We had our draft this week in the Red Reporter Death Match Fantasy League on CBSSports.com (that is the official name of the league). I, uh, slept through it. Actually, at about 9:30pm (the draft started at 8pm), my wife says to me, "Hey, is your draft over already." To which I responded, "D'oh! I forgot." I logged in and noticed that I had a bad ass pitching staff and decided that I'd let our computer drafting overlords finish their work. For having the 20th pick in a 20 team league, and after having used the auto-draft feature, I gotta say that I'm pretty impressed with how well CBSSports.com's auto-draft tool works. I'm not sure I would've done much better.
I'll give you a little introduction to the teams in our league, because I know you all have been waiting for the unveiling. We have four divisions of five teams each, broken out this way:
| Trains Division | Burgers Division |
| Losantiville Zephyrs - RijoSaboCaseyWKRP | The Burning Oreos - crolfer |
| OklaRed1 - Oklahoma Red1 | Dibs' DraGoons - Officer Dibble |
| Hernanigans - Slyde | CamIam - CamIam |
| Kyle's Killers - MixFMKyle | Kal Daniels Fan Club - JD Arney |
| New Red Machine - New Red Machine | King's Diamond Warriors - snailbiscuit |
| CatJack Division | Politics Division |
| The Norwood Laterals - thevole | Heeringa - Heeringa |
| The Vottocracy - Uncle Weez | Gomes, Gomes, Gone!!! - mdccclxix |
| Cats Do Not Abide By the Laws of Nature - shrguy | The Mad Cats - chesirecat |
| Light Tower Havoc - Geki | Defenders of the Universe - bennevis |
| Aroldis loves the Beatles - andromache | GrandOldDukesOfYork - Filbert Fox |
The first pick of the draft went to RijoSaboCaseyWKRP and he surprisingly took Albert Pujols. Joe Mauer went second and future Reds shortstop Hanley Ramirez went third. Then, a mere two hours, forty-six minutes and fifty-one seconds later, Cliff Pennington was taken with the last pick in the 21st round. I'm kinda glad I didn't stay up to see that.
The biggest offender time-wise was mdccclxix, who took a full 21 minutes and 17 seconds to make his 21 picks. It looks like there were 4 of us were on auto-pilot for most of the draft as we all used up less than 2 minutes total time to make our picks.
The first Reds player chosen was Joey Votto, taken by Oklahoma Red with the 28th pick of the draft. Francisco Cordero went in the 3rd round, Jay Bruce in the 4th, and Scott Rolen in the 5th, all taken by Heeringa, who has a bit of a Reds fetish. In all, 19 Reds were chosen in the draft, including Aroldis Chapman and Mike Leake - not bad for two pitchers who have never thrown a professional pitch.
I don't have much analysis of the teams. It's hard to wrap my head around 20 teams, let alone analyze them. With so many players being used, I really can't tell how good teams are just yet. I did notice that JD Arney has a pitching staff with Homer Bailey, Zack Greinke, Stephen Strasburg, Neftali Feliz, and Phil Hughes. I think he likes hyped pitching prospects.
It looks like it'll be a fun season though. We've already had our first trade: snailbiscuit traded Akinori Iwamura to ben nevis for Kenshin Kawakami. The trade was huge news over in Japan.
If you are still considering setting up a league, remember you can still get 50% off a new CBSSports.com Fantasy Baseball Commissioner league thanks to SBNation.com.
CBSSports.com is an SB Nation partner and paying sponsor of the SB Nation baseball communities. This post is one of a series of sponsor endorsed posts related to the CBSSports.com Fantasy Baseball Commissioner League.