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

Not having enough money or faith to bid on Chris Tillman, and not feeling desperate for saves I don’t think Brett Myers will get in Chicago, I thought my only bid this week would be on a MI to replace the demoted Will Rhymes.  So I bid a buck each on Ryan Flaherty, BAL; Danny Worth, DET; and Omar Vizquel, TOR. Then I noticed Blake Beavan was available this week and put in a three dollar bid for him to replace the fading Freddy Garcia. I won Beavan, lost Flaherty for $4 to BBQ’s Dave Adler and got Worth.

Tillman ($14) and Myers ($8) as I suspected went for too many FAAB dollars although Nick Minnix (KFFL) obviously felt otherwise.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Lawr Michaels' Commentary

With the big Houston/Toronto swap of earlier in the week, along with the pending trade deadline, the FAAB wallets were open and moving.

Of course, with the expanded playoff format, the question of deadline trades is indeed in question, but since my Mastersball team had a chunk of change going in ($86), and since there were four other teams with even more money, I decided to shoot the wad this week, grabbing Ben Francisco ($17) for Matt Diaz, and then nabbing Ryan Wheeler (a pricey $35) to replace Jonathan Herrera. A week earlier I had swapped for Troy Tulowitzki, my hope is a power surge over the last six weeks of the season (or whenever Tulo is back) will push me somewhere above the 60 points where I have been languishing, mostly due to lack of said power.

Not that I was the only guy willing to spend, as Steve Moyer was proactively guarding his first place dumping Cody Ransom in lieu of a $4 Marwin Gonzalez.

But, Derek Carty was the big spender, acquiring would be Houston closer Francisco Cordero for $37 smackers.

What did surprise me was though there is always the need for starting pitchers, let alone strikeouts, no one made a single crap shoot bid on new Rockies hurler Jonathan Sanchez.

On the Willy Loman front, Travis Ishikawa was nabbed by Rick Wolf and Glenn Colton for a buck. That would make this the fifth acquisition transaction--and fourth team--for Ishikawa out of the free agent pool this year (the Sirius/XM team grabbed him twice).

I guess it has been that kind of year.

MIXED LEAGUE

PLAYERS AWARDED

UNAWARDED CONTINGENCY BIDS

Todd Zola's Commentary

Note to those that think you can wait on pitching in drafts because decent starters always emerge in season: Jeff Karstens, Kevin Correia, Josh Collmenter and Joe Kelly. Do you still feel that way?

I'm not saying that Josh Rutledge, Anthony Gose and Alexi Amarista are the cat's meow, but position players with a pulse are less likely to hurt you than the pitchers that have been available lately.

This week's closer derby is headed by Francisco Cordero who is supposed to be taking over the departed Brett Myers, but Bobby Colton is hoping Wilton Lopez and his outstanding peripherals are given a shot. I'll bet Bobby gets more bang for his $6 on Lopez than BBHQ gets on the $19 they spent on Cordero.

On the other hand, Mike Podherzer may end up with the best bargain of all with his $1 Sean Doolittle. We like to talk about luck with starters, but there may not be a more fortunate hurler than Ryan Cook.