Mastersball

Each week, your friends at Mastersball will post the results of the weekly LABR FAAB run, featuring the winning bid as well as the runner-up bids. There are three LABR leagues, a 12-team AL only, 13-team NL only and 15-team Mixed League. You can see the complete standings for each league by clicking on the appropriate heading, located just under each player photo.

Included with each league report will be commentary from a Mastersball staff member participating in that league. We invite you to ask questions and post comments at the bottom of the report.

PLEASE NOTE: Beginning this week, all contingency bid for awarded players are included. Sometimes, this bid is a contingency bid tied to a player that owner received, so at times the bid amount is larger than the winning bid. We are including it to provide as much information and context as possible with each report.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Perry Van Hook's Commentary:

Well color me mildly surprised by this weeks’ free agent bidding in LABR AL. I had thought that Andy Pettitte and some of the recently promoted outfielders would get the largest bids.

Right on Pettitte as he did draw several double digit bids – the winner $34 from Nate Ravitz (ESPN). But wrong on Daniel Nava who went for only $6 to Jason Collette; and on Xavier Avery as the Baltimore outfielder went for just $2 to Colton & Wolf (Full Moon Sports); but that was two dollars more than Darin Mastroianni of Minnesota who wasn’t added by any team despite being on a few lists. No what generated the surprise bids this week were two of my former players who weren’t hitting .300 combined when I released them last week – 1B Casey Kotchman who got $23 from Larry Schechter (Sandlot Shrink), and Trevor Plouffe who went for $13 to Nick Minnix (KFFL). Let’s see how long they last on those two rosters.

I decided to watch this week and thus move up the FAAB list by lack of subtraction as I didn’t feel strongly about Pettitte and didn’t have a place for the outfielders. Besides the best dollars spent last week were my $4 on Minnesota’s Scott Diamond who recorded two wins without giving up any earned runs as my team bounced up several places in the standings.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Lawr Michaels' Commentary:

MIXED LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Todd Zola's Commentary:

And the poor get poorer. I am usually quite objective when it comes to self-analysis and in all my years of doing this. I hsve never been so high on a team leaving the draft only to have it all crumble down. On top of everything else, I lost Wilson Ramos, probably for the season. The thing is, I am heavily invested in Ramos and spent much of last evening beating deadlines. I knew I had him in Mixed LABR as well, but with the Monday deadline, I figured I'd do it in the morning -- OOPS!!! I committed the cardinal sin and simply forgot to replace Ramos this week. So not only do have a week of goose-eggs coming up, the available receiver inventory has thinned.

Lost in all the pitching moves this week is Clay's capture of Will Middlebrooks. The Red Sox rookie third baseman is both a performance and playing time risk going forward, but he is the kind of gamble that helps pay off big later, especially if the rumors are true and Youkilis is on the trading block, Middlebrooks will continue to receive fulltime run.