Looking Back at April

As I've mentioned before in this space, Auction Day is the most important day of your season. A great trade can put you over the top, a severe injury can ruin your season, and a skilled (or lucky) free agent pick-up can save you. However, without a good auction, you're probably not going to win.

I've been fortunate enough to be in contention in my A.L.-only Rotisserie League after two above average but dissatisfying years where I finished 4th (in 2005) and 5th (in 2006). This year was supposed to be a rebuilding year, but thanks to some strong trades both before and after the auction, as well as a solid auction itself, I've been able to fight for first place all year.

The year isn't over - and I could regret writing this post in August - but I thought I'd take a look back at some of the strategies I employed that worked for me and others that didn't.

1) Buy a balanced offense
I started out with Carlos Guillen ($19), Mark Teahen ($12), and Gary Matthews ($4) as my freezes on offense. They were all undervalued freezes, but I didn't feel I had a lot of value compared to some of the stronger contenders out there. Instead of going with a Stars and Scrubs approach, I wanted to get as many starters as possible.

For the most part, I was able to do this. Only Chris Heintz ($1) at catcher and Todd Walker ($3) were back-ups, and Doug Mientkiewicz ($3) was the only everyday scrub I bought. Otherwise, I was able to put together a team with a pretty balanced offense. Brian Roberts ($29) and Jermaine Dye ($29) were my most expensive buys, which kept me from spending a ton on one player and going with a thinner team. Something that was tied to this was:

2) Don't blow off catchers or middle infielders
In past years, my teams have suffered because I've skimped somewhat on my middle infielders. I've also had some success buying one market value catcher and one cheap catcher. So I tried to make sure I bought some productive middle infielders (for a change) and still grabbed one at value catcher.

I was surprised that I was able to get Roberts at $29. Along with Guillen at $19, I felt this gave me a pretty solid middle infield combo, and I figured that Todd Walker at $3 would contribute $8-10 worth of stats. Although I turned out to be wrong about that, having two MI as strong as Roberts/Guillen more than offset Walker's nothing.

At catcher, Jason Varitek at $14 provided par stats at a position where people often overpay for stats.

3) Don't dump any offensive categories
Once again, getting Roberts helped here. I didn't get any other burners, but Matthews, Alexis Rios ($27), Milton Bradley ($15), Teahen, and Guillen all figured to run enough to get 10-15 SB and keep me in contention for the category.

4) Build my rotation around one strong starter.
This one simply didn't work. Since I had a weak freeze list coming in, I decided to trade Johan Santana at $47 before the season started. There were only two starting pitchers in the auction worth having in my opinion: D-Mat and Rich Harden. D-Mat was the safer bet, but I knew he'd go for $35-40, and the whole point was to get a cheaper "ace" so I could build an offense.

Unfortunately, Harden went all the way to $25. The thinking here was that, even if Harden got hurt like he always does, he wouldn't hurt my staff the way at $15-20 pitcher who puts up a 5+ ERA and a 1.5+ WHIP does. Still, this was a wasted opportunity. I would have been better off spending $1 on a middle reliever and putting the $24 elsewhere.

5) Don't chase closers
I had Todd Jones at $12. I wanted a second closer, but the market had no middle ground. There were three aces: Mariano Rivera, Joe Nathan and Francisco Rodriguez and three shaky bets: Al Reyes, Joe Borowski and Eric Gagne. I didn't want to spend $35+ on a top flight closer and I didn't want to blow $15 plus on a risky guy. So I wound up passing. Once again, this worked out. I flipped Todd Jones for Gary Sheffield, but then flipped for Mariano Rivera and Chris Ray later when the opportunity arose to compete in saves. Alan Embree as a cheap FAAB pick-up paid off. If I had done nothing, Jones still would have put me in the middle of the pack in saves.

6) Roll the dice on cheap starters
This is something I didn't mean to do. I was going to buy a bunch of $1 middle relievers to go with Harden, Mike Mussina ($14) and Jon Garland ($2) and FAAB or trade for the starting pitching I needed later. Then I wound up stuck with Paul Byrd at $4 and I made a course correction. The pitching market at the bottom was much softer than I anticipated, so I decided to keep buying $3-5 starters, with the idea that I'd quickly nuke the guys who didn't work out.

In the end, I also bought Tomo Ohka ($3), James Shields ($3) and Bartolo Colon ($6). Ohka was the guy I quickly dumped after two bad weeks. Byrd I kept through his rough patch, and he's turned a profit with his wins alone. Colon's the guy I'll pay for if I don't win. I should have waived him at the first sign of trouble, but held on to him through most of his terrible starts until he hit the DL.

But Shields is where I hit the jackpot. His fast start made me a player in the dump game, and I was able to parlay Shields and Teahen into a megadump trade early. This put me in the position I'm in today: tied for 1st place and fighting tooth and nail for a title.