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DownloadIn the last log, we discussed the basics of freeze lists for keeper leagues. Today I want to look at some specific players and strategies that were used in AL and NL keeper leagues and how they might help you with your keeper leagues either drafting this week or to store for incorporating in your leagues next year.
When you have a great freeze list you want to eliminate players that would weaken your attempt to win your league.
I know some of you hate drafting catchers at all, but in two catcher leagues, you are giving your opponents a huge advantage if your catchers are negatively affecting your stats. In this particular case, with an excellent freeze list a team decided since they had a $1 George Kottaras on their team from last season they would just freeze him. Kottaras is not a bad hitter, but he is not a starter in fact the reason he and Wil Nieves (who is a better hitter) are getting as many at bats as they have to date is because the Brewers starter, Jonathan Lucroy, broke a finger in spring training and is just now starting a rehab assignment. So Kottaras will soon get even fewer at bats and what will this team be able to get from the free agent list?
I know we all fall in love with the players WE picked for our Farm rosters, hoping these cheaper players would become All-Stars by the time they found their way on to our rosters. I really like Hank Conger who has been a minor league standout. But just because Conger made the Angels opening day roster, should I really keep him at $5 and take up my second catcher spot? In a normal year I might be tempted to keep him, but aside from the fact that the Angels have to make an upcoming roster change and the third catcher is likely to be the one heading to the minors, the fact that MLB started the season on a Thursday, together with the fact that cbs.sportsline and most other stat providers lumped those weekend series with the first full week into “Period 1” means you may have to be wary of lineup problems you might have for that first week. I thought of keeping him at catcher two (behind VMart) and then adding an everyday catcher at UT, but I may need the extra roster spot to deal with DL or bad performance issues for “Period 1”. Best to just swallow my pride and cut him – if I can’t get a catcher who will actually help my team maybe I can get Conger back for a couple of bucks and at least have a better keeper.
This of course is dependent on your view of your chances for this year. In general I strongly subscribe to the mantra of “Win this year” whenever possible. So unless you have a slam dunk player – read STUD that you need to extend (and in that case they will still give you a profit at their new price), extending a “nice” player for an extra year hurts you two ways. First, it takes a valuable five dollars out of your auction budget. Money you are definitely going to need to complete your roster. Secondly should tragedy beset your wonderful team, you have ruined a valuable trade chip because now you are not only emotionally and financially invested in the player, but if you do trade him you are giving the other team the advantage of having him as a keeper for next year when you really want him to be in the player pool for next year. Obviously if you are rebuilding or taking a two year plan for your team this would not apply.
Finally, tying all these things together, try and step back and take an impartial view of your players. You may love Daniel Bard – and have thought he would be the closer when/if Jonathan Papelbon imploded this year or signed a free agent contract with another team next year. BUT did you forget that the Red Sox signed Bobby Jenks to a TWO year contract? Bard’s chances of closing this year (or likely even next) now depend on BOTH Papelbon and Jenks failing…….I don’t like your chances and that might have been a very valuable roster spot you froze Bard into.
They ARE your players. They are NOT your children.
View the stats and fight the emotional attachment but more importantly don’t make mistakes in the financial commitment.
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Most redraft leagues finished drafting, although we did have a few finish up this weekend, but in a multi part portion of the log this week we want to address what is and should be a growing segment of fantasy baseball leagues – keeper leagues.
And I am not talking about freezing stadiums – you would think in today’s computer driven world of schedules that major league baseball could manage to have a schedule that puts games in the last week of March and the first few weeks of April in stadiums that are either in California, Florida, or have permanent or closable roofs. Why do they continue to make fans and players freeze (far less sympathy for the players with those per diem checks) in Cleveland, Chicago, New York, etc?
So I am going to discuss the art of making freeze lists and other aspects of keeper leagues that by definition should have these leagues drafting AFTER opening day. Because if you draft before opening day you don’t have true definition of major leaguers who should be in the auction pool and those players who are minor leaguers and thus would be ineligible to be drafted in the first portion of the draft. Optimally keeper leagues should have separate minor league drafts, but there are some who just put the minor leaguers into their reserve drafts.
Back to the freeze lists for players on our teams. First they should NEVER include players who started the previous season in the opposite league. Sure FAAB them if they are traded over (or signed as free agents) but they should automatically be taken off fantasy rosters at the end of the season.
There are several typed of players we want to keep for our team for this year:
1) Underpriced players who contribute useful stats
2) Young players whose value is rising
3) STUD players who are not overpriced*
I think the first two groups are almost universally agreed on (fantasy players are rarely in total agreement). These players generate a “profit” of their projected stat value over the salary they have. What is often neglected is the correct evaluation of STUD players – regardless of position who are the toughest to buy at auction regardless of the price.
If you have Miguel Cabrera in an AL only league and you purchased him last year at $41 – congratulations you paid less than most owners in most leagues and frankly you had him at a better price than I did. But I Froze Cabrera at $47 for his third and final year and he helped me win that league last year as well as two years ago. And in fact it wasn’t his fault (economically or stat wise) that my team didn’t win the league in the year in between.
Frankly I will be surprised if Cabrera and Adrian Gonzalez don’t push a $50 price tag in this year’s auction.
You may not value Cabrera as highly as I do, but a hitter with his degree of consistency and solid contribution in four categories is a dramatic anchor for any fantasy team. If we added the inflation factor that is extremely high in keeper leagues – and generally misapplied as Todd suggests in his numerology since the spending is not linear – the one dollar players still go for one dollar – you can see why auction salaries on Pujols, Cabrera, Crawford (at least the version that steals 50+ bases), or Halladay are justified in being so high. The cost certainty is another very important factor. It is very difficult to judge the price to pay for other players at the same position should they be nominated for auction before Cabrera (or Pujols).
Conversely here are some types of players you should definitely NOT be freezing:
1) Players who cannot justify the salary for this year in any way shape or form but the reason you are keeping them is to avoid paying money (whether for contract termination or FAAB penalties) into the league pool. Whatever those costs might be the should be considered as sunk costs for last year’s team and not hamper your efforts to win this year.
2) Pitchers who just had a career year (unless there has been a solid, upward progression of their stats and they are still young enough to believe they will continue to improve)
3) Players coming off serious injury where you have not been able to ascertain their level of recovery to excel at a very hard athletic competition.
4) Hitters whose playing time is in serious jeopardy (to the best of collective knowledge) at your freeze deadline. As an example, I had a very nice $4 Felix Pie from last year’s auction that I had planned on keeping. When the Orioles signed Vlad, the number of at bats for Pie took a serious hit, and Nolan Reimold having a better spring didn’t help either. Now Pie may earn the same amount – heck he might even get the previously hoped-for at-bats, but it is not something I should have paid for at the time.
I will have another posting of the log with some specific players and price considerations later this week – there are many keeper leagues that will be drafting through this week and weekend with opening day changed to a Thursday and those leagues not being able to draft last weekend. If there are specific players you have questions about, feel free to list them and their prices here or on the message board and I will be glad to add them to the article.
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I spent the weekend in Las Vegas trying to put together a team that could win the World Championship of Fantasy Baseball. One I drafted last Friday night where I had the first pick and took Albert Pujols. The second team will be drafted tomorrow, Saturday morning and I will have the eighth pick, so as I write this intro on Friday, after the first draft, I have no idea who I will get. So let’s see how these two rosters took shape.
Friday night – “Captain Morgan” the team name for myself and partner Greg Morgan will start the draft of thirty two players with Cardinals 1B Albert Pujols. That part is easy: waiting two full rounds to see who this league leaves us at 2.14 and 3.01 is torture.
BTW: The format for WCOFB teams is twenty four active players (14 hitters and ten pitchers) with eight reserves. The ten pitchers each period (two lineup periods each week, M-TH and F-SU) must have six starting pitchers, two relievers, and two "free pitchers" FP which means starters or relievers. This change gives more importance to your pitching staff in total as you will be trying to maximize your starts and in addition maximizing strikeouts with your non-starter and non-closer pitchers.
So what did they leave us after the first twenty seven picks?
A set of choices I had not seen before or even thought of, largely because the first pitcher taken off the boards was Roy Halladay at 2.12. When the pick at 2.13 was Andrew McCutchen what was left was second baseman Ian Kinsler and pitchers Felix Hernandez AND Tim Lincecum. We briefly flirted with taking both pitchers but decided on Kinsler and King Felix. On the 4/5 turn we got pitcher Dan Haren and took a slight gamble, but one with a lot of upside in outfielder Drew Stubbs.
Here is the final team with rounds in parentheses:
C – Mike Napoli (7) & Jake Fox* (24)
CI –Albert Pujols (1), Ty Wigginton (17), & Aubrey Huff (8)
MI –Ian Kinsler (2), Rafael Furcal (10), and Danny Espinosa (11)
OF –Drew Stubbs (5), Manny Ramirez (9), Austin Jackson (13), Peter Bourjos (14), & Juan Rivera (22)
UT –Kila Ka'aihue (15)
Reserves –Mike Moustakas, Dustin Ackley, John Jaso, and Kevin Kouzmanoff
*Last year Fox played nineteen games at catcher and thirteen in the outfield and ten at first base. So in leagues where position qualifications are twenty games or most games played, Fox may qualify at catcher if they don’t count games at DH (and many mixed leagues don’t). Now I don’t think Fox is moving Wieters aside, but I do think Buck Showalter is a smart enough manager to not sit down the spring training leader in home runs while Fox is that red-hot. Maybe it is a game at catcher and a game at DH and a game at first base and a game in the outfield. With that kind of power I would be happy if he were in the lineup four days a week. And perhaps Derrek Lee is not ready to play at first base on opening day. But I added a third catcher that would be playable just in case the Fox cools off.
SP – Felix Hernandez (3), Dan Haren (4), Jeremy Hellickson (12), Ricj Porcello (20), Brian Duensing (21), & R.A. Dickey (23)
RP –Neftali Feliz (6), Jonny Venters (16), Hong-Chih Kuo (18), & Jose Contreras (??)
Reserves – J.A. Happ, Clay Hensley, Jon Garland, & Dennis Reyes
It looks like the team has plenty of power and speed but batting average could be an issue. I like the starters and we will have to supplement them depending on how Happ looks, how long Garland is out, and whether former Atlanta Braves prospect JoJo Reyes can continue to pitch as well in the Toronto rotation as he has in spring training. His first two starts are home vs Minnesota and Oakland, so that looks favorable and then we see how he does and when Brandon Morrow comes back.
Saturday morning – This draft would be from the eighth spot and perhaps a slightly tougher field. Again the first two pitchers (Halladay and Lincecum) were taken at 2.13 and 2.14. But from there more were taken earlier than the previous day.
We started with Miguel Cabrera and were happy to select Nelson Cruz in the second round. I was slightly startled but very happy to have Felix Hernandez slip all the way to 3.08 and join us again. In the fourth we got Hunter Pence and in the fifth shortstop Alexei Ramirez. In the sixth round I was very happy to have Dan Haren fall into my lap…..are you sensing something here? Those picks were followed by Pedro Alvarez, Mike Napoli (more than a round later), Gordon Beckham, and then as fate or my man crush would have it – Jeremy Hellickson.
Maybe we should change the team name to the “Three H Club”?
So here is that team:
C –Mike Napoli (8), and Jake Fox (18)
CI –Miguel Cabrera (1), Pedro Alvarez (7), and Adam LaRoche (14)
MI –Gordon Beckham (9), Alexi Ramirez (5), and Danny Espinosa (15)
OF –Nelson Cruz (2), Hunter Pence (4), Andres Torres (12), Peter Bourjos (16), and Jason Kubel (22)
UT – Juan Rivera (24)
Reserves – Julio Borbon, Reid Brignac, and Jonathan Lucroy
SP – Felix Hernandez (3), Dan Haren (6), Jeremy Hellickson (10), Tim Stauffer (17), Derek Lowe (18), Aaron Harang (23), Kyle McClellan (20)
RP –Huston Street (11), Drew Storen (13), and Clay Hensley (21)
Reserves –Evan Meek, Kyle Lohse, Jordan Lyles, Nick Blackburn, & Jordan Walden
Again it looks like a solid team. Several shots at additional saves and we will have to be vigorous in the pursuit of pitchers who become closers or starting pitcher who were undrafted who could improve the team – but that is the case no matter what league you play in.
Hernandez, Haren, and Hellickson. I wouldn’t have planned on it – but I like it. It does give us a solid core for the starting pitchers and a common ground so that if they are as good as I think they are the other differences in the roster will decide which team might make a solid push in the overall standings.
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But when the sports auditors at Examiner.com wanted to have their own league, I could hardly turn down the invitation. No I don’t need another league, but I am their national fantasy baseball writer and, especially after having won the examiners fantasy football league much to the chagrin of the football writers, I had to draft a team.
Sunday morning preplan thoughts
Now I just have to make a plan to beat them. Here are my predraft observations for a league I don’t normally play in - a very shallow 12-team mixed league. And with short rosters – the standard Yahoo configuration of one infielder at each position with three outfielders and two utility players along with two SP, two RP and two pitchers.
The good news is I don’t have to have a second catcher. The better news is I got them to ditch the innings pitched maximum. So how should I draft this team?
Many might wait on a catcher since with only 12 being drafted the last few will be decent. But in my opinion there is such a big potential drop off after the first five that if you can get one of them without a hit to the rest of your team you will have a big edge.
Secondly, the top infielders will be at a huge premium, although you are obviously restricted by your draft position – which I won’t know until I check into the draft room tonight.
It does seem that waiting on pitching should work, and there are so many guys who won’t be in the top 12 that I like that I can wait until the top two tiers (three and then six) go off the board before I dive in and hopefully can find some of Max Scherzer, Cole Hamels, Tommy Hanson, and Mat Latos to put into my SP slots. Neftali Feliz will be a huge wildcard, but as he is the centerpiece of my AL keeper league I am happy to let someone try and beat me with him.
Sunday night draft results
Well part of my plan above was scrapped in round one as I had the tenth pick in the draft and they took all the usual suspects leaving me Carl Crawford – and I couldn’t pass him up there. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it started me thinking and that little bubble led me to pick Kevin Youkilis in the top of the second round. Not that I don’t like Youk – and he should be an RBI machine in the Red Sox lineup, and I was looking at moving him to third base in week three. That would mean I would draft a second first baseman starting them at UT for the two weeks and take a flyer on a third baseman I knew I could draft late (Edwin Encarnacion was stuck in the back of my mind).
By the time I was up in round three I was perhaps over confident in my plan –especially thinking that I could grab Aubrey Huff later and so with both Ian Kinsler and Dustin Pedroia gone, and Brian McCann already off the board, I decided to get Victor Martinez and be well ahead there. I should have taken Adam Dunn who was the next player off the board.
Round four choices were not what I wanted on the hitting side, so I decided with a starter. And with Cliff Lee, Clayton Kershaw, and Jon Lester already gone, I went with Dan Haren. At least Todd would like the pick. Round five’s decimation of my list concluded with Hunter Pence taken right in front of me, so I continued to build the staff with Jered Weaver there and Carlos Marmol on the turn.
The play by play might be interesting to some but my game is getting ready to start in the mud. Suffice it to say that if they take it away from you someplace they have to give it back somewhere else – who could imagine getting Kung Fu Panda in the ninth round (after someone had taken Aubrey Huff in the eighth!). Of course I got some back in the 12th (wink).
So here is the whole team, with round drafted in parentheses (remember this is a 12-team, 24-round draft and teams start ten hitters and six pitchers).
C – Victor Martinez (3)
1B – Kevin Youkilis (2)
2B – Ben Zobrist (7)
3B – Pablo Sandoval (9)
SS – Starlin Castro (11)
OF – Carl Crawford (1)
OF – Curtis Granderson (8)
OF – Andres Torres (14)
UT – Mike Napoli (12)
UT – Adam LaRoche (16)
SP – Dan Haren (4)
SP – Jered Weaver (5)
RP – Carlos Marmol (6)
RP – Huston Street (13)
P - - Max Scherzer (10)
P - - Jeremy Hellickson (15)
Hitting Reserves – Danny Espinosa (17), Manny Ramirez (18), & Austin Jackson (20)
Pitching Reserves – Brandon League (19), Koji Uehara (21), Jair Jurrjens (22), Clay Hensley (23), & Travis Wood (24).
I might be a little short in BA but everything else looks fine – but of course I am staring through raindrops at the field.
As always, questions and discussion is welcome on the message board.
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Experienced auction players are very familiar with the concept of inflation in keeper leagues where bargains on some of the very best players mean there are more dollars chasing the available players than there should be. But in actual practice, how do some of the very best players deal with an auction with very high inflation?
The league I am referencing held its NL only auction yesterday – still almost three weeks before opening day. We can do that because the definition for those eligible for both the auction and reserve draft allows for players on the forty man roster and not strictly major league versus minor league. Both Todd and I, with our partners, play in this 12-team league composed of some of the best high-stakes players in the country. So it is not an easy thing to fight through the jungle to get your team. Witness the fact that with only $58 spent on my eight keepers (the max – some would have to keep less) I though that my $202 of auction money would put me in very good shape.
I wasn’t even the team with the most dollars to spend – there was someone with $215 and another with $216, and five teams with more than $200. The poorest team had $132 to spend. Minor leaguers (each team gets only three) have $5-salaries, and that means players like Jason Heyward, Cameron Maybin, Tommy Hanson, Andrew McCutchen and Colby Rasmus contribute to the heavy inflation. But so do players bought for $1, $2, or $3 in the previous year’s draft. Teams can only keep an active player for three years, so some rotation of the player pool is automatically enforced.
But heading into this year’s auction, only Albert Pujols and Hanley Ramirez would be among the top-10 available hitters. However, most of the top pitchers would be in the pool – nine of the top 11 starting pitchers.
My team kept three hitters – Kelly Johnson, at $20, Colby Rasmus at $5, and Chris Snyder at $4. I also had Buster Posey on my minor league roster and would activate him for $5 but obviously chose to do that post auction so I could buy any $1-catcher and then put Posey in that spot.
On the pitching keepers, I had Ian Kennedy at $10, Jorge de la Rosa at $2, Craig Kimbrel at $10, Drew Storen at $5, and Hong-Chih Kuo at $2.
Now I would need to buy four more pitchers and eleven hitters.
But what kind of budget should I consider?
I thought both Pujols and Hanley would go for close to if not over $50, even if neither were projected to earn over $42. But very high inflation does not necessarily mean you can go spend $50+ on the best players without cutting yourself thin at other positions. Sure you could plan to buy several $1- or $2-players, but in a sharp crowd that would likely mean you had several unproductive slots amongst your 14 hitters. And with 12 teams each having seven reserves and three minor leaguers, you would be hard pressed to cure your ills with the available free agent pool. One other note – there is NO trading in this league.
I prepared two basic budgets – one that would pay up to $50 for Pujols or Ramirez and one that would have my highest hitter in the high $30’s and adding a good, not Tier-1 starting pitcher for $20+.
Twenty-two percent inflation would suggest that Pujols would go in the low $50s and Ramirez in the low $40s. Not even close my friends. When the smoke cleared in the first round, Pujols went for $60 and Hanley for $58. So they weren’t on my team – now what?
I needed a lot of everything on the hitting side and would just have to try and zig and zag – and like you will in a few weeks, I would have to make some bets on certain players. Unfortunately we sometimes don’t really get to choose which number we want our money to ride on. Below Pujols at first base the next best available players would be Carlos Pena or Adam LaRoche. Miss there and after James Loney you would be in the Lance Berkman, Ty Wigginton, and Lyle Overbay tier. It was worse at shortstop where below Ramirez there was Jimmy Rollins and then a severe drop to Jason Bartlett and then an even more severe drop to Alex Gonzalez or Yuniesky Betancourt.
While not a big believer in Rollins putting up anything close to 2007 numbers, I was relatively happy to roster him for $26, where I might have paid for actual value or have a dollar or two of upside. I was even happier to roster Carlos Pena for $19 – well my power side was, my BA gremlin was in for a long day. LaRoche actually went for $20 which would have been fine – who knew in advance, but Loney was clear up to $17.
And then I did a lot of waiting, hoping to catch players at/near value – Raul Ibanez ($13), Alfonso Soriano ($16), Bartlett ($14), Placido Polanco ($9), and Overbay ($6) helped give me the flexibility to reach later for players I had to get – Andres Torres ($25) and Mike Morse ($16) and to move $5 to the pitching budget where I added Tim Hudson ($18), Derek Lowe ($8), Johnny Venters ($8) to handcuff Kimbrel and then have some extra to reach for Tim Stauffer at $12.
Here is the whole roster:
C – Snyder (4) & Kottaras (3) with Posey waiting
CI – Pena (19), Polanco (9), & Overbay (6)
MI – K. Johnson (20), Rollins (26), & Bartlett (14)
OF – Rasmus (5), Ibanez (13), Soriano (16), Torres (25), & Morse (16)
UT – Juan Miranda (9) [who can be moved to CI if a reserve is productive enough]
Reserves – Brandon Boggs, Jason Bourgeois, Chris Denorfia
SP – T. Hudson (18), D. Lowe (8), Stauffer (12), Kennedy (10) & De La Rosa (2)
RP – Kimbrel (10), Storen (5), Kuo (2), & Venters (8)
Reserves – K. Wood, J. Arredondo, Lannan, & K. Kendrick
Glad to answer questions on price points for any player on the message boards.
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