2012 Mock Draft, Rounds 13-16

As I stated previously, I am participating in a fantasy baseball slow mock draft being coordinated by Jeffrey from BleacherGM, which can be followed on Couch Managers. There are 14 teams and there will be a total of 16 rounds. The draft began on Tuesday, December 13th and was originally anticipated to last until sometime in February.

I took a short trip with my girlfriend, so I was out of town for about two days and had to rely on my queue a little bit. We returned Wednesday night where I saw there were only two picks remaining in the draft. It is now Thursday morning and there is no solid indicator, but it looks like the draft ended around 7:00am CST. We had the potential to finish last night, but I accept this ending as it means four of my five projections were accurate and it was still over a month quicker than expected.

224 picks / 213 hours = 0.95 hours per pick or 25.24 picks per day.

Round #13, Pick #178 - Clay Buchholz
I should have guessed the rest of the guys would begin scrambling for closers. I had quite a few starters ranked on top of my queue and Buchholz was drafted as a result of my being auto queued. If I had the opportunity to make a human intervention, then I would have selected one of the three closers drafted after me (Jordan Walden, Sergio Santos, Andrew Bailey). Buchholz missed a lot of 2011, but I still like him in my rotation even though he was a mistake.

Round #14, Pick #187 - Jaime Garcia
Garcia was a human decision, though fan-weighted. I preferred taking the young lefty from the defending world champions and attempt to scrape the bottom of the barrel for my last two picks.

Round #15, Pick #206 - Torii Hunter
You can criticize Hunter all you want. It's probably justified, especially considering the Angels' lineup is still up in the air. There are only two slots I consider set in stone: Albert Pujols at first base, batting third and Hunter in right field batting behind him. He should collect at least 20 homers, but perhaps his batting average will be rejuvenated due to Pujols' presence. Wishful thinking.

Round #16, Pick #215 - Frank Francisco
I had several bottom dweller closer options in my final round including Matt Capps, Jonathan Broxton, Francisco Rodriguez, Daniel Bard, and "Leo Nunez." I decided upon Francisco who was recently traded from the Blue Jays to the Mets. Earlier reports from New York show he is the most likely candidate to receive the team closer role, which makes sense given his great career strikeout rates (9.9 K/9, 2.5 K/BB).

*FanGraphs fans projection

Rounds 1 & 2
Rounds 3 & 4
Rounds 5 & 6
Rounds 7 & 8
Rounds 9 & 10
Rounds 11 & 12
Rounds 13 - 16

Critiques are welcomed!