2019 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Head-to-Head mock draft has Max Scherzer at No. 1

Want to get a jump on the competition? Go to the CBS Sports app on your phone, open up "Settings" and sign up for Fantasy alerts to get the latest from our Fantasy baseball team as soon as it's available.

It's not what I would do.

In a world where Mike Trout consistently positions himself at or near the top of Fantasy Baseball scorers and Mookie Betts has presented a reasonable facsimile two of the past three years, I couldn't pass up those two at Picks 1 and 2, regardless of format.

But that's why we invite others to take part in our mock drafts, to do the things I wouldn't do. 

Andrew McClintock of Fantasy Front Office had the honor of the first pick in our latest Head-to-Head points mock draft, done to commemorate the launch of our 2019 Fantasy Baseball game, and turned heads by selecting Max Scherzer No. 1 overall. 

There's a case to be made for it. Our particular scoring system does provide a way for the very best pitchers to outscore the very best hitters (as Scherzer did last year), and while in the past our argument against drafting them first was "yeah, but there's so many of them," sort of like quarterbacks in Fantasy Football, that's becoming less true with each passing year. More and more, durability is taking a back seat to dominance, and the few pitchers who provide both are not only scarce but lapping the field in statistical output.

If not Scherzer, who else? Jacob deGrom has had only one year of Scherzer-level production. Clayton Kershaw is a broken-down shell of his former self. Even Chris Sale, who mirrors Scherzer in terms of dominance and consistency, always has that pesky habit of wearing down in the second half, the most recent of which was plagued by a shoulder issue.

Turns out Scherzer is kind of on his own at the top of the starting pitcher rankings, and at least this format, I could see targeting him as early as fourth or fifth.

Some introductions before we get to the results:

1 - Andrew McClintock, Fantasy Front Office (@FantasyAid1)
2 - George Maselli, CBS Sports
3 - Nathan Judah, Express & Star (@njudah_star)
4 - Danny Cross, CREATiVESPORTS
5 - James Ganey, Fantasy Front Office (@CubbyNole)
6 - Kory Schulte, Baseline Times (@BaselineKory)
7 - Scott White, CBS Sports (@CBSScottWhite)
8 - Heath Cummings, CBS Sports (@heathcummingssr)
9 - Donkey Teeth, Razzball (@DonkeyTeeth87)
10 - Daniel Preciado, Fantasy Front Office (@DanJPreciado)
11 - Tom Ogonowski, Future Studskis (@ProspectFiend)
12 - Matt Williams, Fake Teams/Turn Two Podcast (@MattWi77iams)

And a quick reminder of how the scoring works in this format: