This week's Tuesday Mock draft on RotoWire Fantasy Sports today was a 12-team mixed points league, using Yahoo's default standards.
Looking at the roster construction, there's a few important differences from our previous mocks. The big one is that we only need to start one catcher. I can't emphasize enough how big of a change that is. There's still a top tier of eight catchers, but the punishment for missing out on that tier isn't nearly as severe, and if you do miss out, you can almost wait until the last round to grab your catcher. If you want to take two catchers to hedge, you can, but with five bench spots among your 23 overall slots, it's hard to spend one of your bench slots on a catcher. But overall, there's not much difference between the ninth catcher and the 14th catcher.
Another big difference overall is there's more flexibility in building your roster, as we only start three outfielders, with no requirement for an extra MI or CI, while getting UT slots. I think that there's a premium on elite scarce positions, but certainly not on the depth at those positions.
But the biggest change is in the format itself. No longer is it necessary to find a balance of talents. Rather, it's a matter of finding the best players, period. No longer is it necessary to chase saves or stolen bases if you don't want to. In fact, relievers are severely devalued. Even though saves are worth the same as wins, you get a point for every inning, and two points for every strikeout - 40 percent of a win or a save. So if you get a starter that gets you seven innings and six strikeouts, you're much, much better off than using a closer. With a relatively high innings cap (1,400 innings), there's little disincentive to load up on starters and pick your spots judiciously. To that end, grabbing pitchers that qualify at RP yet will be starting this year (Neftali Feliz, Dan Bard, Chris Sale, etc ...) can be a nice strategy wrinkle. I drafted Feliz to that end, and subsequently saw Sale and Bard go before I could get a chance to get the other.
Here are the full results: