Draft Recap - 3/19/11

The annual Percell Fantasy Baseball Draft was held last Saturday, March 19, 2011.  The festivities kicked off at 10 am CDT, although owners were busy far earlier (some way earlier!) planning their draft strategies.

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Cole Hamels: PFBL top pick in 2011

In a surprise move, Matt Percell selected Cole Hamels #1 overall, but with each returning team retaining 3 players from 2010, names like Albert Pujols, Hanley Ramirez, and Roy Halladay were already off the board.

The rest of the first round went rather predictably: M Cabrerra, Pujols (keeper), R Cano, Cliff Lee, A Gonzalez, U Jimenez, R Howard, and M Texiera rounded out the opening picks.  2009 champ Matt McAlexander, with a squad newly renamed One Bad Pitch, jumped right back into the action to select T Lincecum at the top of round two.

All in all it was an excellent draft, although one owner, Nate Percell, suddenly opted out of the live draft at the zero hour - some excuse about in-laws coming into town.  However, it was widely rumored that Nate fabricated that excuse, believing the Yahoo Auto Draft mechanism might do a better job than he could.  With Record 6 yielding players like Albert Pujols, David Wright, Ian Kinsler, Ichiro Suzuki, and Matt Latos, he might prove to have been correct.  This pseudo-intentional auto-draft move subsequently threw a corkscrew into some owners' draft plans, who were counting on Nate to burn good draft picks with undesirable players.

Notheless, all rosters sit squarely at 22 with Opening Day looming, and this Points-only Fantasy League, starved for baseball, is licking its collective chops.

Welcome back baseball!
Oh how we have missed you!

Jay
The Commish