2018 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: 12-team Rotisserie mock draft

• Draft Prep Tiers 3.0: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP
  
• Heath's Sleepers | Breakouts | Busts |
  
• Scott's Top 100 prospects | Sleepers | Breakouts | Busts

The good thing about Fantasy baseball is, the best teams in real life tend to be the best teams for Fantasy, too. Whereas there are only so many touches and snaps to go around in New England – every touchdown Brandin Cooks scores is one Rob Gronkowski can't – that isn't an issue in Fantasy baseball.

In fact, the best teams often have a multiplicative effect in Fantasy baseball. Every Carlos Correa home run may not drive in George Springer, but at the very least, it keeps the lineup moving, bringing Springer one spot closer to another chance to accrue value. When it comes to lineups that are loaded with talent, the more the merrier.

Mock drafts are an excellent way to experiment with draft strategy, but you don't have to go crazy doing it. I pretty consistently focus on hitting early in Rotisserie leagues and then prefer an RP-heavy pitching strategy. While I'm not likely to go with starting pitchers early in a Roto draft, I did want to see if I could build a starting pitching staff I liked while still building a strong offense and competing in saves. Here's how it went. 

The draft started as most of mine do, with a lot of hitters. After five rounds I had Bryce Harper, Jose Ramirez, Dee Gordon, Andrew Benintendi and Buster Posey. It's a great start for batting average, runs and steals. It leaves much to be desired in terms of power, but you can find power late. In the Round 6, I took my first potential ace, Gerrit Cole. 

Yes, Cole absolutely has ace potential. For one thing, we've already seen him do it in Pittsburgh. For another he's going to one of the smartest teams in the baseball in terms of enhancing pitcher performance. He's also going to play on maybe the winningest team in baseball. 

I also drafted former aces Masahiro Tanaka (one of this year's most prominent regression candidates) and Johnny Cueto. I expect both of these pitchers to bounce back and be borderline No. 2 starters, but their ceiling is even higher. Later in the draft I focused on upside starters, snagging Taijuan Walker, Sean Newcomb and Jack Flaherty. 

So did it work? For me, yes. And it can for you too, even if you prefer different starters. I'm not sure I like this approach more than I do RP-heavy, but it does reinforce my feeling that focusing on hitting early in Roto is the right way to go, no matter what your pitcher strategy is.

Here's who participated:
Lance Brozdowski, Big 3 Sports
Chris Towers, CBS Sports
Frankie Stampfl, Michael Florio, Gregg Sussman, Fantasy BFFs
George Maselli, CBS Sports
Heath Cummings, CBS Sports
Jeff Tobin, CBS Sports
Matt Williams, Fantasy Pros
Nicky Tapas, Fantasy Pros
R.J. White, CBS Sports
Sergio Gonzalez, CBS Sports
Scott White, CBS Sports
Mike Kuchera, The Fantasy Man

Here are the results: