Atlanta Braves fans draft a lot of non-Braves for fantasy teams

About that Atlanta Braves Pitching…

Given the note about pitching and innings distribution for this short season, here’s how things went:

Gerrit Cole was taken first overall and Jacob deGrom went 10th. Walker Buehler, Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander all fell in Round 2.

Yours truly took Jack Flaherty in Round 3, then followed up with Stephen Strasburg in Round 4.  Then a predictable gap happened as position players were taken in droves.

Mike Soroka had to wait until Round 7 to be taken. Max Fried went later in that same round. I was debating Yu Darvish a round later but went elsewhere (thanks to the prior pitching picks noted above) and then saw Yu snapped up 4 picks later.  I’m okay with that.

The drafted Braves went as follows:

• Acuna: Round 1, pick 3
• Albies: Round 1, pick 11
• Freeman: Round 2, pick 5
• Ozuna: Round 6, pick 3
• Soroka: Round 7, pick 1
• Fried: Round 7, pick 11
• Swanson: Round 9, pick 1 (that got some questions at the time!)
• Will Smith: Round 10, pick 3
• d’Arnaud: Round 10, pick 12
• Folty: Round 11, pick 1
• Chris Martin: Round 13, pick 11
• Newcomb: Round 17, pick 12
• Hamels: Round 18, pick 1 (could be a steal here if he can return)
• Melancon: Round 18, pick 7
• Yasiel Puig: Round 20, pick 7.  Oops.

That was it:  no Duvall, no Riley, no Camargo.

Here are the picks of some other notable players… also known as “our first four rounds”:

• Round 1: Cole, Arenado, Acuna, Trout, Bellinger, Betts, Rendon, Yelich, Lindor, deGrom, Albies, Bregman
• Round 2: Soto, Buehler, JD Martinez, Scherzer, Freeman, Semien, Jose Ramirez, Story, Devers, Trea Turner, Judge, Verlander
• Round 3: Altuve, Alonso, Harper, Tatis Jr, Springer, Baez, Flaherty, Blackmon, Torres, Clevinger, Ketel Marte, Rizzo
• Round 4: Stanton, Bryant, Bell, Bieber, Bogaerts, Strasburg, Yordan Alvarez, Machado, Morton, Paddack, Snell, Carlos Santana

At the end, Jake asked around for opinions on who might have fared the best. There’s not a big consensus here and at this point it’s simply speculation, but I was surprised to hear multiple staff members mention my name.

The was a plan for my team, but as with any draft, you have to roll with the poached players and make adjustments along the way.

I drafted 7th in this 12-team field and had ranked a number of players for early targeting. I did manage to land several of these targets, but we’ll see how that actually plays.

So here’s my picks with an explanation about each one…