The Sharp & The Fish: Round One
A series where we pick out the best and worst picks in each round
Click here to view the rest of this series.
The best players in any future-predicting game are referred to as sharps. I don’t think anybody reading this really needed that contextual information, but now you have it.
The opposite of sharp is dull. I’ve never heard the opposite of a smart prognosticator called a dull. Maybe that’s because it sounds a little bit personal. Like you’re calling them stupid in a broader sense.
In our lexicon, we use the word fish to describe the bad gamblers. But that would go better with saying shark rather than sharp. So we’re mixing metaphors here, but that’s okay. It rolls off the tongue better than the other things I’ve tried.
And I should probably sit here and write a few paragraphs qualifying my negativity, saying that, well, actually, none of these picks are actually really bad, and there’s league and team build context to everything, and yadda freaking yadda, but honestly, I’m sick of all of that. Even if it’s true, I’m sick of it. Let’s just be brash (shout out to Matt) and do this thing like it’s 2012 again and we’re not all pretending to be super understanding and nice.
So if you haven’t figured it out yet. I’m going round-by-round, assuming 15 picks per round, and telling you which pick I think is the best (sharp) and which pick I think is the worst (dull).
Here’s what I’m calling “round one”. The first 15 in ADP in January.
SHARP: ELLY DE LA CRUZ
Round one analysis is pretty impossible and stupid. We’re at the top of the list, everybody kinda knows what’s going on. The ADP is going to be very… shall I say… sharp. And it’s completely dependent on what pick you end up with, right?
If you’re the #3 pick and you take Bobby Witt, am I going to criticize you for not taking Elly De La Cruz? Nope - cause that would be dull. And I try to not be dull.
This series will be wayyyy more interesting like five rounds from now, but the best place to start is the beginning.
Taking Elly at pick nine or ten or eleven, or even getting lucky and getting him at pick twelve… that ain’t gonna win you your league.
But I can see a world where EDLC pops off for 32 homers, 50 steals, and a .275 batting average, plus like 210 R+RBI in 2026. He has that kind of potential. And we were seeing it last year before the leg injury, which he played through.
The upside is absurd. The raw talent has always been there. And I was an Elly critic in his rookie here! I famously (in my own mind, nobody else remembers it… but I think about it 23 hours per day and tell my wife and kids about it every night before dinner) gave my model’s skill projection for the dude when he got called up, and I was dunked on by Reds fans for days after that (which equates to 23.79 years in social media time, mind you).
That ended up being almost perfectly right, and that’s the only reason I can actually fall asleep at night.
But June 2023 was a long time ago, and Elly has been getting better and better every single year. Every month, maybe! The dude has been striking out less and lifting the ball more every time you look at his Fangraphs page. He’s truly figuring it out, and get this, he turned 24 this month. Three years and two weeks ago, he couldn’t buy a beer in Cincinnati. I’m not sure what the rules are in the Dominican, but you get it, HE’S YOUNG.
He’s a potential 1.1 type of player. And that’s tough to get to in the age of Ohtani and Judge, but I’d like to firmly be on the BUY SIDE of young Elly.
FISH: Junior Caminero
There are a handful of players in the league who have the physical ability to hit 50 homers while maintaining a .280+ batting average. Judge, Ohtani, Witt, Soto… and maybe I’m discounting a few guys, but Caminero is in that discussion.
I do not think the guy is going to have a bad year. I think he’s a 30-homer floor dude in this league for the next decade.
But what I don’t want to do is use my first (or second) pick on him this year. The Rays are going back to the Trop, a much tougher place to hit, and they’re going back there with a downgraded lineup.
And Caminero does not steal bases! That doesn’t matter much in round five, but man, if you head into round three in your draft without any projected steals, you start feeling a bit of pressure.
Dynasty leagues, keeper leagues - totally different story. I think Caminero has Hall of Fame-type talent. I’d love to be along for the ride. But this isn’t the year, in redraft, to pay what it costs to get him.