Do You Reach Deep?

When you are in a shallow league, you can skim the cream of the crop for minor leaguers.  Nothing but A-rated players for you, thank you very much.  But what about those of us in deeper leagues?  What do you do when you reach the end of the Top 100 lists, and there's nothing but low-rated players remaining from C to sagging C.  (OK, that was a terrible pun)  What you do is learn to dig deep.

In one league, we have 16 teams and a 15-man minor league roster.  When you are rostering 240 minor leaguers, believe me the talent starts to get thin.  There are only so many Japanese players you can speculate on in the end game.  So what some of us have started doing is speculating on the deep play, and we've started taking college players of note.

It began with me, I think, and mabye one other owner.  I drafted Rickie Weeks once I heard he was going to be the #1 pick in the draft later that year.  That got people's attention, and soon other owners began to dig deeper.  Last year we drafted Weaver, Verlander, Humber, and Niemann all in early rounds.  Before any of them were drafted.  We saw what they did in college, knew they would be fast-tracked in the bigs, and took a chance.  

Heck, I grabbe Jeff Clement when he was a freshman at USC.  Hit that many home runs and I don't care you did it in high school.  I'm interested.  As luck would have it, there is an Iowa owner in my league who actually knew the kid and was chagrined that I took him.  So I traded Clement for a major leaguer!  

Those of you in deeper leagues, now's the time to speculate on guys who will be drafted later this year.  Your late round picks are ideal for that.  Whatever it takes to get an edge, right?