Drafting For 2018 at the AFL |

The 2018 draft season is officially on.

That is because as part of the BBHQ First Pitch Arizona (FPAZ), the Xperts Fantasy League holds their annual auction.

The XFL is an Industry League, which requires 15 years within the industry in some fashion as well as an age requirement of 40 years of age.

For the league, we are part of a standard auction as a feature of FPAZ. Each owner can freeze up to 15 players, declaring the keepers a week before the action begins. We are allowed to keep any combination of prospects, with pitchers with less than 20 innings or hitters which fewer than 50 at-bats can be kept in the minors providing they have never been activated.

Those prospects are activated at a value of $1 and increase $3 a season making for some serious bargains. And, it also means some nasty inflation for star players thrown back into the free agent pool. Free agents selected before the All Star Break are $5, and after the break $10, and all such players and auction acquisitions increase $5 a season.

Then, near the beginning of the season, we hold a 17-man expansion draft that allows for a bench and a chance to offset any errors made in the November auction.

To tell the truth, I have struggled mightily just about every year of the league’s existence, trying any number of tacks to get to the top of the heap, all unsuccessfully, but that does not stop me from trying to figure out the key to a title.

I decided that power was the way to go, and I meant serious power, so I swapped for Khris Davis prior to the draft and targeted either J.D. Martinez or Paul Goldschmidt–the two most dependable and prolific hitters in the pool–was a must grab.

However, I only had $99 to spend and was sure these players would each exceed $50 in salary, so I planned accordingly.

When Goldy went for $64 that was clearly too much, but i hung in with Martinez, bagging him for an unseemly $55.

That meant a good hour of sitting there while I waited to have a competitive amount of dollars with the player pool shrinking with each round.

So, here are my results. I tried to stock as much pop as I could and gamble on some starting pitchers. An asterisk behind the player’s name mean that player was a freeze.