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Jan 13, 2009 
Hanley Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Jose Reyes, David Wright, Miguel Cabrera, Ryan Braun, and Grady Sizemore are eight guys that seem to be stone-cold locks to be selected in the first round of drafts, judging by mocks and rankings I’ve been perusing.
Is there one guy on this list who I believe is a big mistake to take in the first round? Yes. Click to see the answer…
Ryan Braun
Fantasy owners love Ryan Braun’s youth and become duck soup for his flirtation with 40 HR whilst swiping more than a baker’s dozen worth of bags. However, last season, Braun produced a 37 HR-14 steals combo and still barely produced as a Top 20 batter. The cause? A middling batting average of .285, certainly above the league average but not at an elite level.
Fantasy owners tend to shrug off average as a volatile category, but it tends to be the modus operandi of a hitter and sets the agenda for all-around value. Braun’s .285 AVG came with 129 strikeouts, a 79% contact rate that portends a slight but not huge improvement in the average category. Braun also walks 6% of the time, slightly below average. Last year, he posted a pitiful OBP of .335, which may explain why a guy who hit 37 HR only managed to score 92 times.
Perhaps Braun improves a bit at the plate, but he’ll also need to flirt with 40 HR again, and in this post-steroids era, I’m afraid that is a feat that is dependent on a good deal of luck, even for baseball’s elite. Even two of this generation’s best players, Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols, failed to crack 40 last year.
Besides, is there really that much different between Braun and Alfonso Soriano? The latter is going nearly 20 picks after Braun in drafts and yet is projected to tease a 35-20 season. I’ve never loved Soriano either, thanks to his cavalier approach to strikeouts and walks and streakiness. But then again, anybody thinking about Braun in the first round might as well reserve themselves and take Soriano later.
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