Dump Chips Via FAAB

Rodger jumped on a term I used in one of my earlier posts:

Each year, it gets harder to play the angles in this league.

I'd say that's true in just about any league, particularly one with little or no turnover.

Smaller sums of FAAB cash are bid on players who are clearly up for only a week or so to fill in for an injured player. Those guys are often purchased relatively cheaply and stashed away for dump deals or for the owner to retain cheaply. Last month, I bought Jed Lowrie for $8 and German Duran for $1.

One thing about Rodger's league is that there are no farm systems, so guys like Lowrie and Duran are available via FAAB. This angle plays out differently in leagues with farm systems. All farm players in my A.L. become $10 players. Duran at $1 is obviously intriguing. Duran at $10 is most likely not going to work out, unless the Rangers significantly shuffle the deck in 2009.

FAAB players work the same way as farm players in my A.L. You can bid $1 on futures to your heart's content, but if you want to keep them next year, they are $10 S1s (short term contract, one year remaining). Rajai Davis at $4 might be intriguing to a non-contender because of his speed. At $10, it's unlikely.

And this is even true for many players who do work out. Jerry Owens and Reggie Willits are examples of players who were FAABed cheaply in my A.L. last year and who worked out very well for their owners. Yet their owners couldn't move them in a dump deal. Whether it was cynicism due to how these players were acquired or the poor history of FAAB players working out as freezes, it's hard to trade players like this in a dump deal.

In the list I posted, Marlon Byrd was the only FAABed player who was a significant part of a dump deal. And he wasn't kept at $10 this year. Willits, it turns out, was thrown back as well.

Of the FAABed players in my A.L. in 2007, 10 were kept: Brendan Harris, Jack Cust, Dustin McGowan, Carlos Pena, George Sherrill, Joakim Soria, Franklin Gutierrez, Joba Chamberlain, C.J. Wilson and Shawn Marcum. Intriguingly, not a single one of these players was sent to a non-contender in a dump deal during the season. Only McGowan was traded, and he was moved to a contender from a non-contender, amazingly enough.

One aspect about playing this angle is that it's about as easy as panning for gold with feathers. For these 10 players that made it, there were at least 100 that didn't. Granted, FAAB isn't simply a vehicle for rebuilding or acquiring dumping chips. But that might be why these players weren't moved in season.

The teams playing for this year wanted little or no part of the FAAB derby. Given the erratic nature of FAAB, teams in contention would rather acquire players via a more traditional dump trade. However, teams out of the money have nothing to lose (expect more FAAB) by bidding aggressively for freezes. In practice, teams often bid beyond what they think a player is worth so they can lock another owner out of a good freeze next year.

So if you're playing for this year, and you have to add this year's equivalents of Cust, Sherrill and Marcum, chances are all three aren't going to be productive players, and chances are even better that you're dipping repeatedly into the free agent pool because you dug yourself a big hole at your auction. If this is correct, you'll need to get lucky at least twice and probably three times to climb out of that hole and back into contention.