team roto league where we will all be keeping six each year for as long as we want.

A couple things I was happy about:

1. Getting Mookie Betts at the sixth pick overall. I had him in the slot that a lot of people have Altuve this year (even with Altuve going one overall in this draft, which I heavily disagree with). I’ll take him at six this year. I think he rebounds big and carries my team.
2. Landing Bellinger at two is going to be a crossroads pick. I chose him over Francisco Lindor because I don’t think Lindor sniffs his home run total from 2017 again. I think it was an outlier year. I also knew the depth at shorstop was deep. Landing Dejong later in the draft was something I’m okay with. I think Dejong could homer as many times as Lindor. If I’m wrong about this pick, it will cost me dearly.
3. I never pay for catcher, I rarely even draft catcher. But Willson Contreras slipped well beyond his NFBC ADP and into the 7th round, and I decided it was time to lock down the position advantage over other teams for one of the first times ever. I’m happy I did it. I still hate catchers, as a rule.
4. Loved getting Severino, even if he’s my SP1 and he’s not up to par with other SP1.
5. Gerritt Cole and Miguel Sano are the most pivotal players on my team.
6. I didn’t get the one big 50+ steal threat, but I tried to get as many guys as I could with the ability to get 10, 15, and 20 steals.

Matt Joyce was actually Shohei Ohtani the hitter version. If he becomes anything that’s a steal. Right now my keep six going into 2019 would be:

Betts
Bellinger
Severino
Buxton
Jansen
Then a combination of two that pan out: Weaver? Lamet? Ohtani? Vlad Jr.? Sano? Bird? I need two more to emerge in a big way.

I think this is no worse than a 5th place team but I think it will be a dogfight to win this league. I will continue to update on how this goes – the group assembled by the commissioner was very sharp and they left little on the table for me in the early rounds. I started to get some perceived “wins” in the middle-to-late rounds that I am confident in, albeit I may have reached for Guerrero Jr. but I believe in what scouts say about his bat and if nothing else, he could be flipped to a team that is selling off late in the year if he moves up several levels this year like prospects have done at high regularity lately.