Vol. V, Issue #2 - March 2017

** "Building Your Draft Team for 2017
– Wolfman Shapiro, Part III --
How Did I Do in our Draft? **
      (This is a continuation of the article I started in our December 2016 issue, offering a look at my strategies
for building a Keeper League Team using the latest card set offered by the game company. Then, I began
to use my team in the CBA, the Skokie Wolfmen as an example to share my ideas & strategies. This
is the last part as I reveal how we performed in the CBA Draft we started on March 5th, 2017 ... read on ...)

(Notes from the Wolfman:  This is the last part of my article series to share with our readers an example or what some might call a "real case study" of one strat baseball gamer's quest to rebuild his/her team in his/her current SOM Baseball League (ours is a computer league) back into a powerhouse and playoff contender, that we use to be. In seven of our first eight seasons in the CBA from 2005-2009 and 2011-2013 we made the playoffs winning the league's world series in 2012 and losing in 2007, 2008 and 2013.  Also, I am making an assumption that for the reader to truly appreciate the material contained in this segment (Part III) of this article series, that you have read the earlier versions, with Part I being offered in December of 2016 and Part II offered in January of 2017.  Below are direct links to Part I and Part II, which discuss our various draft strategies and why we selected players that we acquired in this year's CBA draft.

Part I: http://www.ultimatestratbaseball.com/USBN-12-2016/WolfmanShapiro-BuildYourTeam-December2016.htm

Part II: http://www.ultimatestratbaseball.com/USBN-1-2017/WolfmanShapiro-BuildYourTeam-January2017.htm

Now, for this last segment, I have decided to try an experiment which if it works, then I shall continue to do so, going forward into the future. And this is to make my new articles and reports a combination of a written article working in tandem with a video. So this is what I am going to utilize to present my last report in this issue of our newsletter.  However, the video I am creating to augment this report will definitely not be any normal video, as recently, I have acquired a new tool, a piece of amazing software that allows me to do presentations I have never done before. Thus, as I don't want to spoil your taste of this video, all I will say is that you should find it very interesting and entertaining at the same time, limited only to my imagination and the deep persona I carry as "The Wolfman". 

I received this new program (or toy if you will) linked to a new on-line business I am creating and using the newsletter as a way to practice using it and learning how to work with it.  I will add however, that if you enjoyed this video presentation and want to know how to get this program for yourself, you should contact me privately.  Perhaps some of you have seen such videos, where a hand is drawing on a whiteboard.  Anyway, I think the article-video tandem will make my report more powerful, see what you think.

Within this normal webpage I am writting for the newsletter, you will find my report that discusses the results of the CBA Draft and give a brief explanation of about why we chose the players we did (I have a co-manager, Mike, and we worked together in our selection proccess).  Mike had some strong opinions and personal likes, so we went in a slightly different direction then I was planning in the draft due to his input. Never-the-less, I truly believe we had a great draft which I will further explain within this combo presentation. Let me now describe how we performed our draft.

There is a very good on-line league draft system we have been using the past few years that is called Strat Draft. This system makes it very easy for your league members to all meet on-line at the same time and do the draft live if you wish. Additionally, it has a lot of great tools built into it to assist you during the drafting process. Although, I understand it does take some time to prepare this system so that all the players on each team in your league are assigned properly and who is available to be drafted can be easily viewed and sorted alphabetically, by position and by ABs or IPs. 

We have spoken of Strat Draft before and we hope at some future time we will be able to interview the genius who set this all up.  It is a major contribution to help all kind of leagues not only with their draft but it has other features as well.  Anyway, I don't recall exactly, but we did our live picks (or you can setup within the system, if you are not available at the time of you pick, a list of players you want Strat Draft to take for you next, and it automatically do so) from about 11 AM - 6 PM EST on Sunday, March 5th and then we just continued to use the system over a few more days with time intervals for each pick, to complete the draft. Going into the draft, basically each team had 24 players they protected (we had one extra due to a trade we made the day before, the evening of March 4th that is discussed below) unless teams made some trades. Since our roster size is 38 players, we had basically 14 more players to acquire.

Finally, here is the link to the video I created .... where a more full discussion of all the trades and draft picks are and will be described discussed below in this article. I don't want to spoil exactly how I setup this video so just hop over there when you are ready. However, I do recommend that you read this article first so you will fully understand all that is shared in the video ( a link to this video is also shown at the end this article ). Just visit:

https://youtu.be/1RbH6reQ8yc  (Part I)
(Part II will be available in a few days which we will announce via a bulletin)

Ok then, - lets delve once again into the meat and potatoes of building your team as we did our very best within our draft to fill our holes and acquire a lot more good young players following the example of many mLB teams today who realized to become great you need a good mix of young superstars with veterans ( as my beloved Cubbies have done which is now be the beginning of a new dynasty ). It is my hope, that for some of our members, this three part article has provided some powerful inspiration how to build your own team. Enjoy and to your team's success .... Wolfman

 

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The Skokie Wolfmen in the CBA
(How did We Do in the 2017 CBA Draft!!)

Part III - The Plan Was Executed Very Well

So, through the first two parts of this article, you had a taste of the Wolfman's madness, my thoughts and strategies.  It is one thing to mentally make your plans in your head what you hope to achieve and entirely all together different to make these plans actually happen.  As is being discussed in our other articles this month's issue, especially featuring the legendary baseball fantasy expert, Ron Shandler, building a good team is not that easy and one must give a consideration to many factors involving the players. 

Further, I will admit to our readers that although I spent many hours studying the abilities of the players who were available in our draft and the predictions about future performances; the final decisions who to pick came down more to intuition and a gut feeling more than anything else. That is, who we inutitively felt would be good young players headed into a glorious future and then secondly, to fill up our usage requirements so we would have enough PAs for our hitters and IPs for our pitchers over 162 games. 

In this final part, of the written portion of this article, my plan is to just briefly share our results during the draft and then use the Video portion, via an ingenious idea I have that will surprise you, to fully discuss more visually and powerfully why we made all our picks and how we see our team going forward as the 2017 CBA season is about to begin over the weekend of March 24th - 26th, with our 1st block of games. 

But before I talk about the draft, we did became very active in making and executing a few key trades.  In order to gage the effective of these trades I need to bring forth our roster again, before the draft started - I already showed the result of part of one trade we made below, a portion of what we called a gentlemen's agreement, a trade we had to wait until the 1st pick of the 2017 CBA draft begin before it could be announced. I will share the full details of this trade below (where we traded Jhonny Peralta + draft picks to get Javier Baez + draft picks back). Let review our roster again, before the draft.

Meet the 2017 Skokie Wolfmen
(As we went into the draft here were our boys ...)

The list of our 24 man roster showing their main positions during the MLB 2016 and their final stats:

(In our list of pitchers above we protected three players who either did not receive a card or did not pitch very many innings allowing us to use them during the 2017 CBA.  This included Tyson Ross, who was linked to a gentlemen's agreement we made that you will hear about below; Greg Holland injured and out for the entire 2016 MLB season and a young rookie top 100 prospect, Frankie Montas with the A's. We expect all three of these pitchers to be very active in the MLB 2017 season and to help our pitching team tremendously in the 2018 CBA Season.  Next lets discuss our trades that helped us to prepare for our draft ....)

 

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The Wolfmen's Trades Linked to the Draft

In this section I want to discuss two gentlemen's agreements we made prior to the draft beginning and a few other trades we made within the timeframe the draft took place.

Gentlemen's Agreements

Since watching the 2016 World Series, I saw the brilliance in the play of the Cubs' 2nd basemen Javier Baez. He truly is a five tool player - I knew the team in our league Philly who had him, didn't want to really give him up, but I coveted him so much .. so I knew I had to make an offer that he couldn't refuse. Also, I saw within the available players of our draft that he was more valuable to the Wolfmen than any other player we could pick up.  Remember our league has 24 teams, 12 in each conference with 3 divisions, plus I had the #7 pick in our 1st round of the draft.

To Philly: (trade made last year linked to this trade), we trade our #4 draft pick in the 2017 CBA Draft and
To Skokie: we received Jhonny Peralta (Philly wanted him back but couldn't protect him)

Then after the 1st pick in our draft, this trade with Philly was announced:

To Philly: Skokie #1 draft pick 2017 draft, Skokie #1 draft pick 2018 draft and Jhonny Peralta
To Skokie:  Philly #4 draft pick 2017 draft, Philly #5 draft pick 2018 draft and Javier Baez

(a heavy price but we wanted our guy, tune into the video for more about our reasons to get him)

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Here was our second gentlemen's agreement with San Diego

To San Diego: (trade me last year linked to this trade) Jeff Locke (who we were going to cut)
To Skokie:  Tyson Ross (only 5 ips, we hedged on his comeback in the 2017 MLB Season with Texas)

Then, a secret agreement, made which had a 2018 draft pick attached during the draft:

To San Diego:  We would pick a player for them in our 5th round pick, and give Skokie #5 pick in 2018
To Skokie:  San Diego would take a player for us with their 4th round pick, which we asked for ...

The final Trade:  San Diego took rookie LH reliever Matt Strahm, we picked Matt Garza
(Strahm became our 4th player /pitcher/ who didn't have the minimum of 25 innings in 2016, allowing us to use him during the 2017 CBA season - visit the video to see why we chose him, Garza helped SD with starter innings)

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Trades Before or During the Draft

1) With Brooklyn, the evening before, a key deal for both teams - Brooklyn by the way is team of Marc Wass, our commissioner and the contributor of our "Strat Wise" column, Marc wanted Kyle Hendricks, the NL ERA winner but we told him it was going to cost him.  We (Mike and I) took two hours to decide because he offered David Price back who at the time of this article, had an elbow issue and could miss a start or two during the regular season but we decided to make this deal, the night before the draft.

To Brooklyn:  Kyle Hendricks, Skokie's #3 pick 2017 CBA draft
To Skokie:  David Price, Montreal's #1 pick (#11) 2017 CBA draft, Yan Gomes (C, Indians)
(Gomes is considered to be the #1 catcher for Cleveland in 2017 MLB Season, more discussion on this on the video)

would you make this trade, wait till you see who we drafted in the 1st round

2) Due to a number of players we acquired in trades last year from the 6th round through the 8th rounds we didn't have any draft picks in those rounds.  New Hempshire had 3 extra draft picks they had acquired which they would lose at the end of the draft, so we asked if they would trade two of them to us for a higher draft pick in the 2018 CBA Draft, here is our trade:

To New Hampshire:  Philly 5th round draft pick 2018 CBA draft (the one we acquired in the Baez trade)
To Skokie:  New Hampshire #7 and #8 draft picks 2017 CBA draft (pick #4 in each round)

These two additional trades help us to pick up other key players in the draft we never would have had a chance for ... ok then, the stage is set to discuss the 13 new players we received in the 2017 CBA Draft, here we go and also again check the connected videos to get a full disclosure about each move we made.

 

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Welcome to the CBA 2017 Draft

In this final section of this report, I will basically go through our draft picks offering a very brief explanation why we took each player.  Again you want to study the players we acquired in our trades and the roster before the draft begins. Then at the end I will show the new 2017 Skokie Wolfmen, the team we will start our new season with before I plan to make even more trades during our entire year.

1st Round of the Draft

1. Atlanta -- Trevor Story (SS, COL)
2. Philly -- Michael Fulmer (SP, DET)
3. Belfast -- Tyler Naquin (OF, CLE)
4. New Hampshire -- Chris Devenski (SP-RP, HOU)
5. Ohio -- Aldemys Diaz (SS, 2B, STL)
6. Longue Point -- Dan Straily (SP, CIN)
7. Philly (Skokie's pick) -- Edwin Diaz (RP, SEA)
8. Indiana -- Ricky Nolasco (SP, LAA)
9. Stirling -- Sean Manaea (SP, OAK)
10. Detroit -- Junior Guerra (SP, MIL)
11. Skokie -- David Dahl (OF, COL)

Brief Comment:  Mike and I thought we might go for a good young reliever, but we needed a LH outfielder in LF much more and I didn't think Dahl would be available this late. However, most of the early picks, as you can see, went after the good starting pitchers left in the draft or who had innings - we needed a 5th starter so we could wait to fill that.

Essentially then we received Javier Baez and David Dahl in our 1st round - see the videos for more thoughts ...

To finish our draft picks, we will show you below who we picked (with a brief comment) but again, it is strongly recommend to watch our videos to see a more detailed analysis of the creation of the 2017 CBA Skokie Wolfmen.

Picks from the 2nd Round to the 5th Round

SECOND ROUND (Pick #7): Gleyber Torres
(-- we are allowed to select each year, if we wish, one uncarded player who is signed with a professional baseball team. Torres was in the minors last year and came to the NY Yankees from the Cubs in the Chapman trade. On mlb.com he is ranked as the #3 top 100 prospect and there is some talk that he might be brought up later this year by the Yankees. We have A. Cabrera at SS with Baez as a backup but we could use a good future superstar there - very surprised he didn't go in the 1st round, the top two ranked prospects Benintendi (Brooklyn); and Moncada (Philly); were picked last year ....)

FOURTH ROUND (PICK #17  via San Diego for 5th round pick player): Matt Strahm
(this was part of our gentlemen's agreement with San Diego, we only had 1 LH relief pitcher in our pen)

FOURTH ROUND (PICK #22  via Philly): Logan Verrett
(not our best pick, no choice, we needed starter innings at the #5 spot, he had 92)

Picks from the 7th Round to the 14th Round

SEVENTH ROUND (PICK #4 via New Hampshire): Adam Frazier
(backup 2nd basemen, hits LH, very good hitter, will play a key role with Pirates in 2017, young)

EIGHTH ROUND (PICK #4 via New Hampshire): Randall Delgado
(relief pitcher, young, was highly rated before, needed relief innings 75)

NINTH ROUND (PICK #7): Brad Peacock
(starting pitcher, young, has been highly rated before, help with our #5th spot, looking towards future)

TENTH ROUND (PICK #7): Jared Cosart
(starting pitcher, young, has been highly rated before, help with our #5th spot, looking towards future)

TWELFTH ROUND (PICK #17 via San Diego): Mike Wright
(starting/relief pitcher, young, only picked him up to help with usage, 75 IP)

THIRTEENTH ROUND (PICK #7): Byung Ho Park
(backup 1B to Santana, DH vs RHP, could be a superstar, from Korea)

THIRTEENTH ROUND (PICK #17 via San Diego): Gregor Blanco
(backup OF, brought back to our team, defense, another LH bat, pinch run)

THIRTEENTH ROUND (PICK #24 via New Jersey): Daniel Castro
(backup 2B/SS, defense, usage protection in infield)

FOURTEENTH ROUND (PICK 5): Josh Osich
(LH relief pitcher, young, could be go in the future)


What does the 2017 CBA Skokie Wolfmen Look Like Now?

Skokie Wolfmen Hitters

Player	Age	Bats	POS	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	TB	BB	SO	SB	CS	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	c	1b	2b	3b	ss	lf	cf	rf
Santana, Carlos	30	S	1B	158	681	582	89	151	31	3	34	87	290	99	99	5	2	.259	.366	.498	.864		4
Park, Byungho	30	R	1B	62	236	215	28	41	9	1	12	24	88	21	80	1	0	.191	.275	.409	.684		4
Baez, Javier	24	R	2B	142	436	421	50	115	19	1	14	59	178	15	108	12	3	.273	.314	.423	.737		4	1	2	2	4
Frazier, Adam	25	L	2B	66	158	146	21	44	8	1	2	11	60	12	26	4	1	.301	.356	.411	.767			4	4		4	5	4
Garcia, Adonis	31	R	3B	134	556	532	65	145	29	0	14	65	216	24	93	3	2	.273	.311	.406	.717			3	4	4
Cuthbert, Cheslor	24	R	3B	128	507	475	49	130	28	1	12	46	196	32	96	2	0	.274	.318	.413	.731				3
Iannetta, Chris	33	R	C	94	333	295	23	62	14	0	7	24	97	38	83	0	0	.210	.303	.329	.632	3
Gomes, Yan	29	R	C	74	260	251	22	42	11	1	9	34	82	9	69	0	0	.167	.201	.327	.528	2
Plawecki, Kevin	26	R	C	48	149	132	6	26	6	0	1	11	35	17	33	0	0	.197	.298	.265	.563	2
Springer, George	27	R	OF	162	732	644	116	168	29	5	29	82	294	88	178	9	10	.261	.359	.457	.816							3	2
Beltran, Carlos	39	S	OF	151	587	552	73	163	33	0	29	93	283	35	101	1	0	.295	.337	.513	.850								5
Inciarte, Ender	26	L	OF	131	567	522	85	152	24	7	3	29	199	45	68	16	7	.291	.351	.381	.732						1	1
Souza, Steven	27	R	OF	120	461	430	58	106	17	1	17	49	176	31	159	7	6	.247	.303	.409	.712							4	2
Marisnick, Jake	25	R	OF	118	303	287	40	60	18	1	5	21	95	16	83	10	5	.209	.257	.331	.588						1	1	1
Blanco, Gregor	33	L	OF	106	270	241	28	54	10	4	1	18	75	29	51	6	3	.224	.309	.311	.620						2	2	2
Dahl, David	22	L	OF	63	237	222	42	70	12	4	7	24	111	15	59	5	0	.315	.359	.500	.859						2	2	2
Cabrera, Asdrubal	31	S	SS	141	559	521	65	146	30	1	23	62	247	38	103	5	1	.280	.336	.474	.810					3
Drew, Stephen	34	L	SS	70	159	143	24	38	11	1	8	21	75	16	31	0	1	.266	.339	.524	.863			3	4	4
Castro, Daniel	24	R	SS	47	137	130	8	26	1	0	0	7	27	7	24	1	1	.200	.241	.208	.449			2	2	2
Torres, Gleyber	20	R	SS	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000	.000	.000	.000

Skokie Wolfmen Pitchers

Player	Age	Arm	W	L	ERA	G	GS	CG	SHO	SV	SVO	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	WHIP
Price, David	31	L	17	9	3.99	35	35	2	0	0	0	230.0	227	106	102	30	50	228	1.20
Archer, Chris	28	R	9	19	4.02	33	33	0	0	0	0	201.1	183	100	90	30	67	233	1.24
Nelson, Jimmy	27	R	8	16	4.62	32	32	0	0	0	0	179.1	186	108	92	25	86	140	1.52
Maeda, Kenta	28	R	16	11	3.48	32	32	0	0	0	0	175.2	150	72	68	20	50	179	1.14
Cosart, Jarred	26	R	0	4	6.00	13	13	0	0	0	0	57.0	61	41	38	4	39	38	1.75
Verrett, Logan	26	R	3	8	5.20	35	12	0	0	0	0	91.2	100	55	53	16	43	66	1.56
Wright, Mike	27	R	3	4	5.79	18	12	0	0	0	0	74.2	81	53	48	12	26	50	1.43
Peacock, Brad	29	R	0	1	3.69	10	5	0	0	0	0	31.2	21	15	13	6	14	28	1.11
Delgado, Randall	27	R	5	2	4.44	79	0	0	0	0	3	75.0	77	39	37	8	36	68	1.51
Herrera, Kelvin	27	R	2	6	2.75	72	0	0	0	12	15	72.0	57	23	22	6	12	86	0.96
Ramos, A.J.	30	R	1	4	2.81	67	0	0	0	40	43	64.0	52	21	20	1	35	73	1.36
Cingrani, Tony	27	L	2	5	4.14	65	0	0	0	17	23	63.0	54	30	29	5	37	49	1.44
Strop, Pedro	31	R	2	2	2.85	54	0	0	0	0	4	47.1	27	16	15	4	15	60	0.89
Osich, Josh	28	L	1	3	4.71	59	0	0	0	0	3	36.1	31	20	19	7	19	25	1.38
Ross, Tyson	29	R	0	1	11.81	1	1	0	0	0	0	5.1	9	8	7	0	1	5	1.88
Strahm, Matt	25	L	2	2	1.23	21	0	0	0	0	0	22.0	13	4	3	0	11	30	1.09
Holland, Greg	31	R	0	0	0.00	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.00
Montas, Frankie	23	R	0	0	0.00	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.00

Again, to view the video component of this report, feel free to go to:
https://youtu.be/1RbH6reQ8yc  (Part I)
(Part II will be available in a few days which we will announce via a bulletin)


Wolfman's final comments:  This could be one of the best drafts we have ever had, also sparked by our trades, that has definitely helped us to build a very competitive team for the CBA 2018 season.  If half of the new players and the players we were protecting that we can't use during the 2017 CBA season (due to no or limited ABs, IPs) do well, we could be a force to recon with, but as with the Chicago Cubs, it took them 5 years to rebuild, so it will take us the same. However, should we find a way to make trades during the season to upgrade a few of our starters, we could compete in 2017.  I like the young players we were able to pick up very much and have a very positive feeling in my bones about our future!