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MLB All-Star Break Re-Do Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft Round 1

July 10, 2018 By Andy Vanfossan Leave a Comment

Boston Red Sox DH J.D. Martinez is absolutely raking. A bit of a health risk and new team deflated his value back in March, but now Andy has him comfortably inside the first round of his re-do fantasy baseball mock draft.

With the All-Star break here, fantasy baseball owners have a moment to catch their breath. For me, it’s a chance to look back and wonder what it would be like to start over (if only).

Needless to say and as usual, there are some surprises through the first half of the season. With the magic of my time machine, I’m able to go back and redraft my fantasy baseball teams.

Reviewing Average Draft Position data from the beginning of the year, I decide whether or not each player is worthy of another pick this time around, and if not who I would draft instead. This is a 12-team standard 5×5 roto league using a snake style draft.

I will start with Round 1 and in a second article run through Round 2. Here we go!

Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft Round 1

1. Mike Trout Preseason ADP #1, Mike Trout

What can you say about Mike Trout that hasn’t already been said? Last year he finished 4th in MVP voting, his worst since 2012. He’s already a 2x MVP and a seven time all-star. His offensive numbers this year are slightly ahead of his MVP years. He’s still running and even more staggering, he’s getting walked more than he’s striking out (79 walks to 78 strikeouts as of July 10). To have that much power and still take that many walks brings flashbacks to Barry Bonds. He is on the trajectory to be Bonds’ equal if not pass him. Trout is still, no doubt, the unanimous number one pick overall.

2. Mookie Betts Preseason ADP #2, Jose Altuve

I really went back and forth with this between Altuve and Betts. I ultimately went with Betts for one reason – power. Betts has 22 home runs to Altuve’s nine and scored 11 more runs. The difference between the two in RBI and batting average is negligible.

Betts is the second best fantasy outfielder in the game. Altuve is the best fantasy option at second base. In the end, I leaned to the power from Betts with everything else almost being a wash. You can’t really go wrong with either player.

3. Jose Altuve Preseason ADP #3, Nolan Arenado

As mentioned above, I think it’s a true toss-up between Betts and Altuve for the second best offensive player in the game right now. Altuve is going to score runs, hit for average and steal bases. Arenado will definitely hit for more power and will drive in more runs but I still can’t get the “Coors factor” out of my head. Playing 81 games in Denver is definitely an asset to Arenado and I don’t think the Rockies lineup is as deep as the Astros. To me, this was why I’d take Altuve over Arenado the second time around.

4. Nolan Arenado Preseason ADP #4, Trea Turner

Like Betts and Altuve, I really struggled to pick Arenado over Manny Machado. Their stats are almost identical.

Name	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	OPS
Arenado	321	58	98	22	63	2	.305	.391
Machado	346	44	107	21	60	6	.309	.382

The key difference is runs. Arenado plays for a team currently winning ball games. Machado simply doesn’t have much of anything on the Baltimore Orioles to help him, especially in the runs category. Neither one of them are going to steal bases. The one factor you could figure in is position. Machado has both third and shortstop eligibility while Arenado would only have third. Otherwise, it’s a toss-up.

5. Manny Machado Preseason ADP #5, Clayton Kershaw

It wasn’t the year to pay up for baseball’s consensus top pitcher with back issues limiting him to 69 innings to date. Kershaw is an easy exclude from my re-do first round.

Even though Machado has third base and shortstop eligibility, I still drafted Arenado ahead of him. That said, I love Machado’s passion for the game and the numbers he puts up are fantastic. His team, quite frankly, stinks. The very real possibility still exists that Machado will get traded to a contending team, where he’d have protection around him and pushing his fantasy value higher. Right now, he’s the only threat in the Orioles lineup and the league knows it.

6. Jose Ramirez Preseason ADP #6, Bryce Harper

Ah, Mr. Harper. At the beginning of the season I wrote Harper isn’t worthy of a first round pick and I’ve turned out to be right. Insert pat on the back here. Harper started out on fire but has cooled considerably since May and finds not only himself, by the Washington Nationals in a tailspin.

Enter Jose Ramirez who has been as consistent as he was last year. He isn’t flashy but can flat out hit. His 24 home runs are fourth in MLB and he’s driven in 59 runs. The thing that makes Ramirez appealing is the fact he gets to pad his stats against the worst division in baseball – the AL Central. Facing the “staffs” of the Twins, Tigers, White Sox and Royals is like an all-state varsity player facing a JV squad.

7. J.D. Martinez Preseason ADP #7, Paul Goldschmidt

Although Goldy has been hitting the cover off the ball the past couple of weeks, Martinez is exactly what the Boston Red Sox needed. He leads the majors in home runs with 28 and RBI with 77. Oh, and he’s also hitting a solid .331. Playing DH primarily allows Martinez to stay healthy, which was a concern when he hit the free agent market this past off season. You know with the lineup Boston can run out there, as long as he stays healthy, he’s going to continue to put up huge numbers and I think may be a Top 12-15 player overall next year.

8. Francisco Lindor Preseason ADP #8, Giancarlo Stanton

The hype before the season was Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton possibly hitting 100 home runs combined. There is no doubt that Stanton has held up his end of the power but its feast or famine with him. He’s struck out 122 times and to put that in perspective, the league leader is Yoan Moncada with 126.

We’ve talked the left side of the infield most of this early draft but arguably the best shortstop out there may indeed by Francisco Lindor. He checks all the boxes as far as offense goes: runs, avg, rbi, home runs, and stolen bases. As with Jose Ramirez, he plays the horrible AL Central. The Indians are going to continue to run away with the division and Lindor will definitely get his.

9. Luis Severino Preseason ADP #9, Charlie Blackmon

Blackmon signed a big contract extension with the Colorado Rockies in the off-season. His numbers aren’t bad but not near what they had been the past couple of years. At the beginning of the year, you’d definitely take Blackmon but not now.

Severino has been the best pitcher in the American League and if it weren’t for Jacob deGrom, the best pitcher in baseball this year. He’s fourth in the majors with 123.1 innings, first in wins, seventh in strikeouts, and tied for third in WAR with 5.1. With the Yankees offense and the bullpen behind him (Robertson, Greene and Chapman) he is going to win his fair share of games. I have to admit, I had deGrom down but the fact that the Mets stink and the Yankees don’t made me pick Severino.

10. Max Scherzer Preseason ADP #10, Mookie Betts

I have already moved Betts up to number two in this fantasy baseball mock draft, so I’ll go ahead and focus on why Mad Max would be the 10th overall pick. He simply is doing Max things again this year. His record is 11-5 and he leads the league in innings pitched (127.2) and strikeouts (177). He also is sporting a 2.33 ERA. He has about 13 starts left which will possibly allow him to reach 300 strikeouts.

I had Scherzer rated ahead of Kershaw, Chris Sale and Corey Kluber at the beginning of the year and if it weren’t for Severino’s wins, he’d be a pick ahead of where he is now.

11. Aaron Judge Preseason ADP #11, Max Scherzer

We’re getting down to the end of the first round and looking at it from a fantasy standpoint, you have to start asking yourself what your strategy is. Is it hitter/hitter, pitcher/hitter, or pitcher/pitcher? With Sale, Kluber and Justin Verlander all still available, I think you need to go with a hitter and that hitter is Aaron Judge.

I thought Judge would take a step back after his break out season last year but that hasn’t been the case. He’s hit 25 home runs, driven in 60 and putting up a solid .281 batting average. He’s also nabbed six bags. Not bad for a power hitter of Judge’s capability. To get Judge with the 11th pick and able to get a stud starting pitcher is the best case at this point.

12. Corey Kluber Preseason ADP #12, Chris Sale

Please understand that this was honestly a coin flip. Sale has established himself as one of the top five pitchers in the game. He’s on pace for over 200+ strikeouts again this year and will undoubtedly get 15-18 wins.

The turning point for me though taking Kluber over Sale is two-fold. One, the Indians’ AL Central division is terrible and Kluber can add to his dominance facing those horrible teams. Sale gets to face the Orioles, Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays, but he also has to face the New York Yankees, a minus in Sale’s column.

Two, Kluber is a control freak. He’s walked only 15 hitters this season. Sale has allowed twice as many, which is still good, but, twice as many. In the AL Central a few extra base runners is not a big deal. In the AL East, it could be the difference between a win and a loss.

So there you have it. The pre-All Star Game “do over” fantasy baseball draft. Undoubtedly, there will be some disagreement but that is completely fine. Make your case in the comments. Next time, round two.

Extra Innings

I really thought that the Minnesota Twins had a shot to be in the Wild Card mix this year. Boy was I wrong. I drank the Kool-Aid and now have a tummy ache because of it. I’m a sucker for a feel good story though so if the Twins aren’t going to make it, I’d like to see the Seattle Mariners finally get back to the playoffs.

Not since 2001 have the M’s played post-season baseball, and they’ve had really good talent in the organization but hasn’t got them over the hump; namely King Felix.

Felix Hernandez has given everything he possibly can/could to the M’s and hasn’t sniffed the post-season. He’s finally in a position where there is some light at the end of the tunnel. General Manager Jerry DiPoto has master minded trade after trade trying to give the Emerald City another shot at playoff redemption. Good luck to the M’s and King Felix. Hopefully this is your year.

Target Percentages in Mock Draft Action

March 10, 2018 By Chris Spencer Leave a Comment

Target Percentages guided author Chris Spencer to draft Boston Red Sox OF Mookie Betts with the 8th overall pick in a recent mock draft.

Recently, I introduced the concept of Target Percentages, the percentage of the targeted total stats a player earns for your fantasy baseball team based on his projections. Part one explains the concept and calculations in more detail. For part two, I will show you how to use Target Percentages during a draft.

In a perfect world you would like each batter (or pitcher) you draft to, “pull their own weight” by contributing positively to each category. For a simple example, let’s say you are in a league where you start 10 batters. Ideally, each batter accumulates 10% (or 1/10 starters) of your Runs, 10% of you HR, 10% of your RBI and 10% of your SB. In the ratio categories you just want to stay positive. For other league setups you simply identify your positive contribution line by 1/x where x is the number of batters (or pitchers) you start.

For this mock draft exercise I am drafting from the 8th slot using the same settings continued from part one on Target Percentages: 12-team league, 5×5 roto with 13 hitters, 9 pitchers and 3 bench spots. My positive contribution line is 7.7% (1/13) for batters and 11.1% (1/9) for pitchers.

I use color coding to draw attention to the players that are contributing positively and pulling their weight or better on my cheatsheet. Green indicates players that are giving me a positive contribution in that category by scoring 7.7% or more for batters or 11.1% or more for pitchers. Yellow indicates one percentage point away from being green (for batters, 6.7% to 7.69%). This indicator lets me know visually that they are close to contributing positively in that category.

I, personally, don’t color code the ratio categories since I am indicating negative numbers already in red. I suppose you could switch it around and color code positive contributors in green and maybe go down to -0.25 or -0.50 in yellow to indicate they are close to positive. Target Percentages are a tool to use however you see fit.

The last bit of draft prep I do is to identify my Star Players. I add up how many green categories for each player + positive ratio categories and that is their Star Factor. Hello, Mike Trout and Paul Goldschmidt! You will never see a 5-category pitcher. Why? They will never give you enough of what you need for Wins and Saves. These multi-category players are the ones you want to, um, target!

Click the image for the PDF cheatsheet showing target percentages detail used in this mock draft.

Here is a sample cheat sheet for this exercise. Click the image to open the PDF in a new tab. Please refrain from critiquing the cheatsheet (wink). This is meant as a demonstration of how to use Target Percentages during a draft. For this exercise I did a mock draft using FantasyPros’ Mock Draft Simulator. And, away we go…

Pick 1.8 (#8) – I am looking at Giancarlo Stanton, Mookie Betts or Manny Machado, or I can go Matt Scherzer, Chris Sale or Corey Kluber. I don’t like to draft a pitcher this early. Maybe at the turn, but not at 8. It really boils down to Betts vs. Stanton or in terms of categories the decision is SB and AVG vs. HR and RBI. Betts just misses being a 5-category star and I’m partial to banking high AVG guys early so the pick is Betts.

Batter	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
Mookie Betts	9%	7%	8%	13%	2.00

Pick 2.5 (#17) – Ugh, I was really hoping that Scherzer, Sale or Kluber would make it back to me here but they were all taken. I still have one SP on my cheat sheet that gives me a solid starting foundation for my pitching squad in Noah Syndergaard.

I’m not positive that he will make it back to me as his ADP is late second round to early third, but I’m going to take my chances that I get him at pick #32. Looking at batters, I’ve got Machado, Francisco Lindor and Joey Votto remaining as 4-category stars. Much like Betts, Lindor is a few HR short of being a 5-category star and a shortstop, so I take him. Adding him to Betts gives me:

Batter	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
Mookie Betts (OF1)	9%	7%	8%	13%	2.00
Francisco Lindor (SS)	8%	7%	8%	9%	1.50
New Batting Total	17%	14%	16%	22%	3.50

Pick 3.8 (#32) – Well, Thor is still here so I snatch him. The three 3-category batters remaining are Brian Dozier, Marcell Ozuna and Jose Abreu. Dozier is out due to the -2.00 AVG hit. I’m going to be taking enough hits later so I don’t need to do so now. Ozuna and Abreu are twins with the same Target Percentage lines so I’m going to cross my fingers and hope one of them is still there in the round 4.

Pitcher	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP
Noah Syndergaard (SP)	12%	0%	14%	1.25	2.00

Pick 4.5 (#41) – Well, all three 3-category guys went off the board. I’m going to snag one of the few batters out there with a high HR% and an AVG that doesn’t put me in a bottomless crater.

Batter	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
Old Batting Total	17%	14%	16%	22%	3.50
Edwin Encarnacion (1B)	7%	10%	9%	1%	-2.25
New Batting Total	24%	24%	25%	23%	1.25

Pick 5.8 (#56) – I’m beginning to see a lot of red remaining on my starting pitchers cheatsheet. I want to get a SP2 that will not put a sizeable dent in the solid ratios Thor gives me so I grab an Archer (Chris Archer) to go with the Hammer.

Pitcher	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP
Noah Syndergaard (SP1)	12%	0%	14%	1.25	2.00
Chris Archer (SP2)	11%	0%	14%	0.25	0.50
New Pitching Total	23%	0%	28%	1.50	2.50

Pick 6.5 (#65) – Whew, it worked. I was hoping Aroldis Chapman would make it back to me! He’s one of the four closers that are 0.75 or higher in ERA.

Pitcher	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP
Old Pitching Total	23%	0%	28%	1.50	2.50
Aroldis Chapman (RP1)	4%	24%	6%	0.75	0.50
New Pitching Total	27%	24%	34%	2.25	3.00

Pick 7.8 (#80) – I’m going with Andrew McCutchen who just misses projections in the green on Runs, HR and RBI. I feel it is important to point out that a player may have 8% for a category but still be yellow. This is due to rounding. McCutchen for example actually scored 7.66% in Runs but rounded up to 8%.

Batter	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
Old Hitting Total	24%	24%	25%	23%	1.25
Andrew McCutchen (OF2)	8%	7%	7%	6%	-0.75
New Hitting Total	32%	31%	32%	29%	0.50

Pick 8.5 (#89) – I had intended to reach for DJ LeMahieu here to get his +2.75 help in AVG, but alas, it was not meant to be. I’m starting to notice the lack of green left on my cheat sheet for HR and RBI so I take one of my favorites, Miguel Cabrera.

Batter	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
Old Hitting Total	32%	31%	32%	29%	0.50
Miguel Cabrera (CI)	6%	7%	7%	1%	0.75
New Hitting Total	38%	38%	39%	30%	1.25

Pick 9.8 (#104) – I’m taking Rougned Odor to help me in HR but he is going to put me in the negative in AVG, which stinks. See what I did there? The good news is that there are some positive AVG guys still available in the outfield.

Batter	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
Old Hitting Total	38%	38%	39%	30%	1.25
Rougned Odor (2B)	6%	8%	8%	8%	-2.00
New Hitting Total	44%	46%	47%	38%	-0.75

Pick 10.5 (#113) – Taking closer number two. You have to take one somewhere. Why not here? Brad Hand is one of the remaining closers available with a high SV% and positive ratios.

Pitcher	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP
Old Pitching Total	27%	24%	34%	2.25	3.00
Brad Hand (RP2)	3%	24%	5%	0.25	0.00
New Pitching Total	30%	48%	39%	2.50	3.00

Pick 11.8 (#128) – Kyle Seager, Ender Inciarte or closer number three. Still some decent OF out there so I am adding Seager. And, yes I see my AVG sinking lower.

Batter	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
Old Hitting Total	44%	46%	47%	38%	-0.75
Kyle Seager (3B)	7%	7%	7%	2%	-1.50
New Hitting Total	51%	53%	54%	40%	-2.25

Pick 12.5 (#137) – My third and final closer, Alex Colome. He was one of the few left with a high SV%.

Pitcher	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP
Old Pitching Total	30%	48%	39%	2.50	3.00
Alex Colome (RP3)	3%	28%	4%	-0.25	-0.50
New Pitching Total	33%	76%	43%	2.25	2.50

Okay, hopefully you’ve gotten a good grasp of utilizing Target Percentages during the draft. I’m not going to go pick by pick for the rest of the draft, but so far I’ve drafted seven batters and five pitchers.

With my remaining six batters to draft as starters I need to draft C, MI, 3 OF and UT and make up 49% in Runs, 47% in HR, 46% in RBI and 60% in SB all while trying to get back positive in AVG. I will have to target players with an average HR score of 8.1% to achieve 100%. It’s not impossible to do this, but it limits some of the players you can select during the rest of the draft.

For example, a quick look at the remaining catchers and I see that there is not a single player with a HR% score greater than 6%. So, when I select my catcher, I have to make up for the shortcoming at another position.

With my remaining four pitchers to draft as starters I will focus on three starting pitchers and one reliever to make up 67% of Wins, 24% of Saves and 57% of K. This will be nearly impossible to do in the draft and speaks more to the nature of pitching in fantasy baseball. You will fill in the gaps with players from the waiver wire, a story for another day.

I hope that this example was helpful to you, and I hope you are getting the idea of how to use Target Percentages – they’ll keep you on target during your draft!

Say Hello to Target Percentages

March 5, 2018 By Chris Spencer Leave a Comment

How many HR or RBI do you need to win your roto league? If you are fortunate enough to draft Los Angeles Angels OF Mike Trout, how much does he contribute to those stats? Target Percentages have the answer.

Why do we play fantasy baseball? Is it the thrill of picking up that pitcher for a spot start and seeing him throw a gem? That’s part of it. Is it seeing that “sleeper” batter you drafted late put up a bunch of crooked numbers for you? That’s part of it. Another part might just be the love of the game and fantasy baseball gives us another way to express that love.

Now, these might just be enough for you and you’re content drafting your players and setting your lineups throughout the season and wherever you end up in the standings is okay. For those of you that like to salt your food with the tears of your enemies, this article is for you!

If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

In roto-scoring leagues, the goal is to finish with the best score in each category. Coming out of the draft, you want your squad to be in the best position to achieve that goal. Simple enough, right? How do you go about getting your squad in position to win?

First of all, you need to define the best score in each category. How do you do that? You look at last year’s standings. If those aren’t available, you look to the Internet! This process will not help you with establishing a ranking of players but it will help maintain your focus during the draft. What you will need:

fantasy baseball projections (also available in Draft Buddy)
spreadsheet skills
color printer
last year’s standings, or those from a similar league setup

In this example I am competing in a 12-team league, 5×5 roto with 13 hitters using 1 catcher and 5 outfielders, 9 pitchers and 3 bench spots. You can easily adapt this approach to different league configurations.

I am going to tell you right now that you are not going to be able to draft a squad that will achieve the absolute best score in each category, unless you are in a league of one, and, in that case, you are both a winner and a loser.

Take a look at the total points score that won your league. In most 12-team, 10-category leagues it was somewhere between 85 and 95 points. That breaks down to an average of 9 points in each category, or 4th best. So, if you aim to finish 4th in each category, you would end up with about 90 points and a good shot at winning your league. I recommend that you strive to finish 3rd in each category. That would put you on pace for 100 points, which should win your league.

How do you do that? If you have last year’s standings, find the third best score in each category. These will become your target for that stat category. For example, if the third best HR score was 356, then you would target 356 HR in your draft. This should all be pretty straight forward. For this article, I took the highest third best score from the final standings last year from my league:

R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
1162	356	1127	159	0.2778

W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP
108	120	1568	3.626	1.212

To put my squad in the best position to succeed, I want the projections of the players I draft to add up to, or exceed, these target totals. Now, I could have a sheet of paper with my target totals at the top and when I draft a player, simply subtract his projections from these totals. I’ll keep a running tally throughout the draft.

This would work very easily for the counting stats, but what do you do about the ratio categories? Unless you have hits, at-bats, innings pitched, etc., you will have a hard time keeping track of those categories. This is where my Target Percentages method enters the picture!

Introducing Target Percentages

In one sentence, target percentages are the percentage of the target total a player earns for you based on his projections. For simplicity’s sake, let’s look at Draft Buddy’s #1 ranked player, Mike Trout. We have Trout projected for 511 AB, .309 AVG, 111 R, 38 HR, 106 RBI and 20 SB.

If I divide his 38 HR by the target total of 356, I will see that Trout would give me 10.67% of my target HR total. I advise you to round all the numbers to the nearest whole number. Trust me on that. So, Trout’s target percentage for HR is 11%. Repeat this for the other three counting stats and you should get 9% for RBI, 10% for R and 13% for SB.

The ratio stats, like batting average, are a little bit trickier. The first step is to subtract the target batting average from Trout’s batting average and then multiply by Trout’s at-bats. This will give you the number of hits above the “target level hitter” that Trout is worth. So, we subtract 0.2778 from 0.309 to get 0.0312 and then multiply that by 511 to get 15.9432.

Now you need to take this “Hits-Above-Target-Level” (HATL) number and find out how many standard deviations the player is from the mean. This is where using a spreadsheet comes in really handy. Take Trout’s 15.943 HATL and divide it by the standard deviation of every hitter’s projected HATL score.

For this article, let’s say that there is a 6.249 standard deviation for all hitters. This would lead to Trout’s AVG percentage to be 2.551 (15.943/6.249). Over the past few years I’ve discovered the sweet spot for tracking throughout the draft is to round this number to the nearest 0.25 (this can be done using the FLOOR function in Excel) and formatting so negative numbers are in red to stand out.

So, put it all together for Trout and you get the results in the table below. I repeated the process for Draft Buddy’s top ten ranked batters:

Player	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
Mike Trout	10%	11%	9%	13%	2.50
Giancarlo Stanton	9%	15%	11%	2%	0.50
Trea Turner	8%	5%	6%	31%	1.75
Nolan Arenado	8%	11%	10%	2%	1.50
Mookie Betts	9%	7%	8%	13%	2.00
Bryce Harper	8%	10%	9%	6%	1.75
Manny Machado	8%	10%	9%	5%	1.00
Paul Goldschmidt	8%	9%	9%	10%	1.00
Jose Altuve	8%	5%	8%	15%	2.75
Gary Sanchez	6%	8%	7%	2%	-0.75

I also did this so that you can get an idea of what your list will look like. To be effective, you have to do this for every possible player that you might draft because this will be your cheat sheet during the draft.

Sanchez makes the list due to position scarcity at the catcher position but you need to keep in mind that you’re going to have to make up the weak catcher stats from another batter… the story since the dawn of time.
Turner’s 31% stolen bases is a big chunk of what you need. You’ll find that with the speed merchants in the player pool. Big chunks of your SB can come from a few players. I, personally, like the 10%-15% guys.
Who do you like better, Betts or Harper? I’m leaning towards Betts simply for the SB %.
Who do you like better, Machado or Altuve? I’m going with Altuve and his 2.75 in AVG. Those positive numbers really help you in the later rounds when you are scraping the bottom of the barrel batters.

For the ratio stats of pitchers, the method is exactly like you did above when you found the batting average score for Trout, with one small exception. You will subtract the player’s projected ratio from the target. This is done to reflect the nature of the pitching ratios, that lower is better. Instead of finding the HATL, you will be finding the “Earned-Runs-Above-Target-Level” (ERATL) and “Walks + Hits-Above-Target-Level” (WHATL).

Here are our projections for the top 5 starting pitchers and top 5 closers. For example purposes, let’s say that the standard deviation for ERA is 61.861 and for WHIP is 11.048.

Player	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP
Clayton Kershaw	14%	0%	14%	2.50	3.25
Chris Sale	14%	0%	15%	1.50	3.00
Max Scherzer	14%	0%	16%	0.75	2.25
Noah Syndergaard	12%	0%	14%	1.25	2.00
Corey Kluber	13%	0%	14%	1.00	2.00

Player	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP
Kenley Jansen	4%	32%	6%	0.75	1.50
Craig Kimbrel	4%	28%	6%	1.00	1.00
Aroldis Chapman	4%	24%	6%	0.75	0.50
Ken Giles	4%	28%	5%	0.25	0.25
Edwin Diaz	4%	27%	5%	0.25	0.25

Hard to argue with Kershaw as the top SP. Look at those ERA and WHIP numbers!
Who do you like between Syndergaard and Kluber? Wins are so flaky that Kluber’s advantage doesn’t make up for the 0.25 ERA.
Note how the closers (and other RP) help or hurt your ERA and WHIP but typically only a little bit.
Regarding saves, I try to get three closers to get close to 100% and then sprinkle in a few other non-closing RP to get a few more saves to get to 100% and help ERA and WHIP.

Enough with all the math! How do you use all of these numbers?

As the draft unfolds, you can keep track of how close you are getting to your target totals. Simply keep a running tally for each category. For example, let’s say (in some bizarre draft) you were able to draft Trout and Altuve with your first two picks. This would put you at 18% of your runs target already secured, 16% HR, 17% RBI, 28% SB, and a +5.25 AVG.

Player	R	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
Mike Trout	10%	11%	9%	13%	2.50
Jose Altuve	8%	5%	8%	15%	2.75
TOTAL	18%	16%	17%	28%	5.25

Your goal is to get 100% for the counting stats and stay above ZERO in the ratio stats. I recommend formatting the ratio scores that represent negative numbers to show in red. This will help you to differentiate between the values that were rounded to zero, even though some will be negative.

As the draft progresses, you will see that you may be falling behind in a certain category and can target a player that helps you in that category. Also, if you fall short of 100% for any of the counting stats, you will know what type of player to target for bench spots.

Target Percentages are only meant to be used during your draft. Once the season starts, things will change and you have to act accordingly. This is just a tool to help you stay focused during your draft. This is Part 1 introducing and explaining Target Percentages, and in Part 2 I will demonstrate using this concept in a mock draft.