Happy Thursday, everyone! Baseball is on the way, but in the meantime, we're in that period of the preseason where we tend to overrate what we're seeing in the early days of spring training. That doesn't mean there isn't value in what's happening in preseason, but it's important to understand what you should be looking for and what you shouldn't care as much about. Chris Towers did an excellent job breaking this down last year around this time and you can find his complete breakdown of what matters for Fantasy Baseball in spring training here. 

If you want the TLDR, here you go: Do care about pitcher velocity readings and new pitches added to arsenals, injuries to all players, where hitters are batting in the lineup, positional battles (playing time is everything), swing changes and prospects gaining hype/playing time. Do not care so much (or at all) about players hitting home runs against pitchers who won't be throwing pitches at the major league level once the season rolls through.

The season is nearing and that means we need to continue preparing for our drafts by learning through others -- so today we'll break down some key takeaways from a 12-team salary cap (auction) league that Scott White, Frank Stampfl and Towers took part in earlier this week. We'll also touch on some of Scott's key takeaways from his AL-only salary cap league. Later, we'll dive into some of the players we love drafting at each position -- the best value picks -- handpicked to give you the best bang for your buck. 

And of course, as always, you can follow to make sure you get the latest episodes of Fantasy Baseball Today right when they drop on Apple and Spotify. Catch up now for a more detailed look at ADP risers and fallers you need to know about plus Scott's top-50 keepers heading into the 2022 season -- for everyone in keeper leagues.

Salary cap drafts (or as they're more commonly known -- auction drafts) are my favorite format in all Fantasy sports. The beauty of it being that you can construct your roster with full freedom and without the constraints of the random order you were assigned in a snake draft. How many times have you been in a snake draft where you wanted to take a player but didn't want to reach? That feeling is eliminated in auctions and I love it! I also love that you can build a roster with two first-round picks if you so please.

I didn't get a chance to participate in this auction, but I followed along closely as the rest of the Fantasy Baseball Today crew live streamed the draft on our Youtube page. And remember -- this is a real draft and a real league that will be played out. So before we dive into Scott's strategy going into the draft and how it actually played out for him, I wanted to touch on a few things I picked up on while observing the draft.

• Scott's strategy this season has been to snap draft Salvador Perez any time he lasts into Round 4 and sometimes even in Round 3, but in this draft, there wasn't the same kind of drop off from Perez to J.T. Realmuto and Will Smith as we're used to seeing. Perez went off the board for $32 while Realmuto ($25) and Smith ($21) weren't too far behind him.
• There is a slew of value that seems to present itself in every draft at the first base position, and on FBT we've coined this group the "profit pocket" of the draft. That pocket previously included Joey Votto, Josh Bell, Rhys Hoskins and C.J. Cron. Recently, Luke Voit was added to the profit pocket after being traded from the Yankees to a Padres team that will provide him with all the at bats he needs. The profit pocket once again proved to include some of the best overall values in the entire draft: Votto ($10), Bell ($10), Cron ($9), Voit ($8), Hoskins ($8). I will be leaving every auction draft with at least one of these players, and I think a strong case can be made for grabbing one for your 1B and another for your CI position and then using your saved salary cap space to upgrade other positions. I like that plan a lot.
• At 2B, two players have stood out to me as the best values this entire draft season -- Ketel Marte and Jose Altuve. I assumed Altuve would be more costly, but they both came off the board at $19. This is a good sign that if you want Marte, you'll have to jump a little ahead of his ADP in snake drafts and pay a little more than expected in salary cap/auction leagues. 
• The talk of the offseason has been just how scarce and barren the 3B position has become with talent. In auction drafts, that will sometimes lead to the top players being pushed up in price (similar to what we saw with Realmuto and Smith at catcher). In this draft, the big three went as follows: Jose Ramirez $46, Rafael Devers $35, Manny Machado $32. More interesting to me were the values of Austin Riley ($23) after a career year and Kris Bryant ($21) following his move to Coors Field. Bryant makes for a very fun auction nominee.
• Bobby Witt is one of the most hyped prospects we've seen in a while, and he absolutely crushed a home run two days ago in spring training. So it wasn't surprising for me to see a hype prospect finalize at $17 in the bidding. But when Oneil Cruz went off the board and was bid all the way up to $7, I had to do a double take. Cruz is a favorite sleeper of mine -- and both Chris and Frank share that enthusiasm -- the power/speed combination is tantalizing -- but this is a hefty price to pay for the upside and doesn't really bake in his floor. Beat reporters covering the Pirates currently do NOT believe Cruz will make the opening day roster. Cruz has only played six total games at the Triple-A level. Chris won Cruz and loves his upside.
• Outfield is a position that carries some of my favorite values this season, so I try to make it a point to not use too many early-round picks or big chunks of my budget at the top of the position. Some of my favorite OF values in this auction were: Bryan Reynolds ($16), Nick Castellanos ($15), Kyle Schwarber ($15), Giancarlo Stanton ($12), Marcell Ozuna ($9), Lourdes Gurriel ($6), Jo Adell ($4), Robbie Grossman ($4), Alex Kiriloff ($3), Andrew Vaughn ($1)
• Speaking of outfield, it was interesting to see a bidding war ensue for Cubs OF Seiya Suzuki. Anyone who is an avid Fantasy Baseballer knows Tim McLeod, and anyone who knows McLeod knows he loves him some Suzuki. So it's not a surprise to see that he was in on the bidding war and ultimately won the bid. But $22?! I did not see Suzuki going for $22.
• Despite showing great velocity so far in the spring, Justin Verlander saw his bid finalize at $16. He's one of my favorite starting pitcher values on the board.
• With so much uncertainty surrounding his injury situation, it wasn't surprising but still notable to see Jack Flaherty go for just $6. A similar situation developed with Shane Baz ($5) and Chris Sale ($5) -- to more starters who already have injury concerns. 
• One development I continue to see in auction drafts is a smaller price drop off from the two consensus elite closers to the next few tiers. This is interesting because in snake drafts you see a larger round drop off. For example, Josh Hader went for $19 while Taylor Rogers went for $10.  Instead of paying a combined $18 for Rogers and someone like Scott Barlow ($8), I would much prefer to just have Hader.

• Some of my favorite winning bids by people other than myself include Kevin Gausman ($21), Jose Altuve ($19),  Jose Abreu (15),  Dansby Swanson ($5) and Hunter Renfroe ($4).
• Tigers prospects Spencer Torkelson and  Riley Greene, who've been rising the rankings amid hopes of them making the opening day roster, each went for $7, though it's worth pointing out that they were nominated early. The Cubs' Seiya Suzuki, meanwhile, went for the fairly ridiculous sum of $22.

You can find Scott's entire draft recap here.

The AL-only league was even harder for me to find a spot in, but I'm guaranteed in it next year, so I've got that going for me, and that's nice. Scott, of course, organized and drafted in this one. And as is typically the case, when you divide the player pool in half, position scarcity becomes even more important. You can find his entire recap here. 

This is how Scott approached the draft and his key takeaways:

• First base is especially thin, what with Matt Olson and Luke Voit joining  Freddie Freeman,  Pete Alonso, Paul Goldschmidt and all four of what we've deemed the "profit pocket" -- Joey Votto,  Josh Bell,  C.J. Cron and Rhys Hoskins -- in the NL. It makes sense why Vladimir Guerrero would go for $45, then. He,  Jose Ramirez and  Gerrit Cole all did, it turns out, with only one other player (Bo Bichette) going for even $40.
• The gap between Salvador Perez  and every other catcher is stark no matter the format, but especially in AL-only, where  Will Smith, J.T. Realmuto, Daulton Varsho and  Willson Contreras are nowhere to be found. At $36, Perez went for the same amount as  Mike Trout, tied for eighth-highest among all players.
• The AL has never been the league for starting pitchers either, though it may change in future seasons with the DH coming to the NL. No starting pitcher apart from Cole cracked $30, but the 12th-most expensive was Tommy John recoveree Luis Severino  ($17), which tells you just how lacking the AL pool is in high-end arms. I felt fortunate to get both  Kevin Gausman ($25) and Justin Verlander ($23).
• Speaking of the DH coming to the NL, how weird is it not to have Nelson Cruz  in an AL-only draft?
• The AL is deeper than the NL at shortstop, particularly with Trevor Story switching leagues, but you didn't see shortstop values suppressed as a result. Each of Story, Xander Bogaerts,  Corey Seager,  Wander Franco and Carlos Correa went for between $25 and $30, with Tim Anderson going for $32.
• In a strange departure from tradition, it's actually easier to meet the stolen base need in AL-only than in NL-only this year. Of the 19 players who stole 20-plus bases last year, 12 are in the AL. Of the 32 who stole 15-plus, 21 are in the AL. The only desperation play for steals that I can recall from our draft was Adolis Garcia for $23, one more than Mitch Haniger.
• As is typical for me in these deepest of leagues, I preferred to spread my money around, knowing that any holes would be next to impossible to fill off the waiver wire, and wound up with Corey Seager ($28) as my most expensive player. I was open to drafting Guerrero and Perez just because they're such obvious standouts at their positions, but each would have had to go for about $5 cheaper.

Since we're getting closer to the start of the season and I've been racking up a lot of drafts -- both mocks and real leagues -- I decided to tally it all up and figure out which players I've drafted the most of at each position. Here is the player I can't stop drafting at each position:

C: Daulton Varsho: In all Yahoo! leagues I drafted Isiah Kiner-Falefa and threw him in my C spot last season. He tallied up some steals and served as a cheat code for me providing speed at a position where it's impossible to find while qualifying at a position he wasn't even playing. This year, that player is Varsho. The Diamondbacks will be using him in the outfield -- or at least that's the plan right now. I want him in every league.

1B: Josh Bell: While Bell has been the 1B I've landed most, I'm happy with any of the five players from the profit pocket we discussed earlier.

2B: Ketel Marte

3B: Luis Urias: This one could come back to haunt me now that he's on the mend with a quad injury and likely to be out for opening day. The good news is that he's only expected to miss two weeks. We've all heard that one before though...

SS: Corey Seager: The full-season breakout is finally happening.

OF: Nick Castellanos: I love the landing spot in Philadelphia -- a better lineup than the Reds provided should lead to more counting stats.

SP: Justin Verlander: I've seen all that I needed to with Verlander -- his velocity in spring training is where it needed to be for this time of year. More importantly, there's a clause in his contract that kicks in when he reaches a certain number of innings and that tells me he and his agent are confident in him pitching a lot of innings this year. The Astros have no reason to limit him.

RP: Corey Knebel: It's not easy closing games in Philadelphia, but Knebel has legitimate top-12 upside and he doesn't cost anywhere near it.