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Thursday, March 28, 2024

On Saturday night, after scoring the Mariners 11-7 win over the White Sox, I drove downtown to participate in the LABR AL auction against 11 other stalwart writers. The full results are not publishable until USA Today’s Leviathan issue hits the newsstands in two weeks, but I can share my team and observations for those of you getting ready for AL redraft leagues.

As I put together my draft plan on Friday, I wanted to take advantage of two known elements of this industry auction league – early overspending and late bargains in the end game. One way to do that would be to stay out of the early battles, saving enough auction dollars to win the midgame battles. BUT there is one pitfall to that strategy that you should watch for very early – someone else, or even worse, two other competitors trying the same approach. That will lead to some very tough bidding wars over players who don’t deserve them.

So as the bidding started, I watched it go to 60 dollars overbid before it stalled and then went back up to over 90 dollars above projected values. And that is not just my opinion. Lenny Melnick of RotoExperts.com, who was one of the commentators on the Sirius/XM broadcast of the auction, pointed out the same thing. But while most of the early nominations were drawing those high bids, I noted with curiosity that Rotowire’s Chris Liss was not winning any battles, strange since he is usually a Stars and Scrubs bidder. In the early going, I wanted to get players at or slightly below their projected value only if I though they have a good shot to earn more.

Always on the lookout for a bargain, I still wanted a solid core of hitters, so early on I rostered Hanley Ramirez at $30 because shortstop is thin and if you pass on a chance in an AL league to get Ramirez or Jose Reyes, then you may have to fight for one you want or settle for a lot less production late in the auction. Then I got Houston catcher Evan Gattis for $24 – again willing to go a little higher for the home runs at that position. In my opinion, there are just three top hitting AL catchers and Gattis came up before Salvador Perez or Yan Gomes.

We had a couple of rounds in now and the only player Chris Liss had rostered was David Ortiz. There were others with money but they were actively bidding. Ominous sign (well maybe he had heard my Saturday morning interview with Fantistics on Sirius/XM where I had said he was a hot bidder).

So I got back in before the two teams with more money got active and bought Tigers’ second baseman Ian Kinsler for $21. That turned out to be a magic number for me as I added new Seattle fly chaser and power hitter Nelson Cruz for that price (a little under where I thought he should go) and then Yan Gomes for the same price (a dollar or two high but it gave me two outstanding backstops for a two-catcher AL-only league). I pulled back at that point, waiting for prices to go down a little, hoping for bargains but trying to get a few more players before I waited for the end game. At the pizza break, Liss had only two players and $216 left to spend and I doubted he would find enough to overpay on but he would have the hammer until the end game.

So here is my roster, with prices:

C – Gattis (24) and Gomes (21)

CI – James Loney (8), David Freese (6) and Luis Valbuena (4)

MI – Kinsler (21), H. Ramirez (30) and Josh Rutledge (4)

OF – Cruz (21), Danny Santana (16), Dalton Pompey (11), Kevin Kiermaier (7) and Jake Marisnick (2)

UT – Justin Smoak (2)

Reserve Draft – Mark Canha, Ryan Ludwick and Billy Burns

SP – Masahiro Tanaka (15), Anibal Sanchez (14), Danny Duffy (7), Joe Kelly (3), Alex Colome (2), 

       Jarrod Parker (1)

P – Aaron Sanchez (8) Will he be SP or RP? Either way, he will be worth more.

RP – Dellin Betances (19) and Zach Britton (14)

Reserve Draft – Nathan Karns, Luis Severino and Martin Perez (DL)

An important note about reserves in LABR – they can be activated and reserved during each lineup period whereas players bought in the auction can NOT be reserved – they can be put on the DL but otherwise must be dropped if you can’t stand them active any longer. Also, LABR like TOUT has unlimited DL slots, so in Week 1, I can DL Parker and replace him and then if Colome loses the last spot in the Tampa rotation, I can reserve him and either get a new pitcher via FAAB or if Karns wins the spot, activate him. The same is true should Josh Rutledge not win the second base job in Anaheim – I could either reserve him if sent to the Minors or waive him and move Santana to MI and activate Canha.

Always glad to answer questions here or on in the MB Forums but I can’t reveal other prices until they are published in USA Today. {jcomments on}