I've been looking back at my regular A.L. auction in my last couple of posts. I won my "expert" league but as always find myself more fascinated with my failures than my successes. When it comes to Roto, the old adage seems true: it's easier to learn from your mistakes.
As I wrote last time, based on Patton dollars I actually purchased a $287 team. In retrospect, this was good for fourth place. The best team had $311 in projected value, while the second best team had $304. This was very close to my two projected best rosters; I had $305 and $301 as the two best projected values. I should note that only one of the two best projected teams finished in the top two in projected value.
The $24 gap means that I should have been a contender, and for the first three months of the season I was. On July 6, I was a mere 3 1/2 points out of 1st place despite ridiculously poor contributions from most of my outfield and the April implosion of Chien-Ming Wang. I had managed to buy a bunch of home runs and wins and - despite Wang - was 2nd in both ERA and WHIP.
Back in April, though, I didn't know that I was dealing from such a position of relative strength. As a result, I kept making decisions that may have helped me in the short term but didn't push me any closer to a pennant.
1) Traded Wilson Betemit and Fernando Rodney for Hank Blalock and Jesse Carlson (May 4).
I started off with Rodney and no other closers. I was hoping that Matt Thornton or Juan Cruz would morph into a second closer, but that didn't seem likely. Rodney gave me enough of a buffer over the three teams behind me that I decided to flip him before he possibly lost the job for Blalock...who would give me certain production as opposed to the disappearing Betemit.
2) Traded Jeff Larish, John Smoltz, and Chien-Ming Wang for Jose Contreras, Eric Patterson, and Vernon Wells (June 8).
Wang was due to be activated off of my reserve list and I probably would have waived him. Larish was about to get sent to the minors. The deal was really Wells for Smoltz. I needed/wanted a hitter and was willing to gamble that Smoltz wasn't going to be league average. Wells had been cold in May but he had to turn it around, right?
3) Traded Franklin Gutierrez and Darren O'Day for Placido Polanco (June 15).
With Pat Burrell coming off the DL, I needed to trade an outfielder, had a hole at 2B thanks to Aki Iwamura's injury, and figured that the slight hit I'd take in stats would be made up for due to position scarcity; it's easier to find a decent free agent OF than MI. This trade looks worse at the end of the season; Gutierrez was at 3/19/3/.251 in 183 AB when I made this deal and even though I thought he'd improve, I had no idea that he would explode in June and July.
4) Traded Jose Contreras, Scott Feldman, and Luis Valbuena for Julio Lugo, Justin Masterson, and George Sherrill.
5) Traded Justin Masterson for Dallas Braden (June 22).
I FAABed Feldman on the cheap and figured that I had been lucky to get three wins, a 4.00 ERA and a 1.22 WHIP over 36 IP. The saves climate had changed for me. I had acquired C.J. Wilson on waivers and figured that if I could add another closer on the cheap later that I could make a run. Braden would replace Feldman, and at $1 would be a better dump chip than Feldman.
6) Traded Jim Johnson, Eric Patterson, and George Sherrill for Matt Guerrier, Ramon Ramirez, and Nick Swisher (July 26).
It turns out that the saves gambit didn't work out, so I decided to add Swisher to replace Jose Guillen, who had just hit the DL. I kept filling in for power, but at the expense of injured players. Worse yet, I hadn't been able to make a move in any of the other categories where I had initially been deficient.
But the final shoe was about to drop...and I'll conclude this painfully long series in my next post.
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