My first ever roto draft and Joe Mauer

Thanks to my colleagues over at MLB Dirt, I participated last night in my first ever mock draft. I had no strategy since I had no clue what I was doing and I never anticipated it would last three hours. But it was fun and it was a good exercise for a baseball writer because it forces you to think about players at different positions and make value judgements as to their relative worth. I picked Verlander first and Sabathia second. That meant that most of the great hitters were unavailable. So I picked the best of what was left in each of the next ten rounds or so. By the end, I was pretty happy with my team. The bonus of the whole thing is that I now have twenty-four stories I can write, one for each of my players. Today's inaugural entry is on Joe Mauer. I was able to pick Mauer very late in the draft. I think I got him in the sixth round or thereabouts. This just goes to show how far his stock with people has fallen since his MVP season in 2009. It is perhaps also a verdic...