A Review of How I Skewed

While the title of this post might accidentally lead to some hits by parents looking for some good old fashioned Dr. Seuss, I thought I'd take another look today at Eugene Freedman's concept of skew.

As I typically do, I went into my auction with a limited amount of freezes and not a ton of value on my A.L.-only 4x4 team. I knew that I needed:

• A lot of pitching in a pitching-thin auction.
• Three middle infielders with a lot of middle of the road or bottom of the barrel starting options, but not many top shelf options.

I felt that my strengths were

• Two solid corner infielders (ha ha, Wilson Betemit was as solid as quicksand).
• Two catching freezes

In my case, I made two separate skews (apart from the individual pricing adjustments up or down on players I liked or disliked):

1. I redistributed some of my money toward middle infielders, so that I wouldn't wind up chasing Nick Punto for $12 at the end.
2. I separated hitting and pitching inflation so that I'd come close to buying a $175/$85 team.

So how did I wind up doing on these two fronts?

I did OK with my middle infielders. I bought Derek Jeter ($28), Akinori Iwamura ($13), and Cesar Izturis ($7). Jeter would have been an overpay without my bid adjustment, but given what I've seen middle infielders go for in previous years, I didn't mind the price tag.

I could have done better with my starting pitching. I bought CC Sabathia for $42. I actually didn't mind that buy, but following it up with Felix Hernandez at $28 was probably overkill. I would have been better off waiting for Jered Weaver ($21) or Erik Bedard ($19) and focusing some of that extra $7-9 toward a top-shelf outfielder.

I prefer skewing my money based on my own roster composition and category needs before I go into my auction. While it is impossible to predict what every player is going to go for - and why "mistakes" like Weaver or Bedard can occur - I also recommend making your own price adjustments before you go into battle on Auction Day.