2019 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: 10-team NL-only Head-to-Head mock draft

How does reducing the player pool to just the NL side change things?

By Scott White

Feb 8, 2019 at 6:53 pm ET • 2 min read

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We've had plenty of looks at the mixed-league player pool already. Time to cut it in half.

Top free agents remain unsigned? Who cares! There are still NL-only leagues to be won.

The approach to those free agents was a little more straightforward than in our AL-only Head-to-Head mock draft given that the the majority of Bryce Harper's and Manny Machado's known suitors are in the NL. Harper actually went off the board early in Round 2 of this draft, with Machado following at the start of Round 3. Obviously, once it's clear they're sticking in the NL, their price tags will go up.

Even bigger discounts were applied to Craig Kimbrel, who went just after Kirby Yates and Round 11, and Dallas Keuchel, who went just after Hyun-Jin Ryu in Round 12. We don't have as much of an idea where they're going to land, and if it's with an AL team, they're obviously worthless.

But let's not get stuck on those uncomfortable circumstances. An entire drafted unfolded here, after all.

It was our first since the trade that sent J.T. Realmuto to the Phillies, where he'll have a chance to apply his exceptional road splits to a hitter-friendly park. He went with the second pick of Round 3. I'm still not sure I was right to take Joey Votto instead, one pick before, but the shortage of quality first baseman becomes even more apparent when working with half the player pool. It's how Anthony Rizzo went second overall and Paul Goldschmidt third. (Granted, it's hard to reconcile those picks with Freddie Freeman at 13th overall when I actually rank Freeman ahead of Rizzo, but it's a draft and sometimes weird things happen).

Catcher itself is actually pretty deep in the NL, boasting six of the only eight bats worth a darn. In fact, I'd say every infield spot is a little better off in the NL than the AL. It's not as pitching-dominated as in years past, though, which became apparent by about Round 9.

There are plenty of other discoveries to be made here, of course, but I'll leave you to peruse. First, though, I believe introduction are in order:

1 - Scott White, CBS Sports (@CBSScottWhite)
2 - Al Melchior, RotoGraphs (@almelchiorBB)
3 - Andrew McClintock, Fantasy Front Office (@FantasyAid1)
4 - Tom Ogonowski, Future Studskis (@ProspectFiend)
5 - Heath Cummings, CBS Sports (@heathcummingssr)
6 - Matt Williams, Fake Teams/Turn Two Podcast (@MattWi77iams)
7 - B_Don, Razzball (@DitkaSausagePod)
8 - Chris Towers, CBS Sports (@CTowersCBS)
9 - Chris Mitchell, Fantrax (@CJMitch73)
10 - Phil Ponebshek, Patton & Company

And here's a reminder of how the scoring works in our Head-to-Head points format:

Head-to-Head point values
For hitters		For pitchers
Single	1	Walk	-1
Double	2	Earned run	-1
Triple	3	Hit	-1
Walk	1	Hit batter	-1
Caught stealing	-1	Inning	3
Hit by pitch	1	Strikeout	0.5
Home run	4	Win	7
Strikeout	-0.5	Loss	-5
Run	1	Save	7
RBI	1	QS	3
Stolen base	2