What I Learned in the Tomahawk Take Yahoo Fantasy Draft
Thursday, March 26th, the first draft of a Tomahawk Take-inspired league took place. 14 total draftees participated, including four writers from Tomahawk Take and ten readers of our site. First, before we get to any further discussion, I would like to express how appreciative I am to be part of such a great community here at Tomahawk Take. We have some awesome readers, and my DMs on my Twitter, email conversations among fellow writers, and comment sections on this site have consistently shown me how great a Braves community we have here. I want to let you all know that we had nearly 40 applicants for the two leagues (one on Yahoo and one on ESPN), so we ended up starting two additional leagues, which are both full as well!
A little background on Yahoo Fantasy
I am a fan of fantasy sports, as seen by my constant 10+ fantasy leagues running at any time of the year. I have ten or more leagues in each of baseball, football, and basketball. I play in dynasty, keeper, and single-season leagues and even write about fantasy. I have 9 podcasts that I listen to that explore fantasy sports. That said, my true fantasy sports love is baseball, far and above all other sports. I was introduced to fantasy baseball back when Rick Mahler was the Braves staff ace. I had a couple seasons of fantasy baseball under my belt before I hit 10 years of age, and I remember drafting both Terry Pendleton and Mike Pagliarulo in 1991 for my fantasy teams and enjoying TP’s MVP season carrying me to my first fantasy league win. Back then, we were in the stone age of fantasy sports, and people required on paper systems to track statistics. When internet fantasy sports came around, I was an early adapter. I have the same Yahoo Fantasy username from 2001, and that’s only because somewhere between 2000 and 2001, I lost my password for my previous account, otherwise, my fantasy username would have a ‘9x in front of it! I played Yahoo Fantasy first, as did many people. Yahoo Fantasy has established itself as the entry-level for most fantasy players, and many people prefer a Yahoo format to their fantasy league.
A review of the TT Yahoo Fantasy draft
This league is a 14-team head-to-head league with standard 5×5 scoring. We had 4 Tomahawk Take writers/editors in the league and 10 readers. Out of 14 members, 11 were there at the opening bell, which is a pretty decent turnout. Two showed up during the draft as well, so 13 league members participated in at least part of the draft. It was obviously a Braves fan crowd. Every certain Braves starter on offense went in the draft, though with 14 teams and 23 rounds, that doesn’t say a ton as 322 players were selected. With the head to head format, closers went fast and furious after about the 4th round. Pitching also went pretty high in general with two pitchers in the top ten picks, 6 in the top 30, and 15 in the top 50 picks. Braves in general went quite a bit ahead of their projected value, though that’s not surprising with a group of TT writers and readers. To make everyone feel smarter, if the league was a rotisserie league, Yahoo would project the four writers in the league to finish 6th, 10th, 11th, and 12th in the league. The chat room in the draft was a lot of fun as well. We will have updates throughout the year on the leagues and highlight readers among us who are doing well!
A little bonus content regarding Jace Peterson and Andrelton Simmons
Before the season, even as a Braves fan, I was down on the fantasy prospects of the Braves middle infielders. The best fantasy option, in my pre-spring opinion, was going to be Jose Peraza, and it was very unlikely he would break camp with the team. Spring has shown us something very different. Jace Peterson was a part of the Justin Upton trade this offseason, but he was really thought to be the 3rd or even 4th “most important” piece of that trade. Many thought he’d be a good AAA option as insurance for utility guys like Phil Gosselin and Alberto Callaspo. Instead, he’s come out and taken the second base job by storm, so much so that the Braves have sent Peraza to AAA with some thought of giving him time in CF as he may not be able to push Peterson aside at the MLB level in 2015 at 2B. Peterson as a fantasy option is actually similar to Peraza. He’s built his profile on speed and batting average, which makes him a good bet to be at the top of the Braves lineup. In a half season between AA/AAA in 2014, Peterson also showed some solid gap power as well, hitting 33 extra base hits in 382 plate appearances. He’ll likely not get double digit home runs in Atlanta this year, but he’s got a good chance of being a guy to hit between 5 and 10 home runs, steal 30 bases, and his good eye and contact ability should allow him to score a good chunk of runs.
In 2012, we all watched as Andrelton Simmons flashed incredible leather and also a very good contact bat, hitting .289 in his first taste of the major leagues. He slipped back in 2013 as he fell in love with his power swing, which did allow him 50 extra base hits, but at the cost of solid contact from at bat to at bat. He continued that struggle in 2014 with a similar swing, but without the power results. Andrelton admitted toward the end of the 2014 season that his swing has always been violent as he was often so small that he needed to put everything he had into a swing just to get the ball out of the infield. This spring, Andrelton has shown a lot more balance in his swing, showing that gap contact and level swing that he flashed in 2012. With his spring performance, there is a very good chance that we’ll see Simba in the top half of the 2015 Braves lineup, and with the speed in front of him to move forward, he could see a good number of RBI opportunities, but more importantly, he should see a lot of pitchers out of the stretch, usually not a pitcher’s best mode of operation. Simmons has jumped up a lot of draft boards recently in experts’ leagues as a low-end shortstop option with good upside. He can be a good high risk, high reward play for you as well.