Each week, I'm going to take a quick look at the results of the free agent bidding in my Sunday night FAAB Leagues, splicing in a few comments for each league.
AL TOUT WARS
Tout Wars has its FAAB deadline at 8:00 pm ET, whereas all of my other leagues, including the NFBC, have later deadlines. That mattered with my pickup of Emerson Hancock, who was brilliant Sunday night against the Guardians. I imagine after six no-hit, nine-strikeout innings he'd have gone for a much higher price. Going into the bidding, there were only four projected starters available for the week: Hancock, Erick Fedde, Ryan Johnson and Jack Kochanowicz. While I have some doubts about Hancock's long-term sustainability, I'm content with picking him up for his start against the Angels and Kochanowicz this week.
NFBC MAIN EVENT
I share an NFBC Main Event team with Tim Schuler, as always, and we collaborate on our FAAB bids each Sunday night. It's my fault that we don't have Cole Sands or anyone else as a second closer on this team. He originally put in a bid higher than the winning amount, and I talked him down to $92. My logic was that I didn't want to commit to 15 percent or more of our FAAB budget in Week 1 for a pitcher that we don't know whether he's a full-time closer, for a bad team. We'll see how this logic holds up.
We did win our second choice bid
Each week, I'm going to take a quick look at the results of the free agent bidding in my Sunday night FAAB Leagues, splicing in a few comments for each league.
AL TOUT WARS
Tout Wars has its FAAB deadline at 8:00 pm ET, whereas all of my other leagues, including the NFBC, have later deadlines. That mattered with my pickup of Emerson Hancock, who was brilliant Sunday night against the Guardians. I imagine after six no-hit, nine-strikeout innings he'd have gone for a much higher price. Going into the bidding, there were only four projected starters available for the week: Hancock, Erick Fedde, Ryan Johnson and Jack Kochanowicz. While I have some doubts about Hancock's long-term sustainability, I'm content with picking him up for his start against the Angels and Kochanowicz this week.
NFBC MAIN EVENT
I share an NFBC Main Event team with Tim Schuler, as always, and we collaborate on our FAAB bids each Sunday night. It's my fault that we don't have Cole Sands or anyone else as a second closer on this team. He originally put in a bid higher than the winning amount, and I talked him down to $92. My logic was that I didn't want to commit to 15 percent or more of our FAAB budget in Week 1 for a pitcher that we don't know whether he's a full-time closer, for a bad team. We'll see how this logic holds up.
We did win our second choice bid on Eduardo Rodriguez, who pitched well against Team USA in the WBC before also pitching well against the Dodgers over the weekend. His next two opponents are also tricky — he draws the Braves at home this week and the Mets on the road next week.
NFBC AUCTION CHAMPIONSHIP
I participated in my first NFBC Auction Championship league 10 days ago, and it was a loaded and difficult league. One aspect of the league was that starting pitching prices were inflated by a large amount, to the point that I didn't chase most of those prices. Each action has a consequence, and I was left with a roster that was somehow both speading the risk and yet still woefully short in starting pitching. That problem was exacerbated by "out of nowhere" injuries to Ryan Pepiot and Kirby Yates before Opening Day.
So this week's FAAB period was critical for me to add to my starting pitching depth, and I did that by aggressively targeting the Pirates' Carmen Mlodzinski and the Rays' Joe Boyle. I was already sold last week on Mlodzinski before his start when James Anderson cited him as his most-rostered player going into the season, and his eight strikeouts against the Mets did little to dissuade me. The Pirates were willing to deal both Mike Burrows and Johan Oviedo to target hitting, and one of the reasons why was they knew they had Mlodzinski available.
NFBC "BEAT JEFF ERICKSON1"
This is yet another league where I had a cheap share of Kirby Yates, so I focused my bidding on adding a closer. Jordan Romano might have been more ideal for my team's needs, but I got outbid there and settled for Sands.
NFBC "BEAT JEFF ERICKSON2"
I often invoke the mantra that 12-team leagues can be weird when it comes to free agent bidding. Apparently I vastly overvalued Mlodzinski's first outing.
TGFBI
The only thing worse than getting outbid on your top targets is to win big, uncontested bids. Between Bryan King here and AJ Blubaugh elsewhere, I took a few low-cost shots on Astros relievers in case there is something wrong with Bryan Abreu, who was pulled after 14 pitches Sunday while getting clocked at diminished velocity.
SCARF
I really love SCARF, part of the EARTH network of leagues. It has the competitiveness of an NFBC 15-team league, while still having the camaraderie of a home league. In fact, it really is a home league — we have drafted in person the last four years, usually with at least 12-13 of us present.
LABR
Once again, I was more enthusiastic about Carmen Mlodzinski than the league as a whole, winning his services by more than double the second-highest bid. Even though this is really inefficient bidding, I'm less crestfallen about that than I normally would be in this league. For the first time ever, LABR is allowing $0 FAAB bids, so I expected a higher set of bids than we've seen so far. LABR also has a rule that forces you to start your pickup the first week you get a player, and I bought three pitchers: Mlodzinski, Randy Vasquez and Ryne Stanek. One consequence is that I have to bench one pitcher I would have normally started this week in Shane McClanahan, who's pitching at the Brewers on Tuesday.
ROTOWIRE STAFF KEEPER LEAGUE
Joe Boyle and Jake Bauers drew the biggest bids for the week, and I came in with the third-highest winner of the week, picking up Emerson Hancock again. To illustrate why I didn't do so well in this league over the last couple of years, my drop (Zebby Matthews) was one of my keepers heading into this season. This is an 18-team mixed league, and we have 10 minor-league spots and seven reserve spots, but zero IL spots, so roster space becomes scarce very quickly in this league.
