CBS Sports Analyst League Recap Part I: Auction

Although Tout Wars was the most well known expert league I participated in this year, I was also in a second expert league: the CBS Sports.com Analysts League.

You can read a recap of my auction results here. I followed up with a piece regarding my projected finish according to the CBS Sports.com projections. To summarize:

my team projects out to 1st place using the CBS Sports predictions...albeit barely. I came out with 77 points out of a possible 120 points.... The team I bought projects out with 47 points on offense: four in HR, nine in RBI, 10 in stolen bases, 12 in runs, and 12 in batting average.... The pitching doesn't project as well, with only 30 projected points. I'm projected to finish with one point in wins, five in saves, three in strikeouts, 12 in ERA and nine in WHIP.

It's amazing how close I came to many of these projected totals. But first, let's see how my version of Patton $ tells the tale.

2010 Patton and Company team, CBS Sports Analyst League

#	Player	$	Sal	+/-	AVG BID
C	Russell Martin	$7	$12	-5	$12
C	Gregg Zaun	$2	$1	1	$3
1B	Adam LaRoche	$20	$16	4	$20
2B	Placido Polanco	$17	$11	6	$14
SS	Rafael Furcal	$21	$4	17	$11
3B	Chipper Jones	$11	$14	-3	$15
CO	Todd Helton	$8	$13	-5	$15
MI	Brendan Ryan	$6	$1	5	$6
OF	Carlos Beltran	$6	$19	-13	$18
OF	Michael Bourn	$26	$21	5	$21
OF	Corey Hart	$28	$17	11	$18
OF	Raul Ibanez	$19	$20	-1	$19
OF	Hunter Pence	$29	$21	8	$25
UT	Lastings Milledge	$9	$5	4	$13
P	Tyler Clippard	$14	$1	13	$1
P	Kelvim Escobar		$1	-1	$0
P	Juan Gutierrez	$4	$1	3	$2
P	J.A. Happ	$6	$11	-5	$10
P	John Lannan	-$1	$1	-2	$2
P	Ted Lilly	$20	$15	5	$13
P	Carlos Marmol	$22	$18	4	$16
P	Johan Santana	$20	$27	-7	$25
P	Randy Wells	$6	$10	-4	$7
	Total	$300	$260	+40	$286

This is why I run these charts. I thought I had a decent auction, but if you had told me I had walked away with $300 worth of value on Auction Day - particularly if you had told me that Beltran was going to flame out and not a single one of my players would crack $30 - I would have thought you were smoking something.

Putting aside the wisdom or stupidity of any of my individual purchases, my relative auction success both here and in Tout Wars (where I bought a team worth $293) came by going where the room took me. In Tout Wars, the prices on the top players were low so I pounced. In CBS, the prices on the top players were too high so I waited and only bought one player - Santana - over $22.

But it turns out the CBS predictions were wrong. I actually bought an 80-point team, not a 77-point team.

And a third-place team coming out of the auction.

2010 CBS Sports Analyst League "Draft" Standings

Team	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	K	W	SV	ERA	WHIP	TOT
Fanball	7	9	11	3	8	9	8	12	10	10	87
CBS White	8	12	12	4	6	10	10	6	8	6	82
Patton	12	5	10	10.5	9	5	3.5	8	9	8	80
CBS Mack	5	11	7	9	4	4	5	9	11	11	76
Rotowire Siegrist	11	10	9	10.5	7	11	11	2	3	1	75.5
Baseball Prospectus	9.5	8	5	8	12	6	7	1	6	9	71.5
Open Sports	3	1	8	7	5	3	6	11	12	12	68
Rotowire Van Riper	6	3.5	6	3	11	7	9	7	7	7	66.5
CBS Melchior	2	3.5	1	5	3	12	12	10	5	2	55.5
The Fantasy Man	9.5	2	6	12	10	2	2	5	1	4	53.5
Fantasy Baseball Sherpa	4	7	4	2	2	8	3.5	4	2	3	39.5
Roto Experts	1	6	2	1	1	1	1	3	4	5	25

Each team is linked to my pre-season write-up along with the CBS projections.

The pre-season CBS projection for my team was spooky accurate. Yes, it was a little off here and there on the pitching side, but it meant that my pre-season assessments turned out to be almost dead-on. I was weak in HR and had a pretty balanced squad everywhere else on offense. My pitching was strong in ERA/WHIP but soft in wins and strikeouts. Juan Gutierrez actually worked out as a quasi-hedge closer.

So how did I do during the season? Was I able to push this team over the top? I'll take a look at that next time.