2013 Astros Shadow System Update

My real time shadow drafts started with the premise that a team should spend on over slot talent that slid in the 2010 and 2011 drafts to rebuild quickly. I used the Astros as the model after seeing that is the direction they were going and they had extra picks high in the draft. With the Oswalt and Berkman trades freeing up money, I thought it should be reinvested in this window of opportunity.

Prior to that, I didn't do shadow drafts but I did top 100 lists since 2008. I used these to "draft" the highest rated player that was available at the Astros pick. It is revisionist history, but this helps fill in the system a little quicker and it's based on taking the best player available from my older lists. I would have drafted 15 in 2008 and 12 in 2009.

I assumed that all of my top 10 round picks as well as any player that actually signed, would have signed for 2008-2011. In all, I expect it would have cost upwards of $60 million dollars for these signings as well as the international signings. That is a large investment, but I am starting a franchise from the ground up and want impact talent.

In my 2012 shadow draft, I only kept the players that actually signed. I could have paid $908,000 to Hunter Virant to sign as my 10th round pick. I think that would have gotten it done, but that's speculation. If he didn't take that, I would have had $783,000 to spread out over the rest of the picks. Trey Williams, Alex Bregman, Mitchell Traver or several others could have received $883,000. I'm not sure how it would've worked out. It's hard to do this with these rules in this fictional world but since they didn't sign in reality, I would just give that fictional money back to the fictional owner, as I owe him for overspending in the past. Going forward, I will only keep players that actually sign and don't exceed my bonus allotment. Again, this will be tricky but that is part of the strategy.

Here is where it stands going into the 2013 Draft and international signings season. It's nice to go into this draft with Kris Bryant already in my system from 2010, so I will likely add Clint Frazier with the #1 pick this year but I will also consider Jonathan Gray and Colin Moran until draft day.