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A lot has happened since our last mock draft. Shoot, a lot has happened just in the past week.

If you're wondering where Kyle Tucker deserves to be drafted now that he's signed with the Dodgers, my rankings say sixth overall, behind what, to me, is an obvious top five of Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Witt, Juan Soto and Jose Ramirez. He was already cinch first-rounder for me, owing to his steady five-category production, and is now surrounded by a trio of Hall of Famers, which bodes well for his run and RBI totals. But no, he lasted to Pick 9, where I myself took him, so who knows where he would have gone otherwise? The enthusiasm for him seems fairly contained.

What about Cody Bellinger in light of his return to the Yankees? The news broke just a few hours before this draft, but it clearly had an impact, seeing as Bellinger went about 20 spots ahead of his NFBC ADP (59th vs. 81st). That's actually in line with my own ranking for him (58th), which always presumed a reunion with the Yankees. It's just the perfect marriage between player and venue, with Bellinger lacking the exit velocities of a true power hitter but having the ideal pull-air rate to take advantage of Yankee Stadium's short porch in right field. He hit 18 of his 29 home runs last year at home and had a .909 OPS there compared to .715 on the road.

What about Luis Robert, who was finally granted his change of scenery by being dealt to the Mets? Little movement there. His selection at 138th overall is actually a round or two lower than ADP, though notably, NFBC is calibrated for five outfield spots while this format employs only three outfield spots.

Oh, did I fail to mention the format for this mock? That would be Head-to-Head categories, which implement 5x5 Rotisserie scoring to determine winners and losers over week-long matchups. We tend to use standard Yahoo settings when we draft for this format, given its popularity on that site, which features a couple of lineup quirks, namely two utility spots instead of one and three flexible pitcher spots to go with two starting pitchers and two relief pitchers. You'll notice that closers were forced up in this draft on account of there being so many places to play them.

Here's who all took part in the mock:

1) Sean Martin, Fantasy Baseball Now (@Sean_Martin77)
2) George Kurtz, Sportsgrid (@GeorgeKurtz)
3) Marty Tallman, TGFBI participant
4) Nick Fox, NBC Sports (@CT_FOX)
5) B_Don, Razzball (@RazzBDon)
6) Jeremy Heist, Fantistics Fantasy (@heistjm)
7) Chris Mitchell, FantasyData (@CJMitch73)
8) Steve Giangaspro, Tablesetters podcast (@SGroundballTS)
9) Scott White, CBS Sports (@CBSScottWhite)
10) Anthony Kates, SportsEthos (@akfantasybb)
11) Mike Nelson, Fantasy Baseball Now
12) Devin Milligan, Tablesetters podcast (@tablesetters)

I found the draft to be fairly straightforward, with few noteworthy trends to comment on, so instead, I'd like to share some reflections about my own team.

  • My preferred approach in these Head-to-Head categories leagues is to dominate the counting stats, finding them to be much more predictable in one-week spurts than the ratio stats are. Hitters have more counting stats than pitchers (and one of pitchers' counting stats, wins, is anything but predictable), so it's only natural that I'd gravitate toward hitters at the start of the draft, taking one with each of my first seven picks in this case. It means that Kyle Bradish is my ace, but he might just be an ace, and I think this year's pitcher pool is so abounding in medium-floor, high-upside types that going the piecemeal route makes a lot of sense. That's especially true in this format, where mimicking a good pitching staff for a week at a time is possible through matchups and sheer variability, provided you have enough competent choices. Having a ratio stabilizer like Drew Rasmussen (Pick 177) doesn't hurt.
  • Meanwhile, my seven hitters put me in a good position to win home runs, runs, RBI and perhaps even batting average (though it's not a counting stat) most every week. Is it overkill? Yes, but to assure regular success in a category over samples as small as one week, you need overkill. It's not like Rotisserie, where you can aim for a perfect category balance with the understanding that numbers normalize over time. Numbers don't normalize over a week at a time, so while you want to be competitive in everything in Head-to-Head categories, you need a few easy category wins that you can count on every week.
  • Having a second utility spot may not sound like a big difference, but there were a couple times early in the draft when it gave me the confidence to take the best hitter available instead of fixating on position. Grabbing Julio Rodriguez when he fell to Pick 16 was the easiest pick I could make even though I had already taken an outfielder (Tucker) in Round 1. Freddie Freeman in Round 5 also seemed like the proper choice, even though I had taken Matt Olson just two rounds earlier.

There's a lot more to dig into here, and I'll let you do just that.