Happy Kokomo Friday! We have another mock draft for you, this time the H2H points variety. The podcast ran a little (a lot) long, but it was fun and there was lots to talk about. To no surprise, the big three starting pitchers — Shane Bieber, Jacob deGrom and Gerrit Cole — were the first three overall picks in this draft. It's quite typical to see elite starting pitchers moved up the board in this format. After that we didn't see another starting pitcher go until Scott White took Trevor Bauer with the 11th overall pick.

As you'll learn as the draft goes on, each of Scott, Chris Towers and me went with different approaches. As usual, Scott was very aggressive on starting pitchers, even more so than usual. He drafted a bench pitcher before his third hitter! Chris went the opposite direction, opting for three elite hitters in the first three rounds with Hyun-Jin Ryu as his SP1 in the fourth round. I went more balanced with four hitters and four pitchers in my first eight picks. Usually I like to be more aggressive on starting pitchers as well but Fernando Tatis was just too good a value to pass up with the ninth overall pick. Anyway, let us know what you thought of the draft. Which team turned out the best?

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We've got a new fancy software for these live mocks so if you want to re-watch the draft you'll find it on our Youtube page (and while you're there you might as well hit subscribe to watch all the latest shows). As a bonus, you'll get to see Towers' cat(s) running across the background room he's drafting from and it never phases Chris.

What often happens in H2H Points leagues is that it's a rush to get starting pitchers. This draft was no different as it started off with two starting pitchers. Our resident SP-or-die believer Scott White leaned into the early run and selected Trevor Bauer and Yu Darvish with his first two picks. This sparked an early debate between Chris and Scott. According to Chris, the belief that it's a race to draft SP in this format vs. how many SP actually return high-end value and therefore prove worthy of investing major draft capital in has created a market inefficiency.

Chris: "I think the rush for SP in H2H points league is a little bit irrational. We're drafting SPs as if they are such an advantage, when in reality, the very best pitchers are so much more valuable that it inflates the cost of everything else to the point where it's an inefficient market."

Chris thinks there are only three SPs every year who are that much more valuable. Scott takes a completely different approach and believes that because there's such a crazy scarcity at the SP position, you can't afford to wait.

Scott: "Our lineups are so scant -- it's just nine hitter spots to fill period, and there are way more quality hitters available who can fill those spots. Meanwhile, the SPs who are worth using are going to run out sooner than later. I'm trying to depend less on getting lucky at SP and trust that there's going to be so much excess at hitting that I'll still be happy with my starting lineup and I'll have gotten the asset that's only available in the draft at the top."

It's a really interesting strategy rooted in the value of scarcity. As Scott says, it's not about comparing total points of hitters vs. pitchers. While I understand Towers' argument, if you don't get the pitchers early, you're going to be left out and scrambling for them later. 

Chris started the draft without taking a single SP in the first three rounds. He went Juan Soto, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. He finally drafted Hyun-jin Ryu as his SP1 in Round 4.

One way you could tell it was a H2H points league rather than a Roto league was by the fact that Trevor Story fell all the way into Round 3.

Scott: "Obviously the steals aren't a necessity like they are in Roto, but they're worth two points and Story was a legitimate stud in this format last season. I'm surprised he wasn't a clear-cut second-round pick in this format." 

Just to circle back with a call back to the scarcity vs. value debate from earlier, 25 SPs came off the board vs. 26 hitters through the first 51 selections overall. 

• Josh Hader came off the board at No. 70 overall despite this being the format where RPs are least valuable. Most reliever points come from saves with strikeout only a half-point, and relievers never really reaching the innings you need them to. So it's just about getting saves, and those don't directly correlate to drafting a relief pitcher high.
• We've preached all draft season about the value you can get in the middle of your drafts by targeting one of the top-tier UTIL-only hitters, and a trend we keep seeing is this group of UTIL value plays going off the board nearly consecutively. J.D. Martinez went off the board at No. 72 overall followed by Nelson Cruz the very next pick and Jordan Alvarez at No. 76 overall. Those were the big three, and I wanted one of them but there's one more UTIL worth targeting in this range.
• Aaron Civale came off the board at No. 82 overall, further cementing the rush to grab SPs and what it can look like in a H2H points format.
• Eugenio Suarez falls all the way to No. 103 overall. He has the potential to be a top-60 player in this scoring format and that's not even much of a bold prediction.
• Chris felt so good about getting incredible value on one player in this draft that he's now destined to move him up his rankings. That value pick was Rhys Hoskins at No. 116 overall: "He's been a borderline elite hitter in this format. He was No. 5 at 1B in points per game in this format last year. He averaged 3.7 points per game. Even his 2019, which is fairly remembered as a disaster season, he scored 473 points in this format -- 2.95 points per game."
• Scott grabbed a player at No. 131 overall that he refers to and considers the H2H points league secret weapon -- Mike Yastrzemski. "He averaged more points in this format last year than Kyle Tucker, Trent Grisham and he was right there with George Springer at 3.55 points per game. He just has really good plate discipline and enough power for it to play up in this format."

Scott jumped into an interesting idea for a column by polling the masses and taking a survey of how the majority of Fantasy managers are approaching their drafts. The goal was to provide you a pulse on how your competition is thinking. From the one player they have to draft, to the starting pitcher most likely to break out or the early-round player most likely to bust -- this is how your competition is approaching your drafts. Adjust accordingly.

One of my favorite spots to find value in every draft regardless of the year is in targeting post-hype sleepers. One of the most exploitable holes in many Fantasy manager's strategies is their tendency to conform to recency bias. If a player has burned them once, they're less likely to give them another chance. And that works on a scale too -- the larger the draft investment the more likely they are to avoid investing again. This doubles and triples when a player has burned them more than once. On Friday, Scott will be dropping a list of players I'll likely have a share of in every league when he debuts his 2021 Post-hype sleepers.