AZ SnakePit Fantasy Baseball: Play ball!

One of the sneaky advantages of being the commissioner, is that you get to select the draft date and time. Now, while you do have to take the opinion's of other league members into consideration, you would have to be an absolute idiot to choose an occasion when you were unable to make it.

Which is why I was surreptitiously checking my phone at a Chinese restaurant on Sunday afternoon, having completely spaced on Mrs SnakePit-in-law's birthday dinner. I was going to let the auto-draft cast the die where they may fall, but speaking to another relative - I think it's Mrs. SnakePit's cousin's son [I'm vague on the second part of that] - it came out he was a fantasy addict, who already had eight teams. I grabbed that lifeline like a drowning man, gave him my Yahoo! login, and officially appointed him Chief Baseball Officer for my team. Hence the frantic texting, especially over our second-round choice:

I wasn't sure if "Tulo taken" meant we had him, or someone else had. Turned out it was the latter, but I'm pleased to report I did not have to fire our CBO after two rounds of the draft, yet alone engage in senseless retributive violence. While he did insist that "we have to" take Puig, in the end, we went for Bryce Harper, thereby saving me from having to set my entire fantasy team on fire. Angry Saguaro, who picked after us, had no such moral qualms, and I cheerfully hope they die in a tragic fantasy accident as a result. I am also amused by the auto-correct on my phone changing "Puig" to "Pig". This may be the first time auto-correct has actually improved the meaning of a sentence.

From my point of view, this is a win-win scenario. If my team does badly, I have an easy scapegoat, and can blame the incompetent draft picks of my CBO, handcuffing me with bad choices (hey, I'm sure Dave Stewart is muttering similar things under his breath, about certain moves bequeathed to him by Kevin Towers). On the other hand, if my team does well, it's clearly the result of my in-season expertise and waiver wire savvy.  Here's how the first round overall went down, along with our amusing/not-so-amusing team names.

I'm pretty sure that third position for Goldie is the earliest any Diamondback player has ever been taken in the 11 years of SnakePit fantasy baseball. I'm not certain, but this may be the first time an Arizona player has gone even in the first round. There is some slight local bias here, but not much; the default rankings still have Goldschmidt in the top half of the first round at #5, after Cabrera and Kershaw. But it's probably an indication for the overall strength of the 2015 Diamondbacks that we then had to wait 130 picks for the next Arizona player to be chosen: I selected A.J. Pollock in the 10th round. Here are all the AZ players selected:

1. Paul Goldschmidt, #3
2. A.J. Pollock #133
3. Mark Trumbo, #134
4. Chris Owings, #177
5. Addison Reed, #200
6. Jake Lamb, #221
7. Yasmany Tomas. #224
8. Josh Collmenter, #241
9. Patrick Corbin, #244
10. Aaron Hill, #267
11. Chase Anderson, #294
12. Ender Inciarte, #310
13. Evan Marshall, #318
14. Rubby de la Rosa, #319
15. Daniel Hudson, with the 322nd and final pick!

As in previous seasons, there are two "feeder" leagues, whose winners will be eligible for promotion to the top tier in 2016. These are smaller than last season - posting the worst record in baseball apparently drains interest [this is my unsurprised face] - at ten teams each, so the owners there have no excuse for not blowing the doors off with their choices. The best of luck to all 38 managers: may all your roster moves be ones of choice, not necessity!