Two years ago, Dalton Del Don and I partnered for the original League of Leagues, a two-year, three-sport, six-season contest with 14 teams. The sports are NBA, NFL and MLB and the goal is both to win the individual seasons in each sport and also to have the highest average finish among all the seasons. For the first go-around, Dalton and I are either going to win the entire contest or finish second. We won last year's NFL and NBA seasons, and we're neck and neck in NBA for the stretch run this year. (If we win NBA, we win it all.)

But as the sixth and final sport from the first edition winds down, DDD flew out to Vegas this past weekend to represent us again for the second one. We drew the 12th pick.

There are some subtle rule changes like switching from a two to one-catcher format in baseball, but the biggest change is the cumulative contest spans only one-year and three seasons rather than two and six. There's a keeper aspect - like any other keeper league you can keep some players from your team going into next year, but the overall title for this edition is decided from 2017 MLB and NFL and 2017-18 NBA.

Because our strategy from two years ago worked so well, we saw no reason not to try it again. The idea is to punt starting pitching completely, drafting only a few closers and elite ratio set-up men. In so doing, we use very little resources on pitching, but finish first in three of five categories and last in two, i.e., we get 60 percent of the pitching points for a fraction of everyone else's pitching expenditures (in picks, not dollars.)

We also punted running back (so injury prone, and new ones emerge all the time, including among the rookie class to be drafted in the supplemental this summer.) Instead we focused on the most reliable and impactful players in the three sports: NBA stars, first and foremost, NFL wide receivers and MLB bats. Accordingly, our first three picks were NBA players: Kawhi Leonard, DeMarcus Cousins and Chris Paul. Then we hit the wide receivers with A.J. Green, Jordy Nelson and T.Y. Hilton before moving on to MLB hitters (which incidentally use OBP, not batting average, as a category.)

Here are the full results: