Saturday, March 05, 2011

Some LABR AL-only Observations

I have not watched the auction in its entirety, but I just logged in a couple of hours in, and I already see a couple of interesting things.

1. Tom Trudeau looks like a first year LABR player. His team is almost full already, and it is filled with risk everywhere. Four closers/potential closers (Chris Perez, Brandon League, Joe Nathan and Matt Thorton) at $18, $10, $16 and $17 respectively. He has not bought a player over $20 (and won't at this stage of the auction).

2. Closers. So far, Liss, Schechter, Ambrosius, and Minnix are without closers (of course, Trudeau has them all). Grey has Kevin Gregg. Evans has Frank Francisco and David Aardsma (Francisco went for $14; we know what the touts think about the closer situation there).

3. Top dollar. Carl Crawford looks like top dollar as far as the offense goes ($40). Felix Hernandez is the King of the pitchers at $30. Yes, $30. Jon Lester and C.C. Sabathia are next at $27 and $26. I will be curious to pick this apart with Mike tomorrow, and see what lessons are learned in preparation for Tout Wars.

I'll check in on the full rosters tomorrow.

Remember, you can now follow me on Twitter at @TozRotoThink.

2 comments:

Gypsy Soul said...

Hope you were pleased with your results last night.

I know you both dont like AJ Burnett at all. So, when you are allocating money to players to make all the numbers add up, what do you do with a guy like Burnett? I mean, do you value him only at the amount you are willing to own him at (though it seems you dont want him at ANY price) or do you value him at what you think is the likely amount he will go for? I presume the former makes the most sense but I am not sure.

Thanks.

Toz said...

Gypsy -

You know, Mike and I were talking about this the other night. Perhaps this is worth a post in and of itself.

Your bids must have some rational relation to the market value of the players in your league. If you drastically alter the value of a player, you need to re-distribute that money elsewhere, and, suddenly, your bids are significantly off from the bids of the rest of the room. While this might be okay by a few dollars if you are trying to follow a strategy, it puts you at great risk of: losing value; overbuying players at a particular position; or allowing your opponents to walk away with particular players at big discounts.

It is one thing to tweak a bid; I tend to reallocate a dollar or two or maybe three. I find it more effective to put a little up or down arrow next to the player (I forgot for Cameron Maybin the CBS auction lol) to remind me to stay away from a particular player.