This past week I participated in two fantasy baseball drafts.  The first draft was a live draft, to see how I would pick now that a fourth of the season has passed.  The second draft was an auto-pick league where I decided to not set my rankings, in hopes that I would get a batch of players who I don't have on any fantasy team.

In the live draft, I went with a similar approach to the rest of my fantasy teams.  I took Ryan Braun with the 12th pick in the first round, Alex Rios and Nick Markakis in the third and fourth rounds, and Corey Hart in the 7th round.  Somemajor differences were that I took Johan Santana in the second roun, which heavily violates my "Don't take a pitcher before the 7th round" rule.  However, this is a head to head league, meaning my strategy is "Draft one stud pitcher, draft a few low-cost aces, load up on offense, and spend the middle rounds loading up on closers.

The end result was that I ended up with a pitching staff of Johan Santana (2nd round), James Shields (9th round), Adam Wainwright (14th round), Johnny Cueto (21st round), Max Scherzer (22nd round) and John Danks (23rd round).

I took Carlos Guillen at shortstop since the top three (Hanley, Rollins, Reyes) went with the top three picks, and Furcal went in the early second round.  I was surprised that Lance Berkman went with the fifth pick overall, ahead of David Wright, A-Rod, Utley, Holliday, and Miguel Cabrera.  I like what Berkman has done, but I don't think he ranks ahead of all of these guys.

The auto-pick draft was a success, in that I got a lot of players who aren't normally on my fantasy team.  I got Matt Holliday in the first round, Johan Santana in the second round, Alfonso Soriano in the third round, and Jonathan Papelbon in the fourth round, which is something I would never do.  It's not that Papelbon isn't good, it's that I don't like taking closers that high.  I was also given Takashi Saito in the seventh round.

The only players who I got, that I have on other teams, were Chad Billingsley, Kenji Johjima, and Adam LaRoche.  The player I like the most is Ryan Zimmerman in the 9th round.  He got off to a .241 start with two homers in April, but has hit five homers with a .280 average in May.  Last year Zimmerman hit one homer with a .236 average in April, and hit .273 with 23 homers the remainder of the season.  For the remainder of the season I would rank Zimmerman right outside of the A-Rod/Wright/Braun/Cabrera group.