Effectively Wild will draft anything that can be ranked (and even things that can't).
The "draft" take the form of the participants taking turns picking something. Sometimes the draft is a competition. Sometimes it's just for fun.
All draft episodes can be found in the Draft Episodes category.
The official scorekeeper of Effectively Wild drafts and competitions is John Choiniere, who continues to carry out these duties even after getting a job with the Seattle Mariners. (Ben mentions this in Episode 1637 at time code 01:06:40.)
Annual drafts[]
Minor League Free Agent Draft[]
The Minor League Free Agent Draft selects players who were minor league free agents at the end of the previous season. Points are earned for each MLB plate appearance (for batters) or batter faced (for pitchers) in the following season.
| Year | Winner | Other Participants |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Sam | Ben |
| 2015 | Ben | Sam |
| 2016 | Ben | Sam |
| 2017 | Sam | Ben |
| 2018 | Sam | Jeff, Ben |
| 2019 | Jeff | Sam, Ben |
| 2020 | Sam | Ben, Meg |
| 2021 | Ben | Meg |
| 2022 | TBD | Ben Clemens, Meg, Ben |
Contract Over/Under Draft[]
The Contract Over/Under Draft selects major league free agents and guesses whether the actual contract will be over or under the amount predicted by either ESPN Insider or MLB Trade Rumors. A correct guess earns the amount by which the actual contract differed from the prediction; an incorrect guess is penalized by the difference. The raw contract amount is used, not divided by the length of the contract. (2019 added an additional $10M bonus for getting the direction correct.)
(The draft was not held in 2016 for mysterious reasons that remain classified.)
| Year | Winner | Other Participants |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Ben | Sam |
| 2015 | Ben | Sam |
| 2016 | Not Held | |
| 2017 | Jeff | Ben |
| 2018 | Jeff | Ben |
| 2019 | Sam | Ben |
| 2020 | Ben | Sam |
| 2021 | ??? | Meg, Ben Lindbergh, Ben Clemens |
The Odds Movers Draft[]
The odds movers draft was a competition where participants chose MLB teams and guessed whether the team's odds of winning the World Series would improve or worsen between the date of the draft (near the start of the off-season) and opening day, according to the Las Vegas oddsmakers. A point is earned for each correctly-predicted direction. It has not been held since the 2019 season.
- In 2018, Ben and Jeff drafted teams, but the agreed upon odds source (Bovada) never updated their odds before opening day, and so official EW scorekeeper John Choiniere declared the competition a push.
| Season | Sam | Ben | Jeff | Meg |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 4 | 2 | ||
| 2016 | Not Held | |||
| 2017 | 2 | 2 | ||
| 2018 | ? | ? | ||
| 2019 | 4 | 3 | ||
| 2020 | Not Held | |||
| 2021 | Not Held | |||
Other notable drafts[]
The first draft takes place in Episode 201, when Ben and Sam draft starting pitchers age 25 and under.
Non-Competitive Drafts[]
In Episode 500, Ben, Sam, Grant Brisbee, and Jeff Sullivan draft things they love about baseball. They do it again in Episode 996, and Meg joins them in Episode 1500, establishing the topic as a 500-episode(ish) tradition.
In Episode 744, Ben and Sam draft their favorite moments of the infamous seventh inning of Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS between the Blue Jays and Rangers.
