2021 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Tout Wars draft recap shows how to navigate OBP and SV+HLD leagues

You need to have a plan for every Fantasy Baseball draft, but when you do as many as we do every year, I'll admit I can pretty much walk into a regular old 12-team, H2H or Roto draft without much prep. You pretty much know how the draft is going to go -- you know which players are moving up boards and who might fall, and there aren't that many different approaches the people in your draft will take. 

When you start to venture out into different league sizes and scoring systems, things are different. I got invited to join the newest Tout Wars industry analyst league, and they decided to make that the experimental league. The game of baseball is changing every season, and the standard Fantasy categories and point systems don't necessarily reflect that. That's especially true with the pitching categories, because pitching usage has changed so much since the Fantasy game was first created. So, we're trying to change with the times. This is a 5x5 Rotisserie league with runs, RBI, home runs, and steals plus on-base percentage instead of batting average; on the pitching side, we've got strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP, but we're replacing wins with innings pitched and saves with saves plus holds. 

The days of the 200-inning pitcher aren't totally finished, but they are increasingly rare. As are the aces who you can consistently rely on to get through six innings consistently. Pitchers are throwing max effort for every single pitch, teams use openers, and teams pull even very good pitchers before they face the order a third time, which has combined to make the win an increasingly scarce category. At the same time, teams are more willing than ever to embrace non-traditional late-inning, high-leverage reliever usage. In 2019, only one player had 40-plus saves, and only one was on pace for 40 saves in 2020; the Rays are on the extreme edge of this, with 12 different players recording a save in a 60-game season. 

This isn't a drastically different game than the one we're used to playing in a traditional league -- seven of the 10 categories are the same, after all. But it did change my approach to the draft. Before I break it down, here's what my roster looks like picking from the No. 10 spot: 

On the hitting side, the change was fairly simple and obvious -- you want hitters with high-OBPs. That moves a handful of players up and a handful of others down -- Aaron Judge moves up, Eloy Jimenez and Bo Bichette move down, and Mike Trout should be the No. 1 player -- but it's not a fundamental shift in your approach.

It's a bit different on the pitching side. I'm already fading relief pitchers this season, but in a format where the number of viable contributors in the relief pitcher-specific category is significantly larger, I'm not paying up for them at all. The principal impact of saves-plus-holds is that it flattens the relief pitcher position -- you're not chasing saves with mediocre (or, even, bad) relievers, you just want the best relievers. They'll get holds even if they aren't the closer. The saves leaders will get more saves than the holds leaders will, so the balance is still shifted to the traditional closers, but given the turnover at the position every season, it doesn't make much sense to chase saves. Even if Amir Garrett doesn't end up the Opening Day closer, for instance, he'll get holds until he inevitably gets a chance to close. 

Replacing innings with wins isn't quite as drastic a change as it may seem at first, though it did change my pitcher targets just a bit. When I was sitting there at No. 10 overall in the draft, I had the choice between Jose Ramirez and Shane Bieber, and my normal response would be to take Ramirez -- in an OBP league, he's even better. But with innings as a discrete, separate category all on its own, Bieber looks even better, ranking second in the majors in innings pitched the last two seasons. I was also willing to reach for Zack Greinke a little earlier than normal, pairing him with Corbin Burnes in the fifth and sixth rounds, giving me a strong base of strikeouts, ratios, and innings. 

That balance was on my mind throughout, as I took Ian Anderson in the ninth round and German Marquez in the 13th, the latter of whom should be an excellent source of innings in a season where they will be hard to come by. I think it created a pretty good mix of upside and solid inning-eater types for my staff, and I'm pretty happy with how it worked out considering I spent four of my first 12 picks on starters. 

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this team -- and I'm not usually a person who loves all of my Fantasy teams. I navigated the OBP part with a core built around Freddie Freeman, Alex Bregman, and Aaron Judge, allowing me to target power-speed guys like Javier Baez, Byron Buxton, Ramon Laureano, and Aaron Hicks in the middle rounds. And on the pitching side, I got some of my favorite sleepers and breakouts -- Anderson, Urquidy, Mahle, Puck, Keller -- to go with a core I feel pretty confident in. 

You can see the full results below, and here's who took part in this draft:

1. Jeff Boggis, FantasyFootballEmpire.com
2. Ron Shandler, 2021 Baseball Forecaster/RonShandler.com
3. Brian Entrekin, FantasySportsDegens.com
4. Doug Anderson/Chris Clegg, FantraxHQ.com
5. Al Melchior, TheAthletic.com
6. Alex Fast, PitcherList.com
7. Ray Flowers, FantasyGuru.com
8. Jim Bowden, TheAthletic.com/CBSSports.com
9. Andy Behrens, Yahoo.com
10. Chris Towers, CBS Fantasy
11. Jennifer Piacenti, SiriusXM Fantasy
12. Jake Ciely, TheAthletic.com

So which Fantasy baseball sleepers should you snatch in your draft? And which undervalued first baseman can help you win a championship? Visit SportsLine now to get Fantasy baseball rankings for every single position, all from the model that called Will Smith's huge breakout last season, and find out.