2011 was my second year participating in the Tout Wars N.L.-only expert auction. After a third place showing in my rookie year, I was hoping that the second time would be the charm.
It wasn't. Worse, it's likely that in terms of executing strategy I took a step back.
First off, let's take a look at the team I bought (you can read my rationale for what I did here).
2011 Roto Think Tank, N.L.-Only Tout Wars
# | Player | $ | Sal | +/- | AVG BID | |
C | $19 | $22 | -3 | $22 | ||
C | $4 | $4 | 0 | $5 | ||
1B | $34 | $36 | -2 | $40 | ||
2B | $30 | $26 | 4 | $27 | ||
SS | $8 | $1 | 7 | $2 | ||
3B | $15 | $16 | -1 | $15 | ||
CO | $8 | $13 | -5 | $14 | ||
MI | $5 | $2 | 3 | $3 | ||
OF | $11 | $26 | -15 | $26 | ||
OF | $13 | $13 | 0 | $12 | ||
OF | $12 | $12 | 0 | $10 | ||
OF | $6 | $9 | -3 | $12 | ||
OF | $5 | $1 | 4 | $2 | ||
UT | $11 | $1 | 10 | $1 | ||
P | $23 | $28 | -5 | $28 | ||
P | $4 | $22 | -18 | $20 | ||
P | $10 | $22 | -12 | $22 | ||
P | $3 | $1 | 2 | $1 | ||
P | -$1 | $1 | -2 | $2 | ||
P | -$1 | $1 | -2 | $1 | ||
P | $11 | $1 | 10 | $1 | ||
P | $13 | $1 | 12 | $1 | ||
P | $5 | $1 | 4 | $1 | ||
Total | $245 | $260 | -16 | $270 |
You can see how my team looked coming out of the auction here.
My offense was fine. Not win-the-league-fine but above average. I spent $182 to buy $179 worth of stats (the average 5x5 team typically has $175 worth of stats).
This isn't optimal (someone is usually going to walk out of the auction with $200+ on offense), but I obviously didn't see it this way in April. When I FAABed Ryan Roberts for $0 during the first transaction period of the season, after a month I thought my offense was better than fine.
This was at the beginning of the season. Once the season was underway, there were cracks in the foundation. Heyward was the big problem. A slow start to May was followed by shoulder injury that landed Heyward on the DL. He came back but wasn't the same all year long.
More than any other factor, this is what led to my offense turning out to be a wash. The addition of Roberts was negated by Heyward's injury and none of my ragtag, end game plays provided enough profit to save my bacon. Renteria and Denorfia were decent earners, but neither provided the bang I needed to dig out of a big hole.
Pitching, though, is what killed me for the second year in a row.
As I noted in my initial write-up, I didn't walk into the auction with a plan, but wound up dumping saves and going with a three aces strategy. I didn't include this in my initial write-up, but I thought early on that I could afford to have one ace implode, but my season would be sunk if two fall apart. Sadly, this is exactly what happened.
Johnson went down to injury while Jimenez was erratic all season long. None of the $1 pitchers I bought at the back of my staff emerged. My strategy was to stream one or two of Correia, Volstad and Zito depending on match-ups all year long, but Johnson's injury forced all three of those pitchers into my rotation all year long.
Betancourt, Marshall and in-season pick-up Antonio Bastardo did pick up some saves, but not enough to give me a significant boost.
Johnson's injury forced my hand into making a trade. In late May, I traded Phillips to Peter Kreutzer for Roy Oswalt. The trade wouldn't have done much for my cause anyway, but Oswalt was ineffective, wound up on the D.L. in late June, and didn't help all that much. I would have been better off taking Tristram Cockroft's Clayton Kershaw for Joey Votto offer, but even then I don't think it would have been enough.
The bottom line was that my bad pitching auction dug me a hole I wasn't going to be able to climb out of no matter how many trades I made. In a competitive league like Tout Wars, trades are seldom going to net you a big, 10-15 point leap. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul. My auction wasn't as good as I thought it would be and - as a result - I didn't get the job done.
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