2010 Designated Hitters

Typically, I don't post anything about designated hitters because there simply aren't enough of them to profile. Last year, though, there were at least 10 designated hitters that could have been purchased. Most of them were.

2010 A.L. Designated Hitters, Sorted by Cost

#	Player	$	Sal	+/-	PK	ZIPS	'09
1	Vladimir Guerrero	$29	$16	+13	$14	$23	$14
2	David Ortiz	$24	$12	+11	$12	$20	$14
3	Hideki Matsui	$17	$12	+5	$12	$16	$17
4	Pat Burrell	$1	$4	-3	$7	$11	$6
5	Travis Hafner	$13	$3	+10	$4	$12	$10
6	Andruw Jones	$12	$2	+10	$5	$9	$7
7	Jim Thome	$16	$2	+14	$4	$11	$12
8	Randy Ruiz	$0	$2	-2	$1	$13	$7
9	Ken Griffey Jr.	-$1	$1	-2		$6	$6
10	Mike Sweeney	$4				$6	$6
	Average	$11	$5	+6	$6	$13	$10

It's rare to have a year with so many players who only qualify at DH, but it happens. The market generally cheats these guys for two reasons:

·       Many of these players are older hitters in decline with limited skill sets that might fall off the map entirely.

·       You can only buy one, and once you do your positional flexibility disappears entirely.

This isn't a trivial matter. In 2009, I bought Hafner in the first "round" of my auction for $9 and quickly locked myself out at DH and corner infield. While I was fortunate that there weren't any significant bargains I lost out on, I probably would have done better elsewhere had I passed on Hafner and spent more on corner infielder or outfielder and stuck him in my DH slot.

Typically, though, the more significant issue is buying a DH early and locking yourself out of better values later. This phenomenon is more common in keeper leagues, but can happen in start-over leagues as well.

The market prices above make me believe that the expert leagues are pretty hep to this phenomenon, and have already built the bargains into the prices. If Burrell were OF eligible, I think there would have been a dead cat bounce built into his price. As a DH-only, no one wanted to add the risk of locking himself out of a position to his cost.

Try to build a lower bid into your DH calculations, especially in a year when you have a lot of these guys in your player pool. Spending $4 on Burrell and getting next to nothing is tolerable. Spending more than that is a recipe for losing.