by toshiro » Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:16 pm
Seems like a key challenge, when assuming that the player has to have a 2002 card (which I assumed we did) is to mitigate the 'bust' card. Almost all players who have a 2002 card 'bust' at some point. The draft seems to have rewarded players who are the most consistent with the highest picks. Many of us are going to be stuck with a 2 million dollar 'bust' card in some years that isn't really worthy of full time play, but you can't really let sit on the bench. That seems to be one of the nice aspects to this format.
Drafting purely in the future may open a pandora's box. If you wanted to "game the game", you could try to target guys who didn't have a bust year. Yea, you don't get a 2002 pick, but the player pool is deep enough that you should be able to find a replacement. Best of all, you're not throwing away $2 or 3 million dollars. Why go for Mora, Clemens or Reyes and have to suck up all those bust years, when you could go for Mauer, Howard, Luke Scott, Carpenter, Wright, Wang, Liriano. RPs could become choice in this strategy. Saito, Zumaya,RSoriano. I can't think of many but you get the idea. Best of all--the 2002 player pool is very deep, esp for pitching, so you aren't going to lose out on the first season so much by solely staking out the future.
Something to think about.