Earlier this week, I promised I'd conclude my series on FAAB with a look at what my A.L. spent in 2006 after the trade deadline, with a comparison of players bought and impact of those players. For those of you who have anxiously been awaiting this post, I apologize.
Because this is getting rather tedious even for me, I think I'll just throw up the winning and losing bids on players who garnered some competition instead of running through every week and every player.
August 14:
Matt Garza $15. Other bids: $13, $12, $2
Edinson Volquez $13. Other bids: $3
Greg Norton $9. Other bids: $1
August 21:
Joe Nelson $18. Other bids $11, $7, $7, $6
Omar Infante $7
Tom Mastny $6
August 28:
Cha Seung Baek $8
September 4:
Ryan Braun $10
Andrew Miller $10
Adam Lind $7
Phil Nevin $7
Darrell Rasner $5
September 25:
Bobby Kielty $10
Garza and Nelson are the only bidding wars of interest. Amazingly, there were no competitive bidding situations on "significant" players after August 21 and short-lived Royals closer Joe Nelson.
So what happened?
First, teams simply ran out of money. The winners of Carlos Lee ($98) and Bobby Abreu ($81) were nearly broke at this point. The guy who went nuts and bought Cory Lidle ($32), Shane Komine ($11), Nelson Cruz ($13) and Ben Zobrist ($16) was all but tapped out as well. That left four contenders bidding against each other.
Second, in carryover leagues, teams often wind up with a complete line-up. One of the goals if you're going for it is to attempt to field a 14-man offense. Bidding $10 on Greg Nelson or even $8 on Phil Nevin doesn't make a lot of sense if your worst corner infielder was Mike Lowell.
A number of these bids actually aren't from contenders, but from teams playing for 2007. Nelson, Infante, Baek, Braun, Miller, Lind and Rasner all went to non-contending teams hoping to catch lightning in a bottle in 2007. In my league, a FAABed player's salary jumps to $10 if he's FAABed below $10.
Not one of these players was kept.
In fact, this is a very failure-oriented grouping. Looking at the players that did go to contenders (stats are what was compiled for the winning bidder, not overall):
Matt Garza 3 W, 47 1/3 IP, 4.75 ERA, 1.585 WHIP. Patton earnings: ($1)
Edinson Volquez 7 2/3 IP, 7.04 ERA, 2.739 WHIP. Patton earnings: ($3)
Greg Norton 127 AB, 8 HR, 25 RBI, .315 BA, Patton earnings: $7
Tom Mastny 10 IP, 4 SV, 8.10 ERA, 2.000 WHIP. Patton earnings: ($2)
Phil Nevin 36 AB, 1 HR, 4 RBI, .194 BA. Patton earnings: $0
In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that all of these players were bought by me.
One of the most difficult aspects of evaluating FAAB is that you cannot make an apples-to-apples comparison, either in one year across many leagues or in multiple years in one league. I look like a schmuck buying all of these lousy players and not spending my FAAB until later. However, I rolled the dice on Boof Bonser at $17 in May because Bartolo Colon went down very early and I had a anorexically thin pitching staff of Johan Santana, Mike Mussina and Gil Meche. I needed innings badly, and knew that predicting when the next great thing would come up from the minors would be impossible. Of course I could have used those $17 later to outbid the $81 winner of Abreu. But getting Abreu wouldn't have gained me enough to finish better than 5th, which is where I wound up.
In carryover leagues, FAAB often takes a back seat to this year for next year trades. After competing and failing in 2005 because of Roy Halladay's early exit, I was close enough to contend in 2006 but without the cheap Huston Street or Grady Sizemore to move in a dump deal. For some reason, my $12 Todd Jones and my $8 Juan Uribe just weren't putting the asses in the seats.
I realize I'm babbling, and I don't want this post to turn into a diatribe on my league and my team. But this might be a good segue into the culture of carryover leagues. Particularly, when should dumping season begin? How much of an impact to dump trades have on leagues? Can dump trades save a bad auction, or is the auction still the most important aspect of a winning Roto squad?
Food for thought.
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