End of May and we are about one-third of the way through the season. I haven’t added anything here for a while…but we know a few things by now.
Too late to be early….too early to know how it is going to turn out. By now our teams personalities have started to show themselves. So much we assumed about our teams after the drafts have proven that once again, our crystal balls are a bit murky. Got Betts (ADP #6)…smiley face. Got Kershaw (ADP #5)…not so much. But it goes deeper than that. Thought you had saves locked down? Were you right? Steals? Power? Starters? As always, the draft (especially live) is the funnest part of the event (winning is the most gratifying, but the draft is fun) but as of right now we are hip deep in the marathon (or 26 consecutive sprints if that is your perspective) of in-season management…the grunt work.
Managing your free agent budget is part of that in-season management. You have four months left to go. How much do you want to have for the last month…the stretch run? Have you been miserly…still have more than half? Already been all in on a few players? How has that worked out for you? Absent trades the only way to improve our teams is through the FA pool, one of the reasons we use our FA budget. The other…to fill the hole left by the (damn) 10-Day DL especially if we are not blessed with a reserve roster player just to slide in. For example, catchers…few of us “waste” one of our precious seven reserve spots for catchers, so when one of ours goes on the DL, we start looking to see if Sal Butera can help us. I do not know how many of the 252 free agents purchased in my league through last Sunday fall into the DL class, but here is a little I do know:
1) Those 252 winning bids have used up $8,231 (or 55%) of the $15,000 to available FA money. Using more than half in the first third of the season is reasonable especially if you want to invest in players you want to get material use out of this season.
2) The problem is churn. So 119 of those 252 players have already been released. If you go back two weeks (i.e. so players bought Sunday would not have been released yet and the players bought two Sundays ago may mostly still have some use), 114 of 190 players have been churned (60%).
3) We hold our high dollar purchases a bit more (which is good). Only three of ten (again only going through 5/13) with $100 plus ($105 to $659) have been cut. There have been 24 winning bids of $50 to $99 ($50 to $94). 15 (62.5%) have already been released. 19 of 43 (43%) of those winning bids down to $25 have churned. And so on. In short, that is $3,407 of FA money no longer on our rosters.
4) I have been mostly in the filling injury holes mode. I have won 23 players, of which 16 (nearly 70%) are no longer on my team. Ouch, but with losing Andrus and Souza for most of the year I have been churning….mostly outfielders…as well as a couple of catchers early. Having Logan Morrison as my primary 1B has had me putting out a few flyers on guys who might get “hot” in that role.
5) Of those 252 winning bids, 160 (63%) had at least one runner up bid. That means just under 37% (92 winning bids) had no runner up bid.
6) Other than an ill-timed $659 (highest bid so far this year in my league) bid on Tyler O’Neill (who was subsequently released) that had no runner-up bid, the highest bid for a no-runner-up bid player was $64.
7) 169 of 252 players purchased (67%...that is two-thirds for you non-accountants) could have been won for $10 of less. That would have been $1,690 in FA money. Instead, we spent just over $3,000.
8) For the other 83 players, we spent $5,229. Total RU bids….$3,438.
In my league, as I have found in most years I have played, there is a pretty even split between misers and spenders. Five teams have $330 or less left (two less than $100) and includes two teams in the top five as of 5/27. Welcome to the bargain basement. Five teams have between $561 and $428. Please, welcome to the store…and use the front door. Five teams have between $627 and $854 (spend some money will you Roy! You are just holding it to piss me off, aren’t you?)
. Two of the top five teams are in this group and when we get to the store, we get the concierge service (in the South that means you get a Royal Crown cola AND a Moonpie!). I am in this no-spend group, well behind Roy with $700 remaining. My goal, as in prior years, is to enter the last month with at least $75-$100 left. If I want somebody in slack September when we are all scrambling for AB, starts, and saves, I want to be able to get them.
Up until then, I have enough to make a big play (think Bellinger from last year if I can do a better job of recognizing the impact) or two until I join the other losers in the bargain basement.
For my team, I know I have been very lucky on some fronts. While I have popped a few small bids on potential third closers (two of twenty-three players purchased…O’Day $1 and released, Oh $13). I needed two catchers early (Pina and Butera…together $26 total), I have spent $43 on five cornermen hoping to catch a little lightning. I did get lucky there for example with a $3 Matt Adams, though when Murphy, Zimmerman and Eaton comes back, he will play much less. I have also spent $153 dollars on nine outfielders to shore up the weakest area of my team…one last week (Calhoun $25) and three others still on my team and starting (Profar $21, Heredia $13, and Joyce $12). Man, I need Souza and K. Davis back.
The luck is in pitching. With the exception of Ryu, who I still was able to use for six starts with excellent results, and the week where deGrom was/wasn’t hurt, I have been pretty healthy there. All of my 75 starts, except four, have come from the starters I drafted. I streamed Wainwright for one (7 IP, 3 ER) just because I liked the matchup (Milwaukee) and Yarbrough for thee (yes, I know someone else “started” two of them, but he was the true starter…2 wins, 18.1 IP, 1.47 ERA, 1.09 WHIP). I still have Yarbrough on my team ($12 of the $64 total I spent on starters so far), Wainwright, Brault, and Andriese (twice) not so much.
Anyway, just some dribble on free agents and free agent money management.
Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You 'take in' a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.
Charles Krauthammer
