Regular A.L. Post-Mortem (What Went Wrong)

By some standards, I had a good year. I'm in two leagues. I won one. I finished 4th in the other.

However, as my co-blogger Toz once pointed out, I don't like finishing 2nd. So while finishing in the money for the third year in a row in the ultra-competitive league that I'm in isn't something to sneeze at, I was definitely hoping for more.

So where did I miss the mark? My cost is next to the player, while his Patton earnings are in parenthesis.

Freezes: Brandon Inge $5 ($13), Miguel Olivo $3 ($15), Carlos Pena $15 ($21), Wilson Betemit, $1 (-$1), Jose Guillen $9 ($6), Franklin Gutierrez $10 ($23), Fernando Rodney $1 ($21), Chien-Ming Wang $9 (-$16).

My projected value for this team was $86. The actual value turned out to be $82.

Wang's negative earnings were so dramatic that I thought that my team had been torpedoed. In actuality, I had a better freeze list than I could have imagined. Inge and Olivo both outperformed expectations and gave me nearly $30 worth of production behind the dish, while Gutierrez more than made up for Guillen's disappearing act. Rodney wasn't the best closer in the league, but at $1 was solid.

My strategy going in was going to be to grab two aces at a combined $70 to compliment Wang, go dollar derby on the rest of my staff and go cheap on offense. The goal was to dump batting average (I figured the hitters I had would take care of that for me quite nicely) and do a half category dump of steals/saves, with the hopes of getting lucky in either category.

The most difficult part of this strategy was going to be acquiring the two aces I needed. The pitchers available who I considered top shelf were limited. There were eight pitchers I had projected at $15 or more: CC Sabathia, Josh Beckett, Felix Hernandez, A.J. Burnett, Scott Kazmir, John Lackey, Erik Bedard, and Jered Weaver. Everyone else was frozen, and leading my staff with Burnett and Weaver didn't exactly warm my cockles.

The second portion of my strategy was that I was half-thinking about 2010 before the season even started. I don't like to play for next year before this year has even started, but I looked at my freeze list, looked at the lack of value in it, and thought that thinking of the future wasn't a bad idea. Grabbing the ace starters would give me an opportunity to flip them in dump deals if it came to that.

Here are the players I got (in bold)...and the ones I almost didn't (in italics).

Round 1
1. CC Sabathia $42 ($31)
It wasn't my call, but right off the bat the biggest fish in the pond came up and I got him at what I considered a fairly reasonable price (given the alternatives I listed above). One of my worries coming in was that I had $207 to spend and not enough to spend it on, but this certainly solved my problem.

2. Alex Rodriguez $30 ($30)
I wound up with the first two players in the auction and dropped all the way from $207 to $135 and we were only two players into the auction. I was incredibly pleased with this price, as I had A-Rod at $34 with inflation. I surely thought someone else would have chased him higher. The fact that he earned $30 was quite a surprise.

4. Derek Jeter $28 ($38)
This price only looks great in hindsight. I pushed a lot of my middle infield prices higher because I had three open middle infield slots and didn't want to get stuck with either a lot of money on the table or three versions of Robert Andino up the middle. Mission accomplished. At the age of 35, Jeter had one of his best seasons ever...and gave me more SB to push me toward the middle of the pace than I could have reasonably hoped for.

9. Carl Crawford $43 ($45)
If I had purchased Crawford, I would have been left with $65 for 11 players in the first round of the auction. Given what Crawford earned - and given some of what I bought in the OF later - I might have been better off buying him and going stars and scrubs.

11. Travis Hafner $9 ($11)
Someone called him out early in an effort to be cute and Pronk wound up going $3 below my sheet (inflation) price. A $2 profit is fine, but this clogged up my DH and CO slots early and left me without any flexibility very early on.

Round 2
13. Felix Hernandez $28 ($39)
If I didn't sound more disappointed about Sabathia above, that's because I hit the jackpot with Felix. I watched almost every one of his starts in 2009, and he finally became everything he was advertised to be and then some. If Wang had been even a $5 pitcher, I probably still would have won ERA/WHIP in a walk, finished with another five points, and made more noise than I did.

Round 3
26. Magglio Ordonez $32 ($15)
With a mere $70 left to spend after the Felix buy, I was already at the point where I had to pick my spots. I thought about saying $33 on Ordonez, but not for long. I figured there were plenty of OF left to spend my money on.

35. Robinson Cano $25 ($30)
I thought Cano was going to bounce back, but I wasn't confident enough to say $26 so I let him fly by. I asked his owner after the auction if he would have said $27 and he said yes without hesitation, so I can't be too sorry. However, given how I spread my money around later I might have been better off with Cano.

36. Torii Hunter $29 ($29)
Everyone's talking about how Kendry Morales is the MVP of the Angels, but Hunter probably had the better year, particularly when you factor in defense. Anyway, I started pushing a little harder for an OF here but apparently wasn't pushing hard enough. I was right on Ordonez and wrong on Hunter.

Round 4
40. Vernon Wells $26 ($18)
Like Ordonez, Wells is a guy I happily dodged in the auction (though I wound up acquiring him via trade later). I'm pushing for an OF here and continuing to fail.

43. Jason Bartlett $19 ($32)
I'd love to say that I had some kind of premonition on Bartlett, but the truth is that middle infield was weak, speed wasn't plentiful, and I was price enforcing, knowing that there were two owners in the room who loved Bartlett. I let out a sigh of relief when one of those owners said $19 and at the time thought that I had dodged a bullet. Oops.

46. Mark DeRosa $21 ($11)
Of course DeRosa was the guy I wanted and wondered if I should have pushed harder on at the time. Meanwhile, 33 players after Felix, I haven't bought anyone.

Round 6
62. Scott Lewis $5 (-$2)
After an entire round of watching players sail by, I finally realized that I was going to have to alter my strategy and spend a little money on pitching if I wanted to spend my money. Lewis wasn't really someone I wanted, but I didn't want someone getting a cheap $4 possible dump chip either.

64. Anthony Reyes $7 (-$6)
Why again were people high on the Indians entering 2009?

Again, I was price enforcing pitchers since I figured I needed to spend my money and thought that there were going to be some hitting bargains coming up.

67. Pat Burrell $20 ($7)
Ugh. After sitting on the sidelines for 53 players, I finally managed to land someone. At the time, I thought this price was OK but not great. Burrell at $20 wasn't a bargain, but since I was tanking batting average he fit in nicely with the rest of my team (except for Jeter, oddly enough). As it turned out, Burrell managed to eat up my entire auction hitting profit in one fell swoop.

69. John Smoltz $6 (-$9)
This was one of those buys where everyone was patting me on the back at the time for saving my money and waiting for someone good. Based on the results, this one obviously didn't work out, but this league always seems to go gaga for Red Sox (even though it hasn't been a Boston-centric league in about a decade) and I was able to flip Smoltz and Wang for Wells. Wells wasn't great, but this was really a case of getting something for nothing.

72. Brett Gardner $16 ($15)
I had suddenly gone from having spent my money early to having a fair amount left on the table. I didn't feel pressured at this point to buy someone, but I could hear the clock ticking. I had traded for Gardner in the off-season at $15 and then threw him back, thinking I'd get him for less. I wasn't pushing him to $17. If he had stayed healthy, I think Gardner would have been quite the bargain.

Round 7
77. Marcus Thames $13 ($7)
Thames was the first player where I really pushed past my bid limit ($10) because I didn't want to leave money on the table. Again, he fit my low BA strategy well but at some point you have to wave goodbye. Judging by his earnings, it's a good thing I did.

78. Hideki Matsui $18 ($21)
Matsui was also well past my bid limit of $15. In retrospect, this is a case where I took Patton's bid limit too seriously and should have been more aggressive with my own bid adjustments. I had bought Matsui in Sportsline, liked him a lot as a free agent-to-be bounce back candidate and should have stuck to my guns. The guy I was bidding against had a lot of money, though, and I might not have got Matsui even if I went to $21.

79. Cesar Izturis $7 ($7)
Izturis wasn't exactly what I was hoping to back Jeter up with, but if I wanted to pick up any points in speed I needed to get someone who would run. Izturis managed to break even, but when you spend $7 on a middle infielder like Izturis, you're hoping for the 24 steals he put up in 2008 and not the 12 he put up in 2009.

81. Clay Buchholz $3 ($5)
Our auction took place before the season started, so players like Buchholz who were still in camp could be purchased but had to be thrown back if they were sent down. I suspected Clay would get sent down, but he was having a great spring and there was the slight possibility that Brad Penny was going to start the year on the D.L. and leave Buchholz with a spot on the team. It didn't work out, but at $3 it wasn't a bad gamble, particularly in a league with dumping.

82. Brad Penny $7 (-$7)
Once again looking for a place to spend my money/price enforce on some pitchers who simply weren't getting pushed. Looking back, it's good that the league didn't let me get these clunkers.

Round 8
86. Ken Griffey Jr. $9 ($7)
Burrell and Griffey weren't the outfielders I was hoping to land in this auction, but 19 HR/57 RBI for $9 in an auction where I was tanking average was just fine.

87. Akinori Iwamura $13 ($8)
Finally, I got to spend my a good chunk of my money and disappoint my foes who thought I was going to get stuck with crap at MI and have $15-20 left on the table. Jeter/Iwa/Izturis didn't look bad coming out of a middle infield poor auction; if Iwa didn't get hurt and had played all year this would have been more than OK.

89. Trevor Cahill $9 ($2)
96. Ben Francisco $10 ($12)
I had a max bid of $9, and Cahill and Francisco were my best shots at spending all my money. In the case of Cahill, I wasn't sure I wanted to leapfrog from $7 to $9 on the bidding and in the case of Francisco an owner with an OF slot had a max bid of $10. It's funny that I would have been better off with Francisco than Burrell even though Francisco was flipped to the Phillies and we don't count N.L. stats.

Round 9
101. Justin Masterson $4 (-$2)
I liked Masterson but wasn't willing to go $5 on a middle reliever who was basically a 2010 play.

105. Raj Davis $3 ($28)
I'd look like I genius if I hadn't waived Davis on July 6 in favor of N.L.-import Scott Hairston. To be fair, Davis had a 1/4/9/.248 line in 109 AB and looked like he was going to be buried on the bench post-Hairston, but that doesn't make this sting any less.

106. Brett Anderson $8 ($12)
My max bid here was $7. I wanted one of Anderson and Cahill - figuring that one of them was going to work out - but didn't cry about not getting either. This was my last penultimate bid on a player. Given some of the pitchers that came out later (Ryan Rowland-Smith, Jarrod Washburn, Edwin Jackson, Dallas Braden) I guess I could have or should have waited, but that's all hindsight.

Round 10
110. Juan Cruz $2 (-$2)
117. Matt Thornton $1 ($16)
Since I wasn't completely trying to tank saves, I was hoping to buy some cheap fallback options who might step in and gobble up some garbage time saves - or take over if the closer got hurt or was ineffective. This didn't work out, but Thornton was solid in a middle relief role and I picked up C.J. Wilson on waivers later in the year.

120. Glen Perkins $2 (-$5)
Ugh. This was a rare case where my sheet said to wait for Edwin Jackson but my heart told me to roll the dice on Perkins. He was great through his first three starts but then was a rollercoaster ride throughout the year. I think he was pitching hurt for most of the year, but I definitely held on to Perkins for way too long.

So yeah, this looks like a fourth place team. I actually hit on my big ticket buys but then didn't do much in the endgame outside of Davis to distinguish myself. In particular, I didn't get lucky on a cheap pitcher the way that winning teams typically do.

I'll continue with this review in my next post.