Greg & Shawn Competing In LABR AL & NL Auctions

[Greg Ambrosius]

Here's our ugly NL LABR squad:

C - Yasmani Grandal $11
C - J.T. Realmuto $1
1B - Pedro Alvarez $23
2B - Dee Gordon $26
SS - Andrelton Simmons $13
3B - Kris Bryant $16
CI - Ryan Howard $15
MI - J.P. Crawford $1
UT - Hector Olivares $2
OF - Billy Hamilton $27
OF - Curtis Granderson $11
OF - Mark Trumbo $20
OF - Melvin Upton $5
OF - Grady Sizemore $1

P - Stephen Strasburg $27
P - Johnny Cueto $20
P - Jose Fernandez $8
P - Zach Wheeler $12
P - Dan Haren $2
P - Tim Lincecum $2
P - Rafael Montero $1
P - Drew Storen $15
P - Jason Grilli $1

Reserves:
Mike Olt
Steven Piscotty
Jonathan Gray
Aaron Nola
Cesar Hernandez
Eugenio Suarez

Thoughts?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Here were the top bids in the NL LABR:

Clayton Kershaw $40
Andrew McCutchen $39
Paul Goldschmidt $38
Giancarlo Stanton $36
Max Scherzer $32
Carlos Gomez $32
Starling Marte $32
Anthony Rendon $31
Yasiel Puig $30
Ryan Braun $30
Anthony Rizzo $30
Freddie Freeman $30
Troy Tulowitzki $28
Ian Desmond $28
Bryce Harper $28

Thoughts?

[Attie]

Schwks wrote:
Every year I look at the results of draft and I wonder what Lawr Michaels has been smoking. $40 for Kershaw when Scherzer, next highest sp, went for 32 is flat out just bad strategy. Then he sat on $211 for about 90 minutes and really didn't get a quality bat in his entire lineup. Im no "expert" but does that guy ever place?


If you've read the book "Fantasyland", then you'll know what Lawr smokes on a regular basis..........really great, funny guy......I remember the first time I went to the NFBC several years ago, Lawr was the draftmaster for my draft, and a guy went up and introduced himself to Lawr........Lawr asked him if he knew who he was, and when the guy said "no", Lawr said "are you new to the fantasy industry?"...........

[Greg Ambrosius]

This weekend in Phoenix is the 23rd annual USA Today LABR Auction Leagues. You can hear them live on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio on Saturday at 7 pm ET and Sunday at 7 pm ET. The AL auction is Saturday and the NL Auction is Sunday.

I am the last original member of LABR, having joined in 1994 by invitation of John Hunt, then the editor of USA Today Baseball Weekly. John assembled a crew that included myself, Ron Shandler, Bill James, Keith Olbermann, Peter Gammons, Danny Sheridan, Paul White and several USA Today writers. The first two years of LABR were phone auctions, which as you can imagine was a zoo that took over 6 hours. My ear is still sore from that debut AL Auction.

Anyway, I'm joined once again by NFBC Hall of Famer Shawn Childs, who led our team to the LABR NL Auction in 2013. We've incorporated some wild strategies in the past and I'm sure we'll do it again this year. Tonight is our night for planning the AL Auction and having a little fun. I'm sure you can imagine who we are targeting as our foundation.

Last year we gave it a great run in the NL, but finished 3rd. I think we finished 4th or 5th in the AL as we just didn't have enough pitching to contend in the AL. As I look back at our AL auction, we had so many misses, but think about this AL roster: Trout, Betts, Correa and Lindor. Correa went in the 5th round of the reserve draft in an AL-only league. Crazy. But we missed on every pitcher except Sonny Gray and we just never could contend for enough pitching points to win it all.

Here was our AL roster last year:

C - Dionar Navarro $8
C - Alex Avila $2
1B - Prince Fielder $30
2B - Jason Kipnis $27
SS - Francisco Lindor $5
3B - Pablo Sandoval $23
CI - C.J. Cron $8
MI - Nick Franklin $8
UT - Mitch Moreland $7
OF - Mike Trout $44
OF - Mookie Betts $22
OF - Allen Craig $5
OF - Michael Choice $1
OF - Kevin Pillar $1

P - Sonny Gray $19
P - Drew Smyly $16
P - Justin Verlander $11
P - Kevin Gausman $14
P - Clay Buccholz $5
P - Erik Johnson $1
P - Tommy Hunter $1
P - Brandon Finnegan $1
P - Michael Tonkin $1

Reserves:
Matt Dominquez
Craig Gentry
Carlos Sanchez
Hector Olivares
Carlos Correa
Gordon Beckham

We have to do better this year and we will.

Any tips you can give us, we'll listen. That doesn't mean we'll use them, but we'll listen. Have fun at our expense on this thread and just realize that Shawn and I and Steve Fiore and Mike O'Connor are all going to a ballgame today with the temps supposed to set a record today of 90. Eat your hearts out on the East Coast and in the Midwest!!

We'll update everything here. Enjoy.

[Philly High Hopes]

Pillar for $1 wasn't too shabby either.

Prediction: Trout and Betts cost you $66 last year. You'll roster both again this year for a combined $80.

[Greg Ambrosius]

It's time to get aggressive tonight in the AL Auction. Should be fun. Listen in as start time is an hour from now.

[Philly High Hopes]

I nailed Betts at $35 but thought you'd pair it with a $45 Trout. You went with Correa instead. Unless Trout can return to 20+ SBs, he's a borderline $40 player. A lot nicer getting Correa in the reserve round last year, huh?!

[Philly High Hopes]

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

[Greg Ambrosius]

It was an interesting night in AL LABR as Shawn and I actually showed a little restraint last night. For the first time since he entered the majors, we didn't get Mike Trout on our NFBC team. We bid $8 for him as a rookie and have had him ever since. We were going to make him the foundation piece again last night, but we knew he would go a bit high for our plan and was ready for a contingency plan. When he went $42, we moved on.

We knew we were going after Carlos Correa and Mookie Betts with one more bat to follow. We also knew we'd likely punt saves again. We didn't expect to spend $199 on hitting and $61 on pitching because last year we didn't have enough arms and it cost us a title. We weren't going to let that happen again. But we got some starters for cheap and used the extra money on hitting.

Here's how our team finished out. Let's see some feedback:

C - Jarrod Saltalamacchia $1
C - Mike Zunino $1 (okay, so we also punted Catchers)
1B - Jose Abreu $30
2B - Dustin Pedroia $17
SS - Carlos Correa $35
3B - Nick Castellanos $13
CI - Pablo Sandoval $11
MI - Jimmy Rollins $9
UT - Kendrys Morales $14
OF - Mookie Betts $35
OF - Delino DeShields $17
OF - Rusney Castillo $9
OF - Chris Young $1
OF - Desmond Jennings $5

P - Marcus Stroman $16
P - Sonny Gray $22
P - Luis Severino $13
P - Matt Moore $3
P - Mat Latos $3
P - CC Sabathia $1
P - Yovanni Gallardo $1
P - Jered Weaver $1
P - Keone Kela $1

Have at it!!

[Greg Ambrosius]

Top bids last night included:

Mike Trout $42
Miguel Cabrera $36
Carlos Correa $35
Mookie Betts $35
Jose Altuve $33
Chris Davis $31
George Springer $30
Jose Bautista $30
Edwin Encarnacion
Jose Abreu $30

Chris Sale $33
David Price $29
Corey Kluber $28
Dallas Keuchel $26
Felix Hernandez $25
Carlos Carrasco $24
Chris Archer $24
Sonny Gray $22
Garrett Richards $22
Cole Hamels $22
Danny Salazar $22

Wade Davis $21
Craig Kimbrel $21
Cody Allen $17
Zach Britton $17

[mdecav]

C - Jarrod Saltalamacchia $1
C - Mike Zunino $1 (okay, so we also punted Catchers)
1B - Jose Abreu $30
2B - Dustin Pedroia $17
SS - Carlos Correa $35
3B - Nick Castellanos $13
CI - Pablo Sandoval $11
MI - Jimmy Rollins $9
UT - Kendrys Morales $14
OF - Mookie Betts $35
OF - Delino DeShields $17
OF - Rusney Castillo $9
OF - Chris Young $1
OF - Desmond Jennings $5

P - Marcus Stroman $16
P - Sonny Gray $22
P - Luis Severino $13
P - Matt Moore $3
P - Mat Latos $3
P - CC Sabathia $1
P - Yovanni Gallardo $1
P - Jered Weaver $1
P - Keone Kela $1

Have at it!!

Stroman/Gray/Severino/Kela perfectly fine. The rest of the pitchers... yikes. I'd rather have had Duffey at $3, and Bassitt, Colome and May at a buck. Chris Young at a buck was nice. I would never leave myself with $7 with 7 picks to go because that doesn't leave me with any options if another team bids on a guy I like.

[Bjs2025]

Looking at the results I'm pretty sure Larry already won the league. Why was Jose Altuve bought in an AL only for $33? And he gets the top 2 catchers both for discounts. Pretty amazing.

[Captain Hook]

Pedroia for $17? Castellanos and Panda for double digits?

I think that money could have been spend elsewhere to make the team better

I don't mind the cheap pitching grabs (with the exception of Gallardo pitching in Camden Yards and the AL Beast)


Who did you get for reserves?

[Edwards Kings]

Interesting. I would like to know the thinking around some of the back-end purchases like Jennings, Moore, and Latos? I admit to scratching my head about $28 bucks on Pedroia and Sandoval, but I was not in on the auction so I do not know the circumstances.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Sorry about not posting our NL LABR auction team before leaving Phoenix. It was a wild night and an early morning.

The NL Auction did not go as planned for several reasons. One of them was the fact that two owners chose to spend $224 each on hitting and $36 on pitching, which made it tough for others to get the offensive players they wanted. Second was the aggressive nature of the Starting Pitching bidding. There were no bargains there, so you had to dive in and deal with the end game later. Everyone was doing that as there were 45 $1 players at the end. Crazy.

Here's the complete draft board:

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

This was a tough one. Here's our NL team:

C - Tom Murphy $3
C - Christian Bethancourt $1
1B - Wil Myers $20
2B - Jace Peterson $10
SS - Jose Reyes $12
3B - Kris Bryant $30
CI - Matt Adams $9
MI - J.P. Crawford $3
UT - Carl Crawford $6
OF - Jay Bruce $19
OF - Joc Pederson $17
OF - Jason Werth $12
OF - Matt Holliday $15
OF - Gregory Polanco $25

P - Max Scherzer $33
P - Matt Harvey $25
P - Steven Matz $13
P - Tom Koehler $1
P - Archie Bradley $1
P - Jose DeLeon $1
P - Jeremy Hellickson $1
P - Tony Cingrani $1

Reserves: Chase Utley
Pete O'Brien
David Dahl
Clayton Blackburn
Rafael Montero
Stephen Drew

Thoughts?

[Philly High Hopes]

Generally speaking on the NL, I didn't think there were very many hitting bargains. Maybe the 2 hitter heavy owners pushed this market up. Conversely, I think this opened up a number of pitching bargains in the $8-14 range. Also, while closers are a mess in the NL, I'm surprised how little the projected closers went for: McGee $9, Ramos $9, Casilla $8, Hernandez $5, W. Smith $4, Hoover $2. I realize these aren't premium options, but some are worth it on speculation alone.

[Captain Hook]

Again with the punting on catchers and closers

I understand not wanting to pay so much for closers but in every draft there are some closers (okay call some marginal closers but if they have the job they have some leash) available for cheap. True you can chase them during the year but at least draft some high strikeout relievers who might inherit the job

BUT punting catchers is not a great strategy - at the end of the draft they aren't many if any catchers who will contribute to your counting stats so you end up with a pair of relative zeroes. OTOH there are always some outfielders who will have a lot more at bats than bad catchers (who also make a negative contributions with their few at bats) and can score some runs and steal some bases.

IF you disagree with that, WHO is the winningest player in LABR & TOUT? Look at any of Larry Schecter's teams and you will see he doesn't buy the expensive catchers but he always has two who will contribute to his team's stats