I left pitchers for a separate post, since pitching was the key to my strategy. The first price in parenthesis is the price at auction; the second price was my bid limit.
Justin Verlander ($26/$31), Javier Vazquez ($22/$23), Scott Kazmir ($13/$21), A.J. Burnett ($18/$21), Kevin Millwood ($2/$6), Gio Gonzalez ($2/$2), Brian Fuentes ($16/$16), David Aardsma ($19/$16), Chris Perez ($2/$2)
My first pitcher off the board was Verlander at $26. CC Sabathia and Felix Hernandez both went for $32 and Zack Greinke went for $30. These were right around my prices, but my thought process was to make sure I got two top-tier pitchers for $50. I did not have a specific intention of grabbing Verlander, but when the bidding did not move off $26, I was a happy owner. Vazquez came soon after, and while I don't love the price, I love locking him up at $22. Kazmir came next. I could not believe the bidding stopped at $13, given his interiors and his excellent September. Over at the Patton & Co. site, I've talked about my hesitation with Kazmir. Even if he throws 150 innings; however, he will out-earn that $13 bid.
Burnett is the pitcher I will regret from a bidding perspective. I only wanted to spend $100 on pitching, and I was in good shape after grabbing Verlander, Vazquez and Kazmir (along with my plan for the closers). I got caught with my hand in the proverbial cookie jar, however, with Burnett. I fully expected, given when he came up, someone would say $19 and likely get to the low $20s. I would have let him go at that point, but no one said $19. My bidding strategy changed here...I knew I now needed to be very cautious in order to fill out my offense.
Millwood was a "whoops, excuse me for bidding" addition to the team. Someone called him out for $1, and, frankly, I didn't want him to fall in at $1 and repeat last year's success. So I said $2, and no one else bid. The beauty of the reserve list is that Millwood can sit there until he hits a favorable match-up. Same goes for Gonzalez. I am still enamored with Gio, and at $2, there is nothing but upside. Again, the reserve list operates in my favor here...if he tanks, he can sit.
As far as closers go, Fuentes and Aardsma are not Jon Papelbon and Mariano Rivera. In retrospect, given the prices, I should have paid par for Paps and Rivera and been done with it. Frankly, I am happy to have gotten Fuentes and Aardsma for just a couple of ticks over my sheet prices, given that we were running out of closers very fast. In retrospect, with the $14 left over, I could have bought a third low tier closer. Perez is merely a hedge on Kerry Wood and will spend most of his time on the reserve list.
All in all, while I would have liked to have said $16 on John Lackey or picked up a Mark Buehrle, John Danks or Gavin Floyd late at a cheap price (Danks was the highest at $10), I think I locked down a very competitive staff.
The biggest problem is that a $126/$120 hitting/pitching split with $14 left on the table is not ideal. We'll look more closely at the projections in later posts.
5 comments:
Hi Mike, this doesnt pertain to what you are now posting, but if you think it is important maybe when convenient for you that you could address the issue of anticipated money left on the table after the auction relative to inflation. My keeper leagues often have $50 or so unspent at the end of the auction, I assume such an amount should be taken into account when calculating inflation. In fact, it acts to increase the inflation amount, I believe. As always, thanks very much.
Wow Gypsy - that is a ton of money. This is a good topic to address...if it is the same year after year, you are going to have to factor it in somewhere.
I don't remember the last time I left more than $1 on the table. Leaving $14 on the table -- particularly when you had to pull back your horns after spending more than you expected to on pitching (Burnett) -- is an odd result.
$50 TOTAL for a 12-team (or so) league doesn't strike me as an absurd amount -- that's one guy really screwing up (say, $15), two guys MODERATELY screwing up (say, $7 each), and several leaving sub-$5 on the table.
I agree TMU - I think I've left $14 on the table over the last 10 years, certainly not in one auction. I'm also not used to a league leaving $50 on the table...our leagues are pretty tight, so if it happens year after year, that is an odd occurance as well.
Didn't mean to imply any skill on my part in rarely leaving any cash on the table; I'm fond of the endgame, and I generally find myself with $5 for 3 spots (or thereabouts), so you can step out for one guy toward the end, and then shop for your backup catcher and your last pitcher . . . If anything, it's HARDER to try to hit the spots perfectly in terms of diving back in in the last third of the auction with money to burn . . . but you can get burned if you can't spend the money.
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