For a good portion of the season, I've been lamenting the lack of impact hitters available on the waiver wire, especially in deeper leagues. Well, this week we had a number of prospect hitters available to bid on, though arguably still nobody on the level of Nick Kurtz last year. Ryan Waldschmidt, Spencer Jones and Bryce Eldridge were headliners, but there was plenty of action involving Joe Mack, Jesus Rodriguez and Zach Cole too. I jumped into the pool in a handful of my leagues this week, even if it wasn't quite the deep end.
AL Tout Wars
I cut Paul Goldschmidt last week, only to see him homer twice in the stead of the injured Ben Rice. I attempted to pick him back up this week - aka "boot-and-rally" (h/t former colleague Chris Liss), but fell well short in my bid. That's ok, that wasn't my big regret from the bidding this week. No, my big regret was not going aggressively after Zach Cole here or elsewhere. I thought that there was a reasonable chance early in draft season that he would win at least a part of a corner outfield job with the Astros, but he got sent down pretty early and I kind of dismissed him afterward. He's up now and playing a decent amount for them, and they're home with seven games against right-handed pitchers this week.
The AL & NL Tout Wars leagues have a fairly unique IL rule. We have four
For a good portion of the season, I've been lamenting the lack of impact hitters available on the waiver wire, especially in deeper leagues. Well, this week we had a number of prospect hitters available to bid on, though arguably still nobody on the level of Nick Kurtz last year. Ryan Waldschmidt, Spencer Jones and Bryce Eldridge were headliners, but there was plenty of action involving Joe Mack, Jesus Rodriguez and Zach Cole too. I jumped into the pool in a handful of my leagues this week, even if it wasn't quite the deep end.
AL Tout Wars
I cut Paul Goldschmidt last week, only to see him homer twice in the stead of the injured Ben Rice. I attempted to pick him back up this week - aka "boot-and-rally" (h/t former colleague Chris Liss), but fell well short in my bid. That's ok, that wasn't my big regret from the bidding this week. No, my big regret was not going aggressively after Zach Cole here or elsewhere. I thought that there was a reasonable chance early in draft season that he would win at least a part of a corner outfield job with the Astros, but he got sent down pretty early and I kind of dismissed him afterward. He's up now and playing a decent amount for them, and they're home with seven games against right-handed pitchers this week.
The AL & NL Tout Wars leagues have a fairly unique IL rule. We have four IL spots, and if a player is placed on the IL during the week, we can make a midweek move to replace them if we have the player on our roster. Similarly, if a player currently on the IL gets activated by his Major League team, we too can activate him on to our roster. I made full use of those rules last week, unfortunately and fortunately at the same time. In the span of 24 hours, Roman Anthony, Jasson Dominguez, Cole Ragans and Cade Povich (one of these things is not like the other!) all went on the IL. I was able to activate both Brendan Donovan and Kirby Yates at the same time, plus activate two players from my reserves to make the rosters fit.
Leo De Vries was the pickup here, as I'm replicating the Max Clark gambit that hasn't paid off yet. This time I paid a much lower price, at least, but if Wilson's injury is serious, we might see De Vries sooner than expected.
My Drop: None, given the roster machinations above.
NFBC Main Event
Sometimes when you pick up a player, you get a twinge of regret, wondering if you did the right thing. That's what happened with us and Bryce Eldridge on the Giants. We lowered our bid twice on Eldridge, initially starting in the $80's before eventually dropping down to $29 and third on our priority list. Yet we still won him, $29 to $27. Our reasons for lowering the bid were his strikeout rate, his lack of positional-eligibility and his home ballpark. We overlooked a fourth reason to lower our bid further - a lack of playing time. He didn't start Sunday, though later entered the game. But he's out of the starting lineup again on Monday, in a sweet matchup against right-hander Roki Sasaki. We're not even starting him to begin the week - a total failure, given how many other hitters we could have picked up this week.
Our Drop: Jakob Junis. Junis had three saves before we spent 18 percent of our FAAB budget to get him, and hasn't even had a save attempt since (though he gave up a lead in the eighth inning in the subsequent week and thus has a blown save). We held out as long as possible to drop Junis, but his usage pattern lately has been putting him in even lesser leveraged situations. As it turns out, he's opening on Monday night after Nathan Eovaldi was a late scratch, making this a bit of a fortunate but truly sad drop.
NFBC Auction Championship
Ryan Waldschmidt was my top target across the board this week. I view him as the outfield version of Kevin McGonigle - perhaps not the biggest power guy, though not completely without power, but a great on-base hitter with speed. That the Diamondbacks designated Alek Thomas for assignment suggests a modicum of job security for Waldschmidt as he ramps up against major league pitching. I thought that the bidding would be robust for him, and while it was competitive, I overestimated how much it would take here, with my $175 bid exceeding the second-highest bid by $60. I'm now down three bats between Christian Yelich, Giancarlo Stanton and Roman Anthony, so there was a sense of urgency in bidding for Waldschmidt. I also landed Christian Vazquez at catcher for the Astros, with Yainer Diaz on the IL.
My Drops: Rhett Lowder, Danny Jansen.
Beat Jeff Erickson1
If I overspent on Waldschmidt in the Auction Championship, I really overspent for him here. On Thursday's RotoWire show on SiriusXM, I talked with James Anderson how the West Coast 7:00pm FAAB deadline is a bit of a disadvantage, especially on holidays that fall on a Sunday. That felt like the case this week, as I rushed to get my bids in while we were hosting family for Mother's Day. With a little more time spent, my bids could have been more commensurate with the 12-team market.
My Drops: Jakob Junis, Luis Campusano.
Beat Jeff Erickson2
Ok, so maybe I didn't overspend on Ryan Waldschmidt in those two other leagues after all. My $175 bid fell well short, here. He was my only attempted bid this week.
TGFBI
I thought I could sneak in a cheap bid on Christian Scott. I thought wrong.
SCARF
This was the "Coming to America" version of FAAB bidding. Instead of McDonalds, go to McDowell's! Instead of bidding big on Bryce Eldridge, you could bid big on Bryce Elder! Instead of Ryan Waldschmidt, well, the analogy sort of breaks down here, but you could bid on Ryan McMahon instead.
I won two closely contested bids, and one scarcely contested bid. I picked up Bryan King as my best guest as the short-term closer for the Astros, with Enyel De Los Santos no longer being used in high-leverage situations, winning him $33 to $28. I opened up the possibility of getting "Gombered" (named after Rockies pitcher Austin Gomber, who got torched twice in what appeared to be a nice two-step on the road a few years back) by winning Stephen Kolek $17 to $16. And I re-added Rays pitcher Jesse Scholtens.
My Drops: Erik Miller, Enyel De Los Santos, Jakob Junis. I spent a combined $239 on the trio to pick up a combined one (1) save. Sweet.
LABR
It was a quieter week in LABR, as Ryan Waldschmidt, Bryce Eldridge and Spencer Jones were already rostered, as was Robby Snelling on the pitching side.
In my continued quest to find a second closer, I added Graham Ashcraft for $2, beating out a slew of $1 bids. Pierce Johnson got the save for the Reds on Saturday, whereas Ashcraft blew the save on Wednesday against the Cubs, but I still trust Ashcraft a little bit more. He's been ahead of Johnson in the Reds' leverage pecking order this year, and was high up there last season. He followed up that blown save with two good games against the Astros over the weekend. It's interesting that the league was more involved for Ashcraft than Johnson (the failed $2 bid for Johnson here was my contingent bid if I didn't get Ashcraft).
My Drop: None. I had Erik Miller and Steven Matz go on the IL and we have IL spots in this league.
RotoWire Staff Keeper League
Aaron Ashby wasn't my first pitcher choice, or even my second choice, but even if he didn't already have seven wins he's useable in an 18-team league, with 41 strikeouts in 26 innings so far. Still, I missed out on a handful of closer targets - Caleb Kilian, Bryan King and Ryan Zeferjahn. Braden Shewmake is my (hopefully) short-term replacement for Jacob Wilson at MI, after Wilson got hurt on Sunday.
My Drops: Erik Miller, Enyel De Los Santos.
