Shawn & Greg Are Ready To Defend LABR NL Title

[Greg Ambrosius]

This weekend the 21st annual LABR AL and NL Auctions will take place in Phoenix, Arizona, sponsored by USA Today. The NFBC tag team of Shawn Childs and Greg Ambrosius are the defending LABR NL champions, having won our first ever LABR title by 8 points. We also finished last in LABR AL, so we have some work to do there!!!

SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio will be broadcasting live from the News-Republic headquarters on both days from 7 pm to midnight ET. The AL Auction will be held on Saturday night, while the NL Auction will be held on Sunday night. 12 owners in each league, $260 budgets for 23 starters and 6 man reserve rounds. Should be fun.

I'm the last of the original LABR owners, which included Keith Olbermann in 1994, Peter Gammons, Bill James, Glenn Waggoner, Danny Sheridan, Paul White, Ron Shandler, Alex Patton and many others. Shawn and I finished 2nd in LABR NL in 2012 and we finally cracked through for a win last year. Shawn has won four NFBC AL Auction titles in 10 years, so I expect our finish to be much better in the AL this year.

We'll post our rosters on these boards after the auction and as usual I'm sure Shawn will explain his theories as well. In fact, he might even do that BEFORE the auctions take place!!! Look for that on a special site.

Anyway, it's -7 here in Iola this morning and it will hit a low of -17 tonight. Great time to get the hell out of the Frozen Tundra and head to Phoenix. Ballgame tomorrow and hopefully ballgames on Saturday and Sunday with the LABR crew. Safe travels everyone and wish us best of luck. We'll need it against this tough group of industry writers.

[Sack]

Just keep Childs away from Turf Paradise so you have some money left for Las Vegas.

There is a $1000 World Series of Handicapping Tournament at the Orleans Hotel between March 27-29.
NFBC, March Madness, Horse Racing mega contest finally collide. Can't wait.

Childs, I know you'll read this thread. A partnership needs to be formed for the Orleans.


Good Luck in ARIZONA boys. Does Tom get to go?

[rockitsauce]

-17 wow!

I've been hearing this noise from my next door neighbor's balcony for wk's, found out the other day that he's been runnin' the AC already I mean, it's warm but holy sheeit man! Not there yet for me. Glad to hear you will be escaping soon Greg. Good luck to you & Shawn, defend that NL title and get the AL !

My new fav. Brewer - he looks just like my Chase

Hank the Brewer !

Hank!.jpg (11.53 KiB) Viewed 6272 times

Chase the liondog !

rowdy boy.jpg (7.04 KiB) Viewed 6272 times

Ken, I think the answer to your question about Mr. K accompanying Greg/Shawn to AZ is an obscure Zeppelin song

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'll be on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio today talking about LABR AL and NL at 10:20 am ET and 9:20 pm ET.

I'm going to talk about the weather, too!!

[Tom Kessenich]

Here's a link if you want to track the auction online.

http://www.rtsports.com/labr-al-auction

[Walla Walla]

I took a peek mid-way into the draft for the AL auction. A classic Shawn draft, stars and scrubs. I think they're in trouble with pitching.

[Greg Ambrosius]

The LABR AL Auction took place last night here in Phoenix, Arizona and the NFBC team of Shawn Childs and myself came out spending like drunken sailors!! We spent $212 in the first 45 minutes on 8 players and then sat for 2 hours without getting another player as we had $48 left for 15 players. After the core group, it was time to fill in the rest of the roster.

Our early bidding included:
Mike Trout - $45
Albert Pujols - $29
Jacoby Ellsbury - $35
Brian McCann - $21
Prince Fielder - $33

Masahiro Tanaka - $19
CC Sabathia - $15
Matt Moore - $15

After the 2 hour wait, we finally had more money than the field and started to fill in our lineup. Here's how it played out:

C - Brian McCann $21
C - J.P. Arencibia $2
1B - Albert Pujols $29
2B - Nick Franklin $7
SS - Stephen Drew $2
3B - Lonnie Chisenhall $1
MI - Gordon Beckham $6
CI - Prince Fielder $33
UT - Ichiro Suzuki $1
OF - Mike Trout $45
OF - Jacoby Ellsbury $35
OF - Josh Willingham $8
OF - Raul Ibanez $2
OF - Jason Kubel $3

P - Masahiro Tanaka $19
P - CC Sabathia $15
P - Matt Moore $15
P - Michael Pineda $4
P - Trevor Bauer $1
P - Kelvin Herrera $1
P - Erik Johnson $1
P - James Paxton $2
P - Matt Harrison $1

Reserves: Delmon Young, Danny Duffy, Jarret Cosart, Brett Oberholtzer, Nate Freiman, C.J. Cron

We actually had a few bucks left at the end. Okay, bring on the feedback. Does this team have a chance to compete for a title, knowing that this is a trading league and we could trade some assets for other categories later?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Top bids from LABR AL included:
Mike Trout $45
Miguel Cabrera $42
Jacoby Ellsbury $35
Edwin Encarnacion $34
Robinson Cano $33
Jason Kipnis $33
Prince Fielder $33
Adam Jones $33
Chris Davis $31
Evan Longoria $30
Adrian Beltre $29
Albert Pujols $29
Alex Rios $29
Yu Darvish $28
Max Scherzer $28
Felix Hernandez $27
Dustin Pedroia $27
Justin Verlander $26
Eric Hosmer $26
Jose Reyes $26

Greg Holland $23
Joe Nathan $20

Thoughts on the top players?

[Greg Ambrosius]

LABR NL is tonight at 7 pm ET and will be carried live on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio. We'll post the link to the draft board as well so that you can follow it online, too. Thanks all and enjoy. This should be equally as wild tonight, although I don't think we'll spend as heavily early on, but we'll see.

[76erfan]

love the stars. the scrubs obviously are a concern. your pitching may be your downfall. no closers and a lot of question marks with your pitching. I do like the offense you pieced together after the initial star set of mccann, fielder, pujols, trout and ellsbury(which is very good of course)

[Bronx Yankees]

Greg (or Shawn) - If you get a chance, it would be very interesting to hear how the auction played out compared to your strategy going into the contest. For instance, I'm assuming you settled on a "stars and scrubs" strategy going into the auction. Did you plan to roster the specific stars you wound up with early (and, if so, why them instead of other stars)? Or, did you plan to grab a group of stars and thought these were the best buys? Any stars not part of the plan going in but you couldn't resist grabbing them? Also, did the scrubs portion of your team turn out the way you wanted/expected? Any buys that you thought were relative steals? Any big regrets? Any big surprises for you? Thanks.

Mike

[Walla Walla]

Any one looking for the LABR NL draft its the same ling that Greg gave for the AL auction. Type in the same address and change al to nl.

[CC's Desperados]

Greg (or Shawn) - If you get a chance, it would be very interesting to hear how the auction played out compared to your strategy going into the contest. For instance, I'm assuming you settled on a "stars and scrubs" strategy going into the auction. Did you plan to roster the specific stars you wound up with early (and, if so, why them instead of other stars)? Or, did you plan to grab a group of stars and thought these were the best buys? Any stars not part of the plan going in but you couldn't resist grabbing them? Also, did the scrubs portion of your team turn out the way you wanted/expected? Any buys that you thought were relative steals? Any big regrets? Any big surprises for you? Thanks.

Mike

We went into the auction with a target goal of 8 hitters for a price points of about $170. We thought we would take 3 holes - C2, OF5, and MI or CO. This would leave us with about $17 to try to find 3 batters that would possibly get full time at bats. If we structured our team properly, we would only need limited production in HR's and SB's to have success in hitting.

Trout was the #1 target and we had him listed on the cheat sheet for $45. We only bid once on him - $45. At first base, we settled into a second tier range with Pujols and Hosmer in play. Greg was not a fan of Pujols. I thought he would work well with Trout. This position really came down to timing. If Hosmer came out first, we would have taken a swing for him. His price was $27 and he may have gone $29+ if we bid.

Based on the lack of top talent at the middle infield positions, we targeted Jason Kipnis for a price range of $28 to $30. We bid $28, $30, and $32, but we had to let him go at $33. Looking back Pedrioa probably would have worked well for us, but he was already off the board at $26. At that point, we pretty much knew we would drop all the way back to Gordon Beckham at 2B. He tends to go undervalued. If he played well, we would hit 10+ HR's with a handful of steals and he would fall into our low value plan as a back end hitter.

The loss of Kipnis forced us to look to replace him skill set elsewhere. The top options at a lower price point were Shane Victorino or Desmond Jennings. We thought both players might work, but we weren't confident either player would be elite. When Ellsbury was called out, we stayed alert. He seemed to be dying in the high $20's when we dove in. We pushed quickly with a few over bids before landing him at $35. At this point, we knew had to be careful or we wouldn't finish out out offense.

Before the auction, we decided to target Joe Mauer for the $20 range with Mike Zunino as somewhat as a fall back plan. He would allowed us to add low average power at the back end of the auction. Mauer was the first catcher called and he went for price ($23). When McCann was called out, we decided to test the market rather than see where the other top options would fall. We purchased him for $21, which we thought we a fair value. We actually bought him before we purchased Ellsbury. If it happened in reverse order, we may have drop down in tiers at the catcher positions.

Heading into the draft, we targeted a couple of mid range players at short and third base. When Prince Fielder was dying at $31 or $32, I just thought he was too much of value for this type of league. I pushed to $33. Once we owned him, he was in essence our third baseman. Instead of punting the corner position, we had to punt third base.

At this point of the auction on the hitting side, we just had to sit and wait to see who they would leave us with at the other positions.

At the back end of the auction, we were at the mercy of who was left. We took a swing at Nick Franklin ($7) just in case he gets traded and he lands a starting gig. Stephen Drew ($2) was just a flyer.

After our core batters, we were hoping to draft 60 HR's and 40 SB's with solid at bats. I felt as though we were really lucky to get Josh Willingham for $8. Our first target at that that position was Josh Reddick, but he drew plenty of interest as he was quickly priced out of our price range. We were extremely happy to land Ibanez, Kubel, and Arencibia for short money. They all have batting average risk, but we will be able to move one or more of them to help our team elsewhere.

We were beat at the 3B position, but Lonnie Chisenhall may work for $1.

In our style, it's tough to predict the back end of your roster. Many times it comes down to the timing of the player flow. We really paid for the core of our offense, but we did better than expected in power at the back end for short money.

On the pitching side, we thought there was a chance that the top end pitching would be discounted. I almost bid on Verlander and Darvish. I knew our top players on offense would be expensive so a I held back on a top ace due to timing. Tanaka and Sabathia were targets. We had Matt Moore on our cheat sheet for $20+. We wanted a 3rd solid starter with upside and he was better than expected.

Overall, I think the team ended up deeper than expected. Our pitching staff has some question marks for sure. I think we are deep enough where we should be competitive in wins and K's. At some point, we will trade power for saves.

The draft board was real tough. We really didn't have a feel for each teams roster and it was tough to see how much money was left without asking for a money check. We left $7 on the table, but we controlled the back end of the auction. Looking back, we could have spent for Yunel Escobar or a better back end pitcher.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Here was the NL board:

http://www.rtsports.com/labr-nl-auction

[Greg Ambrosius]

Shawn and I had an aggressive plan last night to defend our LABR NL title and things went well even though we did make a failed attempt at Billy Hamilton. Here's how it played out:

C - Evan Gattis $16
C - Tim Federowicz $1
1B - Ryan Howard $14
2B - Josh Rutledge $7
SS - Hanley Ramirez $31
3B - Kris Bryant
MI - Troy Tulowitzki $28
CI - Ike Davis $8
UT - Dee Gordon $5
OF - Bryce Harper $32
OF - Jason Heyward $21
OF - Carl Crawford $17
OF - John Mayberry $1
OF - Josh Bell $1

P - Stephen Strasburg $27
P - Michael Wacha $16
P - Shelby Miller $13
P - Mike Leake $4
P - Josh Beckett $6
P - Travis Wood $3
P - Noah Syndergaard $4
P - Drew Storen $2
P - JJ Putz $2

Reserves: Edinson Volquez, Bobby Abreu, Rafael Montero, Jonathan Gray, Kevin Slowey

Thoughts?

[76erfan]

howard at 14 could be good value. seems healthy this year.

solid team.

You need Shelby Miller to be a legit #3 fantasy starter

did you guys come in with game plan to punt saves in both drafts or is that just kind of how the auction played out?

[Bronx Yankees]

Shawn - Thanks for the reply. It is interesting reading about the pre-draft strategy and then seeing how it played out.

I agree about Howard potentially being a very good buy. Similarly, if he can stay healthy throughout the preseason, I'm starting to warm to Josh Beckett as the Dodgers' fifth starter. He doesn't have to regain all of his old form to earn a profit. Very good team, very good home ballpark, very good supporting bullpen ....

While the NL team certainly has a number of stars, it seems like less of an extreme stars & scrubs team compared to the AL team. Good luck with both teams.

Mike

[Deadheadz]

Shawn and I had an aggressive plan last night to defend our LABR NL title and things went well even though we did make a failed attempt at Billy Hamilton. Here's how it played out:

C - Evan Gattis $16
C - Tim Federowicz $1
1B - Ryan Howard $14
2B - Josh Rutledge $7
SS - Hanley Ramirez $31
3B - Kris Bryant
MI - Troy Tulowitzki $28
CI - Ike Davis $8
UT - Dee Gordon $5
OF - Bryce Harper $32
OF - Jason Heyward $21
OF - Carl Crawford $17
OF - John Mayberry $1
OF - Josh Bell $1

P - Stephen Strasburg $27
P - Michael Wacha $16
P - Shelby Miller $13
P - Mike Leake $4
P - Josh Beckett $6
P - Travis Wood $3
P - Noah Syndergaard $4
P - Drew Storen $2
P - JJ Putz $2

Reserves: Edinson Volquez, Bobby Abreu, Rafael Montero, Jonathan Gray, Kevin Slowey

Thoughts?

Bryant priceless? Just curious.

We're you planning to not draft a closer or was it more circumstance that led you to just setup men? (edit: didn't know you could trade for a closer in season).

[BK METS]

Shawn and I had an aggressive plan last night to defend our LABR NL title and things went well even though we did make a failed attempt at Billy Hamilton. Here's how it played out:

C - Evan Gattis $16
C - Tim Federowicz $1
1B - Ryan Howard $14
2B - Josh Rutledge $7
SS - Hanley Ramirez $31
3B - Kris Bryant
MI - Troy Tulowitzki $28
CI - Ike Davis $8
UT - Dee Gordon $5
OF - Bryce Harper $32
OF - Jason Heyward $21
OF - Carl Crawford $17
OF - John Mayberry $1
OF - Josh Bell $1

P - Stephen Strasburg $27
P - Michael Wacha $16
P - Shelby Miller $13
P - Mike Leake $4
P - Josh Beckett $6
P - Travis Wood $3
P - Noah Syndergaard $4
P - Drew Storen $2
P - JJ Putz $2

Reserves: Edinson Volquez, Bobby Abreu, Rafael Montero, Jonathan Gray, Kevin Slowey

Thoughts?

Very nice for NL Only. Big names and trade chips all over the place! Carl Crawford saying he will steal 40 this year might be a blessing in disguise. Starters are very solid.

[Greg Ambrosius]

howard at 14 could be good value. seems healthy this year.

solid team.

You need Shelby Miller to be a legit #3 fantasy starter

did you guys come in with game plan to punt saves in both drafts or is that just kind of how the auction played out?

Yes, we've punted saves every draft every year for the last 5 years together. Three teams punted saves in the NL last night. If we get enough SPs we can trade for saves during the season. Last year in the NL we punted saves and still wound up with 5 points. The fact that this is a trading league makes it worthwhile to add another $17 SP instead of just one closer because you can trade for that one category later.

[Deadheadz]

I went to the LABR NL draft board link...

Bryant for $1 could be HUGE value. I'm thinking 2nd half monster but anything could happen in spring training.

[DOUGHBOYS]

howard at 14 could be good value. seems healthy this year.

solid team.

You need Shelby Miller to be a legit #3 fantasy starter

did you guys come in with game plan to punt saves in both drafts or is that just kind of how the auction played out?

Yes, we've punted saves every draft every year for the last 5 years together. Three teams punted saves in the NL last night. If we get enough SPs we can trade for saves during the season. Last year in the NL we punted saves and still wound up with 5 points. The fact that this is a trading league makes it worthwhile to add another $17 SP instead of just one closer because you can trade for that one category later.

Trading stinks.
If only somebody could come up with a high end fantasy league with no trading.
I bet it would be really popular.

[Schwks]

that team of Lawr's is godawful...how did he do that?

[Greg Ambrosius]

I was listening to SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio yesterday afternoon during my drive to Chicago and former Mets GM Steve Phillips was talking about LABR. He liked our team in the AL and then he reviewed the NL and had positive things to say about our NL roster. At the end he said, "there's one team that jumps off the page in both leagues and that's the teams of Greg Ambrosius and Shawn Childs."

Now jumping off the page can mean many things, but it was kind of cool to hear a former GM (insert jokes from Yankees fans here) say how much he liked our two teams. When he said we nailed the NL with the best offense and then a great staff, that was pretty cool to hear. I hope he knows what he's talking about!!

All I know is that we didn't get Andy Dirks or Cameron Maybin. Last year we lost Mark Teixeira and Adam Eaton the week after the draft, so we're off to a better start already!! Let's hope the good health continues.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Shawn was back on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio this morning with Dr. Roto talking about our two LABR auctions. I swear, that guy gets more air time on that channel than anyone else in the industry!! You're becoming a media darling, Shawn!!

Good stuff this morning.