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DownloadLast Tuesday evening, 15 baseball writers gathered online to draft their teams for the 2015 Mixed League Draft. Since I lost the 2014 title on the last day of the season to Roto Rob’s Tim McLeod (we were tied after Saturday and I lost points while Tim gained some so I lost by 2.5), Tim had the first pick of draft spots and chose 1.01 and thus Mike Trout.
Since this is a 5x5 league with on-base percentage replacing batting average, Todd has Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt and Giancarlo Stanton all ranked the same for projected earning, so I chose 1.03 so I would have a choice of either Goldschmidt and the remaining outfielder or of the two outfielders. If I chose #4, I would still get one of the three but I wouldn’t have a choice.
So after Brent Hershey of Baseball HQ chose McCutchen, I took the top first baseman Goldschmidt. Now the long wait until 2.13. Sadly, all of my primary targets were taken so I jumped on Houston’s second-year outfielder George Springer, who with OBP replacing BA, takes a huge jump in the rankings. That was the easy part. Now I was hoping that one of the remaining top shortstops – Ian Desmond or Jose Reyes, or Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre would make it around the turn. No such luck – all three along with SP David Price were gobbled up by Brent and Tim. Could I have reversed the picks? Who really knows, but Springer is projected to earn ten dollars more than any of those players and I wanted maximum stats from my first three hitters. At 3.03, the best hitter available was Atlanta first baseman Freddie Freeman, and while I might not do it in BA leagues, his projected OBP of .382 with 25 home runs was enough to put him on my team. Yes, with the hopes I would squeeze first basemen for my competitors.
My plan for the 4/5 turn was to take the best starting pitcher available and perhaps one of the best remaining outfielders or Marlins second baseman Dee Gordon. Gordon went earlier in round 4, so I took Jordan Zimmermann at 4.13 and waited to see if Yoenis Cespedes or Kole Calhoun would be there in round 5. Well, along with Cole Hamels and Zack Greinke, they were drafted in front of me so I decided to jump rankings again because Matt Harvey was not making it back to 6.13.
So that was the base of my draft but you don’t want to hear every decision, so here is my team, along with the draft spots.
C – John Jaso (11.03) and Chris Iannetta (15.03) – Perhaps not the power from other backstops but both with very good OBP which would allow me to have enough ballast to draft some riskier picks in later rounds.
CI – Goldschmidt (1.03), Matt Carpenter (9.03) and Freeman (3.03) - Lots more OBP help.
MI – Marcus Semien (8.13), Ben Zobrist (6.13) and Brandon Phillips (23.03)
OF – Springer (2.13), Mookie Betts (7.03), Leonys Martin (13.03), Michael Saunders (17.03) and Anthony Gose (20.13)
UT – Adam Lind (21.03)
Reserves – Luis Valbuena (24.13), Jose Peraza (25.03) and Norichika Aoki (26.13)
SP – Zimmermann (4.13), Harvey (5.03), Tyson Ross (10.13), John Lackey (19.03), Jarred Cosart (22.13)
P – Aaron Sanchez (14.13) - I like him whether he is starting or closing in Toronto.
RP – Fernando Rodney (12.13), Tyler Clippard (16.13) and LaTroy Hawkins (18.13)
Reserves – Luis Severino (27.03), Alex Colome (28.13) and Joe Kelly (29.03)
I like the versatility with Zobrist eligible at 2B/SS/OF, Semien at 2B/3B and will add SS, and Luis Valbuena at 2B/3B. That will allow several different lineups. Peraza, when he arrives in Atlanta, will provide a lot of stolen bases and if I don’t need them, allow me to trade for something I might need.
On the pitching staff, I like the strong NL lean of the starters and perhaps having extra saves to trade at some point.
Yes, as you can tell from my comments above, it is a trading league. It is also a league with unlimited DL slots and the ability to DL an active player and replace with a reserve during the week if necessary.
I will post some updates throughout the season but I'm always glad to answer questions here or in the MB Forums. {jcomments on}
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}
I participated in another NFBC 15-team, mixed, 5x5 auction league last week and while some of my purchases will be of interest, I think after several early auctions we can clearly see certain trends and pitfalls for you to put into your study notes.
As always, there is a lot of overspending in the early rounds of the auction. This was a private NFBC auction with 13 NFBC players competing with head honcho Greg Ambrosius and his first officer Tom Kessenich. A small money league with a lot of bragging rights on the line. (Listed as FEB 26 7:45 PM EST Auction w/FAAB, w/Greg & Tom if you want to read about it on the NFBC message boards.) So let’s take a look at the first two rounds of nominations and some of my brief comments.
Round One
1. |
M. Trout |
$51 |
Great player but a net loss |
2. |
C. Kershaw |
$40 |
Usually goes low 40s |
3. |
B. Hamilton |
$18 |
A few dollars less than projected value |
4. |
A. Jones |
$29 |
Right on the mark |
5. |
M. Fiers |
$9 |
Early attempt to steal failed |
6. |
J. Bautista |
$28 |
Good buy – just a few dollars over |
7. |
H. Bailey |
$5 |
A bet he regains health early |
8. |
J. Altuve |
$31 |
Don’t pay for 2014 stats |
9. |
P. Goldschmidt |
$38 |
Would like to get for a few pennies less |
10. |
J. Reyes |
$20 |
Should be slight profit here |
11. |
S. Strasburg |
$28 |
A tad expensive but could be worth it |
12. |
A. McCutchen |
$43 |
You don’t want to go over $40 |
13. |
F. Hernandez |
$33 |
Reasonable but I don’t spend over $30 for P |
14. |
G. Stanton |
$45 |
Ten dollars over projected value |
15. |
A. Rendon |
$33 |
High 20s at most, 2B pool is deep |
Round Two
1. |
J. Abreu |
$37 |
Highest I have seen on Abreu |
2. |
T. Tulowitzki |
$30 |
Too much for part-time player |
3. |
C. Kluber |
$27 |
We all love Kluber but he can’t earn that much |
4. |
C. Sale |
$31 |
Good price if he is your guy (well before the injury) |
5. |
J. Arrieta |
$15 |
A tad high unless he can take another step |
6. |
Y. Puig |
$26 |
The potential is there but I wouldn’t pay that much |
7. |
M. Cabrera |
$36 |
Only works IF he is healthy on opening day |
8. |
M. Bumgarner |
$28 |
Just a few dollars over |
9. |
A. Beltre |
$27 |
Only two top third basemen but lots below |
10. |
Y. Darvish |
$24 |
This is a silly price for Yu and You |
11. |
T. Frazier |
$27 |
Another over ten dollars over projected |
12. |
C. Gomez |
$38 |
Another magical year? I will take the under |
13. |
A. Rizzo |
$33 |
Price keeps climbing – will his HR? |
14. |
J. Donaldson |
$31 |
Love Donaldson in Rogers Centre but high |
15. |
R. Cano |
$27 |
Finally a decent price for Robbie |
I bid on more than half those players but wouldn’t pay those prices. IF you can conserve your money, you will still have lots of good players to buy AND make a profit on most of them.
That doesn’t mean I won’t spend the extra dollar or two when there is a player I really need, as you will see, but staying at $30 or less is a better way to build a roster – you want all your hitters to have starting jobs so you can have more at-bats thus more counting stats than your competitors.
So here is my team:
C – Jonathan Lucroy (20), Salvador Perez (15)
CI – Adam LaRoche (12), Matt Carpenter (13), Adam Lind (2)
MI – Dee Gordon (26), Ian Desmond (27), Chris Owings (2)
OF – Yoenis Cespedes (23), Kole Calhoun (19), Austin Jackson (3), Dexter Fowler (2), Josh Reddick (4)
UT – Everth Cabrera (2)
SP – Sonny Gray (19), Tyson Ross (17), Doug Fister (9), Chris Archer (8), Jered Weaver (5), John Lackey (3)
RP – Mark Melancon (17), Koji Uehara (11), Tyler Clippard (2)
If you haven’t taken a good look at our position value sheet or the Tiers sheets, I suggest you do to see which positions are really lean and where you have more options. There are plenty of good catchers to roster this year. In my opinion, the problem position is shortstop, where the top end is just four deep with Hanley Ramirez and Ian Desmond at the top closely followed by Troy DL Tulowitzki and Jose Reyes. If you don’t want to bid what it takes to get one of those, you better find a few alternatives that you like and hope you aren’t in a bidding war for them. Almost all middle infielders this year will come from the healthier 2B pool.
Another thing to keep in mind when you make your draft plan is that the real bargains come in the end game when there are plenty of nice players at just TWO positions – outfielders and starting pitchers. (Yes, there are some nice setup relievers but you want to add those in reserve – i.e. free rounds or via FAAB, not in the auction.)
Look at my last two outfielders – Jackson is projected to earn $10 and I got him for $3 while Reddick is projected to earn $9 but only cost $4 (and he was my last player so I went all in to make sure there weren’t other bids). Similarly, Weaver will earn double digits, so a nice profit at $5, and Lackey could get there but certainly a small profit at $3 even if he doesn’t.
Platinum readers will soon be able to see my 2015 auction plan. {jcomments on}
Fantasy baseball auctions are FUN for lots of reasons. First, if there is a player you covet, you know you can have him on your team.
That isn’t great strategy, at least for the top players, BUT you want to have a team YOU want to root for, so especially in leagues where you want to have more fun, it is possible if you have great self-control. I am sure you have read about several different auction strategies, and I am not trying to deflate any of them, but no matter how you construct your roster, you should be looking to build profit into your selections.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have Mike Trout on your team, but if you pay $50 for him and he earns our currently projected $45 (12-team mixed), then you have your first loss. If you can sit on your bidding hand or mouse until later in the auction, you can still add a lot of profit to go with Trout.
Personally, I try and enter every auction not married to any specific player and looking for “value” when I can find it. Normally, I won’t spend more than low thirties for my best hitter or pitcher, trying to spread dollars across most positions in the beginning and middle of the auction, knowing that there will be great bargains, especially on outfielders and pitchers in the end game.
Let’s see how that worked in a mock auction draft that was put together by Rotoworld’s Seth Trachtman a few weeks ago that I participated in along with Lawr and Pasko. As you know, I am not a big fan of mock drafts, but with a very good cast of writers and analysts, I thought this would have some value, especially when I might face some of them in later LABR or NFBC auctions this spring. Because of some problems with the first site where we gathered, there were some minor problems with early prices but nothing that would seriously disrupt the validity of the total pricing.
I bought just a few players in the early stage of this auction – Carlos Gomez for $33, Jonathan Lucroy for $20 (pre hamstring issues), Ian Kinsler $21, Todd Frazier $13, Wilin Rosario $12, Mike Morse $5 and just one pitcher, Masahiro Tanaka for $9. So going into the middle of the auction, I had the most money left to spend with $147 and needed 16 more players. And I waited, looking to find players that would contribute to my team that were undervalued by my competitors or that they no longer had money to buy. That started slowly and then I was on a buying spree until I was back in the middle of the available funds and then I waited for the end game and specific players to fill the positions I had left, making lists for each.
Here is the final roster with prices paid and projected earnings.
Pos Player | Cost | Proj |
C1 - Jonathan Lucroy | 20 | 29 |
C2 - Wilin Rosario | 12 | 21 |
1B - Adam LaRoche | 8 | 16 |
3B - Todd Frazier | 13 | 17 |
CI - Evan Longoria | 13 | 19 |
2B - Ian Kinsler | 21 | 21 |
SS - Jimmy Rollins | 9 | 13 |
MI - Daniel Murphy | 8 | 17 |
OF1 - Carlos Gomez | 33 | 35 |
OF2 - Mike Morse | 5 | 7 |
OF3 - Matt Holliday | 15 | 19 |
OF4 - Danny Santana | 6 | 14 |
OF5 - Steven Souza | 7 | 14 |
UT - Adam Lind | 1 | 11 |
TOTAL | 171 | 253 |
Some nice position flexibility there with Morse also 1B eligible and Santana SS eligible, and Lind 1B eligible.
SP - Masahiro Tanaka | 9 | 11 |
SP - Julio Teheran | 17 | 17 |
SP - Sonny Gray | 13 | 17 |
SP - Tyson Ross | 8 | 14 |
SP - Gio Gonzalez | 9 | 8 |
SP - Jered Weaver | 6 | 11 |
SP - Mike Fiers | 3 | 5 |
CL - Kenley Jansen | 15 | 16 |
CL - Dellin Betances | 9 | 14 |
TOTAL | 89 | 113 |
With two high strikeout closers in Jansen and Betances, it boosts the staff with some starters projected for lower strikeout totals (although none of those are really low).
So how did this do on my flexible 170/90 budget?
Despite moving some funds back and forth in the end game, I finished at 171/89.
The nine pitchers bought for $89 have projected earnings of $113.
The hitters bought for $171 have projected earnings of $253 (although Lucroy may take a small hit depending on how many games he misses and we still don’t know what Colorado is going to do with three catchers, so I expect Rosario to earn less (both if he stays a Rockie or if he is traded).
But as you see, while none of those are ridiculously low buys (Lind is always devalued and if brought up late, LaRoche is underpriced), most every player looks like he will add some profit and paying $260 for $364 of stats will win you a lot of leagues. In case you are wondering about those stats, here are the projected category totals:
HR - 262 |
RBI - 1009 |
Runs - 1089 |
SB - 177 |
BA - 0.272 |
Wins - 94 |
SV - 78 |
ERA - 3.236 |
WHIP - 1.151 |
K - 1386 |
And that is with an early (low) projection on Fiers for innings pitched. But all the categories are in line with the top 20 percent totals from the 2014 NFBC Rotowire Online Championship (12 team).
And auctions always have different ebbs and flows but are still always FUN.{jcomments on}
The National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) has had quite a bit of success in running Draft Champion (DC) leagues in January and February as fantasy baseball players get ready for the high stakes leagues that will draft in March.
In addition to gaining a much better knowledge of the current player pool, one of the main attractions of these leagues has been the low maintenance level as the DC leagues draft 50-man rosters to use the whole season and there are no free agents added during the year, which saves a lot of time for those who are doing that weekly for their main event, online championship, and/or specialty higher stakes league every Sunday.
The DC leagues are also available at a variety of price ranges – starting at $150 and going up to $250, $400, $500, and even some $1,000 leagues. In most of these leagues, there is both a league payout for the top three teams but a very large combined prize pool with some of the entry fee for all DC leagues furnishing the $25,000 prize to the overall champion and paying out the top 22 finishers.
So while these 50-round drafts have been very popular and still growing – there were 164 DC leagues last year and NFBC is ahead of that pace now with 84 full leagues - there are two things creating the demand for the new auction format. First, of course, you actually have more control in your initial 23-man roster – you could pay for both Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw if you were so inclined or any other combination you wanted to have as your team’s cornerstones. The second thing is that many of the NFBC drafters have not done auction drafts, only the serpentine drafts that the NFBC’s main event or online championship use. There were no auction leagues in the DC format last year and there have already been ten full ones with more to be added, so they may finish with 16-20 and should do far more next year when their online auction platform is ready. So this is a great opportunity for many to learn the auction format. For some, it may be ground work for their plans for the NFBC Auction Championship event that will be held in Las Vegas and New York in late March. This separate event with a $1,200 entry will pay $10,500 in league prizes but all teams in the 12-plus leagues will also compete for a $20,000 overall prize.
I participated in one of the $125 auction leagues on January 23 and thought I would share my roster from the $260 auction as well as my reserve selections drafted online later. In trying to keep this description at an easily readable length, I will give my starting 23-man roster with the auction prices (in parenthesis), and then a few notes about my reserves and then the final roster by position.
At the auction, I bought these starters:
C – Evan Gattis (20) and Devin Mesoraco (17)
CI – Eric Hosmer (10), Josh Donaldson (31), and Adrian Beltre (24)
MI – Ian Kinsler (21), Danny Santana (14), and Ben Zobrist (12)
OF – Kole Calhoun (16), Adam Eaton (5), Dalton Pompey (4), Coco Crisp (2), and Rajai Davis (2)
UT – Adam Lind (1)
SP – Max Scherzer (32), Doug Fister (10), Lance Lynn (8), Jose Quintana (5), Henderson Alvarez (2), Taijuan Walker (2), and Jarred Cosart (1)
RP – Mark Melancon (19) and LaTroy Hawkins (2)
This turned out to be a 179/81 hitting vs pitching split. The offense is very strong – numbers that would have been in the top ten of all teams in the 2014 event. The pitching has in my opinion a strong base but the projected numbers for just those nine would have been good enough to win a single league but would need to be very strongly supplemented for the team to have good enough category totals to contend for the overall championship.
Going into the reserve rounds, I wanted to get a third starting catcher and to supplement my pitching with several starters and hopefully another closer and/or some relief pitchers who might accumulate some saves. In the first round, I took Francisco Cervelli (in my opinion, you must have at least a couple extra catchers to survive a long season where backstops get nicked up – I usually prefer four if not five). With the next several picks, I worked on pitching, adding Joe Kelly and Vance Worley followed by Houston’s Chad Qualls, who figures to break camp as the closer (I will worry later about how long he holds the role). My fifth and sixth picks were Alexi Amarista, who not only qualifies at 2B, 3B and SS but also looks to be the Padres starting shortstop, and outfielder Matt Joyce, now of the Angels, who should get a large number of the DH at-bats in Anaheim at least against right-handed pitching.
Okay, here is the full roster by position with players who have multiple eligibility shown at the position they were drafted to play (but also in parenthesis at the other positions where I might deploy them). I thought this would give a better view of the overall depth of the hitters since I drafted more pitchers.
C – Gattis, Mesoraco, Cervelli, and Caleb Joseph
1B – Hosmer, (Lind), A. Rosales, (M. Canha)
3B – Donaldson, Beltre, (Amarista)
2B – Kinsler, Zobrist, (Amarista), Carlos Sanchez
SS – D. Santana, Amarista, (Zobrist)
OF – Calhoun, Eaton, Pompey, Crisp, R. Davis, Joyce, Jake Smolinski, Ryan Rua, Mark Canha, and Andrew Lambo
SP – Scherzer, Fister, Lynn, Quintana, Alvarez, Walker, Cosart, Kelly, Worley, Miguel Gonzalez,
Mike Foltynewicz, Tyler Glasnow, Martin Perez, Eddie Butler, C.J. Edwards, and Robbie Ray
RP – Melancon, Hawkins, Qualls, Tony Watson, Bruce Rondon, Darren O’Day, Dan Otero, Eric O’Flaherty, Shea Simmons, and Dale Thayer
That is probably more relief pitchers than Todd would like, but the number of injuries was devastating last year in MLB and more so in this format. In addition, all have some shot at adding at least a few saves. Simmons is a particularly nice sleeper for this in case the Braves do in fact trade Craig Kimbrel during the year as part of their rebuilding process.
As usual, I'm glad to answer questions here or in the Forums (where several other teams are listed). {jcomments on}