<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ghoti)</div><div class='quotemain'></p>
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (GMJigga)</div><div class='quotemain'></p>
But I'm getting ancy in my pants (the ones I'm not wearing that is).</p>
</div></p>
You'll feel a lot worse if the guys you draft all get hurt in the preseason.</p>
We should have this draft at the end of October.</p>
</p>
</div></p>
Not at all. real teams have to cope with injuries, also. There's no difference between an injury in training camp and one in the first week of the season. An early draft allows you to take a chance on a guy whose role is undefined. A long time ago, before the internet made compiling stats easy, my baseball league required that a player had to be in the majors, or he had to be cut (which led to players getting cut who were sent down for disciplinary reasons, like Gary Sheffield one year, but I digress). At one draft, one team selected some kid in the last round who was not expected to make the team and would be sent back to the minors. With less than a week to go in spring training, the team changed its mind, made this kid the starting shortstop, and we still call our annual "best late round pick" award the "Nomar Garciaparra Award." Something like that can only happen if you have an early draft. I see that as a positive--if you want certainty, just hold the draft every March and count all stats retroactively.</p>
And yes, I've been burned, too--for instance, there was the year Pasqual Perez entered drug rehab a few days after our draft. I immediately cut him.</p>