Getting Cheap Freezes on Reserve

Rodger and I have essentially been involved in a one-sided discussion about all of the "angles" you have to play in Stage Three, and how it gets harder and harder to play them. One of the angles Rodger mentions is:

We have a major league reserve draft at the end of our auction. Several 2008 keepers were retained for $5, $4 or $3 after being purchased in the 2007 reserve draft.

I talked this winter about the differences between leagues with farm systems and leagues with reserve drafts. I'd agree that when it comes to reserve lists that there is gold in them thar hills, but panning for that gold is a random act that requires more luck than skill.

In Tout Wars A.L. 2007, 302 players were bought or drafted ahead of Joakim Soria, yet he earned $24 and surely would have been retained in a freeze league the following year, regardless of whether his salary was $3, $4, $5, or $10. But was grabbing Soria skillful or purely luck? I'd argue for luck.

There are certainly some good reserve picks in Tout. I like the Matt Stairs pick. But that doesn't mean that I would have guessed that Stairs would have earned $17 last year.

The problem with picking up players on reserve isn't even so much that they won't be freezes next year. The bigger quandary is trying to convince your fellow owners that these players are worth grabbing in a dump deal. Why should I dump for a guy who no one in the league thought was even worth buying at $1?

Reserve picks that pan out fall into a similar trap that winning FAAB bids do. These players are often great to own but hard to use as chips in that dump deal you know you'll need to push your team over the top. And guys like Stairs and Marlon Byrd are great examples of why this is so.

Both players were successful last year. But how many owners believed that either Stairs or Byrd were going to be centerpieces to their winning strategies this season? It's easy to sit back now and say that both were going to regress, but even if they had simply stayed the course, these aren't the kind of players dumping teams typically target.

These players are often what I call component players. You need them to win, but you'll have hard time shipping them off in a dump trade. And you need those dump trades to win even more than you need these component players.