Mastersball

Each week, your friends at Mastersball will post the results of the weekly LABR FAAB run, featuring the winning bid as well a 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.

All contingency bids for awarded players are included. Sometimes, this bid is tied to a player that the 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, I had two holes to fill this morning with Andy Dirks on the DL and Nathan Adcock sent to the minors – that would have been more interesting if there were some good players to bid on but the wire had bodies but not much interest this week. Or so I thought. I made one dollar bids on several decent relievers to fill my slot as there were no SP – topping Nate Jones, Koji Uehara, and Hector Santiago with a four dollar bid for the Mariners’ Stephen Pryor. Well Nick Minnix, KFFL also bid four and Chris Liss, Rotowire bid five but we were all short of USA Today’s Steve Gardner who put a nine spot on the hard throwing Pryor. That said I don’t see him getting very many save chances for a manager who said we brought him up out of necessity not to reward him for his pitching this year. Still relievers who throw 100 mph tend to grow on managers. Nate Jones who I landed also throws hard and if it weren’t for Addison Reed being a year ahead of him on the White Sox pecking order might have gotten some opportunities. I needed any hitter to take Dirks' UT spot and just tried a buck each for Steve Pearce, BAL; Steven Tolleson, another Oriole, and Jayson Nix, NYY who I won. Anyone bidding six dollars to get Nick Punto qualifies as desperate - but Gardner was replacing a hole on his roster and he did have to bid four to land the Boston middle infielder.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Lawr Michaels' Commentary

Lawr is covering the SF Giants game today for mlb.com, so he has entrusted Todd Zola to add his $.02 to the NL LABR FAAB.

Todd Zola's Commentary

Geez, I wish I could play in a league with these bozos.

Andrelton Simmons was the big catch this week. Simmons almost broke camp with the Braves, but Tyler Pastornicky was given first dibs at the SS gig and obviously came up short. Simmons' walk and contact rates portend to decent on base skills, which could result in some steals for Rotowire's Dalton Del Don. This was a very nice pickup since Dalton is at the bottom of a tightly clustered group in the steals category so there are points to be had.

Alex Castellanos also drew some serious interest with Tristan H. Cockcroft of ESPN leading the way. Castellanos is also a stolen base threat. He's an outfielder by trade, but has dabbled recently at second base. His profile is a bit odd as he strikes out a ton, but also walks a ton. The amount of playing time he gets while Matt Kemp recovers from his hamstring injury will likely depend on which of those two skills carry over the the Bigs. If Castellanos can make decent contact, he can be a sparkplug type and the Dodgers have ample moving parts to get him in the lineup.

Brett Wallace is going to be interesting to follow and I suspect Doug Dennis is hoping he hits well enough in Carlos Lee's stead that Houston is comfortable dealing El Caballero, paving the way for regular at bats for Wallace.

MIXED LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Todd Zola's Commentary

When you draft Troy Tulowitzki, you do so expecting a DL stint or two and hoping for that 3 week stretch where he is the best hitter on the planet -- one down, one to go. I opted for Lonnie Chisenhall (I have Sean Rodriguez to scoot around) instead of Andrelton Simmons, mainly because I am so far behind in steals it is not worth trying to catch up, I just take the "1" and try to pump up the other categories. Chisenhall appears to have handled his being set to Triple-A to begin the season well and is a good bet to keep the hot corner job in Cleveland.

In case you do not know of Fred Zinkie of mlb.com, he is quietly one of the better players in the mixed format and showed why with a nice snag of Michael Fiers, starting for Marco Estrada in Milwaukee. If Randy Wolf continues to struggle, Fiers could remain in the rotation even when Estrada is ready. It will be interesting to track Fiers versus Nathan Eovaldi, another young starting pitcher. Apparently, Fred wanted Eovaldi more than Fiers, but fell short to Rotowire's Derek Van Riper. I'm not so sure Fred won't be glad his Eovaldi bid came up a buck short.