After competing in several 2010 fantasy baseball mock drafts over the last few days, there are several trends that seem to be occurring that you need to be aware of as you prepare for your fantasy baseball league.
1) The top five seems to be locked in place with Albert Pujols, Hanley Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Chase Utley and Ryan Braun. Every once in awhile Matt Kemp or Ryan Howard may jump in the top 5, but other than that, the top is pretty well set from draft to draft.
2) David Wright is starting to slowly creep back up draft boards. His original average draft position (ADP) had him going in the early second round of 15 team mixed drafts. In the drafts from this current weekend, he was consistently in the first round and went as high as 11th. I think the majority of people are willing to give him a pass on last season and expect his numbers to return to 2008 levels.
3) Pitching continues to go very high in drafts. By the end of round seven, almost every top tiered pitcher is off the board. The next pitchers being drafted usually include a group from Chad Billingsley, Matt Garza, Brandon Webb, Jered Weaver, and A.J. Burnett. If you are not comfortable with any one of those players being the first pitcher or second pitcher on your staff, you are going to have to plan on taking a pitcher a little bit earlier than you are accustomed to this season.
4) Relief pitchers are following the trend of starting pitchers and seem to be going higher than usual for the second group of 15 closers. In years past it seemed like you could maybe pick up a second closer that was still decent in rounds 13-15 or maybe even later. That no longer seems to be the case as the most dependable second 15 closers seem to be gone by the end of the 12th round, which is roughly the midway point of the draft. Once the 12th round is over, your options usually look like Brad Lidge, Kerry Wood, Octavio Dotel or taking a chance on the winner of the Toronto / Houston closer competition.
5) There has been one position that is showing a consistent “run” in a draft; that being the catcher position. It looks like the majority or owners have Kurt Suzuki, Jorge Posada, Miguel Montero, Russell Martin and Geovany Soto ranked relatively close because once one of that group is drafted, the others seem to follow shortly after.
The next group after that then is Bengie Molina, Chris Ianetta, Ryan Doumit and Mike Napoli. This gives you an idea of where the two runs are for the group of catchers because if you miss the first one, you might be able to get someone from the second group depending where your draft position is.
