Salient is an excellent design with a fresh approach for the ever-changing Web. Integrated with Gantry 5, it is infinitely customizable, incredibly powerful, and remarkably simple.
DownloadTout Wars auctions will be held on March 23 and 24 in New York City as is the custom. But in an effort to branch out and give people insight to more draft formats, Tout added a 15-team draft with on base percentage replacing batting average to this year’s events.
This was very helpful for me since I couldn’t get to the Big Apple to take my seat there, thus on Monday evening I got to draft in the first Tout draft of 2013. So here is a draft question for you - who would you take with my first pick?
Rememeber, it's an OBP league. Here are the ten players who were off the board – Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Ryan Braun, Robinson Cano, Andrew McCutchen, Matt Kemp, Joey Votto, Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder, and Carlos Gonzalez. Who do you take?
I must admit when I got the eleventh pick in the draft I didn’t see this scenario – there is usually one of those that always slips, whether it is because somebody wants to take the first pitcher or because there is always a diehard drafting Giancarlo Stanton, Buster Posey, Evan Longoria or Troy Tulowitzki betting they can actually play a full year. So who did you take at 1.11?
I decided pretty quickly that I wanted to go for the upside play, and thinking this group would be slow to draft the first pitcher, I thought the best hitter to give me that shot was Bryce Harper. So yes, I was that guy. But add a few more home runs and a few more steals to either his 2012 numbers or projected 2013 numbers and Harper has first round value, and unless you are a hater, you will agree there is a possibility for even more.
But I also wanted to have a shot at upside in the second round where I didn’t think I could get Harper at 2.05 but would have been happy to take either Justin Upton or get one of the first pitchers. J-Up went at 1.14 and I was happy to get Justin Verlander at 2.05 after the turn settled for Jason Heyward, Jose Reyes, Longoria, and Hanley Ramirez.
Now I had to wait a long time to get back to 3.11 where my choice was which first baseman I wanted to add, with Paul Goldschmidt, Allen Craig, and Billy Butler all there and probably not on the shelf for too much longer. I took Goldschmidt as much for the stolen bases he will contribute over the others as for another shot at more upside from the young Diamondback. Around the corner I was hoping to get B.J. Upton or Chase Headley, two more guys who are likely to have double-digit contributions in both HR/SB, but neither made it. Seven pitchers went after Verlander, including Matt Cain and Yu Darvish in front of me. In the fourth, I took Jered Weaver, who was surprisingly still waiting for a dance partner. At this point I thought I had 55+ HR and 40ish SB and two of the top ten starting pitchers. Now I would go back to work on my infield, wondering what would be available at 5.11.
Having just missed Aaron Hill, I thought I was better with the upside of Jose Altuve at second base over a shortstop (Jimmy Rollins went two picks later) because I thought some good players would last longer at shortstop. On the back of the 5/6 turn, I took Austin Jackson, who looks like a good bet to score 100+ runs while having double digit HR/SB. Note at this point Altuve was the only hitter below a .350 OBP and not real far off at a projected .330 percentage.
I normally like to get two productive catchers in these formats but hadn’t pulled the trigger on one of the early backstops like Posey (2.15), Carlos Santana (4.13), or Joe Mauer (5.06). It looked like I had a shot at Yadier Molina in the seventh but he was taken at 7.07, and just a few picks later Wilin Rosario went off the board. In case the run got longer, I decided to take Salvador Perez, another .330+ OBP catcher who would also get double digit home runs. At 8.05 I took my third baseman, selecting Cincinnati’s Todd Frazier, another good bet for double digit HR/SB but who, at just over .300, would be my lowest OBP hitter. I thought there that I might still be able to get Mastersball fav Kyle Seager later in the draft.
While I added my closers – Greg Holland in the ninth round and Brandon League in the 13th round, I purposely waited to add to my starters until later in the draft as I filled out my hitters but started back up in the 16th round, adding Clay Buchholz, Hisashi Iwakuma, Wade Davis, and Ross Detwiler in four consecutive picks.
The team is summarized by positions below with the pick value in parentheses, but as a final point I will say there were several drafters using picks to roster minor leaguers well before we got to the reserve rounds. I think we have all seen this happen this year when many are trying to find 2013’s Mike Trout when in fact that was an unprecedented season from a rookie callup and one not likely to be duplicated. Sure there will be players coming up this year as always who will help fantasy teams, but I chose to use my four reserve spots on players who might help me much earlier in the season.
Here is my opening day roster:
C – Salvador Perez (7.11) & A.J. Pierzynski (10.05)
1B – Paul Goldschmidt (3.11)
3B – Todd Frazier (8.05)
CI – Kyle Seager (11.11)
2B – Jose Altuve (5.11)
SS – Jean Segura (12.05)
MI – J.J. Hardy (14.05)
OF – Bryce Harper (1.11), Austin Jackson (6.05), Dayan Viciedo (15.11), Justin Maxwell (20.05), Cody Ross (22.05)
UT – Mitch Moreland (23.11)
SP – Justin Verlander (2.05), Jered Weaver (4.05), Clay Buchholz (16.05), Hisashi Iwakuma (17.11), Wade Davis (18.05), Ross Detwiler (19.11), Drew Smyly (21.11)
CL – Greg Holland (9.11), Brandon League (13.11)
Reserves added were:
Rick Porcello (24.05) – with Smyly gives my Tigers 5th SP plus possible extra with trade
Sean Doolittle (25.11) – strong option behind Balfour in Oakland pen
Mike Olt (26.05) – lots of power if/when he is in the Rangers' lineup
Juan Rivera (27.11) – could get lots of at-bats in the Yankees' lineup to start the season
While we can’t compare all the teams (at least for now), I do think this draft gave me a good balance between good hitting, with 250 projected HR and 170 projected SB for the starters, and a good pitching staff, with 100 projected wins and 60 projected saves with 1164 strikeouts, all of which will go up some with substitutions and additions. I will follow this team and the Tout online league with future articles and am always glad to discuss the selections on the forums.
The entire draft can be found HERE{jcomments on}
Saturday night was the auction for the AL LABR (League of Alternative Baseball Reality, the longest running fantasy industry league which started in 1994.
I approached the draft with this plan –
So how did things play out? Well at least for those who didn’t listen live on Sirius/XM radio I will give you a brief recap with my reasoning. I was asked when interviewed for the radio broadcast if I had any players on my must get list. Frankly I never go into a draft or auction with that mindset. What if you don’t get that player? Why would you waste extra dollars on just one player when you need a balanced productive roster?
I did have a couple of guys at each position that I thought might fit well into my budget but you must take the value the auction gives you rather than reaching too much. On the other hand you must fill a need when you have control (dollar wise) later in the draft. So off we go ……
I did some mild bidding as the draft started up knowing that the prices for Mike Trout ($42), Miguel Cabrera ($40), Robinson Cano ($35), Justin Verlander ($31), and David Price ($27) among the early nominations were going for more than I wanted to spend. In fact it wasn’t until late in the second round of nominations that I landed my first player – Texas closer Joe Nathan for $18.
The next player I landed was Chris Sale for exactly $20. So I had the backbone of my pitching staff but through the first three rounds still did not have a hitter. That changed abruptly when I landed Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus for what seemed like a slightly soft $21. His runs scored and stolen bases are nice contributions in a shallow MI pool but as I said I wanted to get a good player at both SS and 2B. Jason Kipnis who I liked last year was out of range at $26 and frankly while the room was not egregious in their early overspending, the auction through five rounds was overspent.
Early in the sixth round I landed one player I do like for an improvement on a nice first season in 2012 when Yoenis Cespedes in just 480 at bats had 23 home runs, 16 stolen bases, and 82 RBI with a .292 BA. I think he adds 5-10 in each counting category with likely a slight reduction in batting average. So I added Cespedes as my most expensive player and key outfielder at $29
Unfortunately I can give you every twist and turn in the draft – useful only if you are battling insomnia, but I will give a few interesting developments and list my full team and my six reserve picks. Remember that in LABR you can’t just move players in and out of your lineup – if a pitcher is killing you, your only recourse is to drop him. But the reserve players are valuable in that they can be activated and then reserved as long as you have the active roster opening to use.
I didn’t quite get the prime cut of the good but not expensive catchers – Joe Mauer, Matt Wieters, and Victor Martinez all going for just under $20 – but I did get Ryan Doumit for $16 and A.J. Pierzynski for $14 to give me to solid catchers who should hit 15+ home runs and have decent batting averages.
It was a long time before I got my third pitcher but eventually landed Tampa’s Alex Cobb for $9. All the rest of my pitchers were added in the end game when I had some control.
So here is the Mastersball team in the AL:
C – Doumit ($16) & Pierzynski ($14)
CI – Billy Butler ($27), Kyle Seager ($20), and Mitch Moreland ($10)
MI – Jose Altuve ($19), Andrus ($21), and Hiroyuki Nakajima ($5)
OF – Cespedes ($29), Justin Maxwell ($10), Leonys Martin ($13), Juan Rivera ($3), Casper Wells ($2)
UT – Mike Olt ($3)
SP – Sale ($20), Cobb ($9), Jason Hammel ($7), Mark Buehrle ($4), Drew Smyly ($4), & Jose Quintana ($3)
RP – Nathan ($18), Sean Doolittle ($3), & Phil Coke ($2)
Reserves – I picked in the late middle of the snake at 1.08
1.08 Robbie Ross, P, Texas – huge bonus if he wins the 5th spot in the rotation
2.05 Carlos Peguero, OF, SEA – good power and hedge for Wells
3.08 Conor Gillaspie, 3B, CWS – some chance he could make club out of spring training
4.05 Hector Santiago, LHP, CWS - likely starts in bullpen BUT would be 5th starter if John Danks falters
5.05 Daniel Nava, OF, BOS – likely in a platoon but could replace Rivera when Granderson comes back
6.08 Scott Downs, LHP, LAA – did well last year and we know Scioscia trusts him in the 9th.
Always glad to discuss the auction or my team in the forums and will have a few updates about the competition in this great league. Look for the “Leviathan” – the Sports Weekly edition out in two weeks with full AL prices and rosters as well as those of the NL which took place on Sunday night.{jcomments on}
As in Arizona and Justin Upton and their trade with Seattle as you have seen on many channels today. I see many opinions about the deal between the Diamondbacks and Mariners, but many of those are flawed in my view.
Yes, both the Diamondbacks and Mariners knew that J-Up had Seattle as one of the four teams on his no-trade clause. But not only are there ways around that, Seattle adding a sweetener that would convince Upton to drop his block, perhaps a transfer bonus, buying him a house in Seattle or more likely giving him an option for the third remaining year (2015) on his current contract.
But both Arizona and Seattle announced the trade (purportedly without asking Upton) for additional reasons. For Arizona, they get other teams to take notice that they are in fact serious about trading Upton, not just “listening to trade offers.” The failed trade may re-open dialogue with Texas or initiate discussions with Atlanta, where Justin could be united in the Braves outfield with his older brother.
Atlanta would know they could then move Martin Prado to third base, thus making Juan Francisco a potential part of the Upton trade along with one of Randall Delgado/Julio Teheran and a younger pitching prospect.
Texas no longer has to offer either Elvis Andrus or Jurickson Profar, as Arizona received Didi Gregorius in their deal with Cleveland. So third baseman Mike Olt is the first piece along with a few of the Rangers' many good pitching prospects.
Seattle, if they could swing the deal (and unlike many articles penned today I don’t think they would be giving up too much), would then have Upton adding to their weak offense AND playing with Felix Hernandez along with many other pieces they either have in place or are just a phone call away. They would only be parting with Taijuan Walker and still have top pitching prospects Danny Hultzen and James Paxton ready late this year or more likely in 2014.
But even if they couldn’t convince Justin Upton to move north, they let other teams know that the presumably untouchable Walker would be available if they could meet the Mariners' price. So if they can’t make the Upton trade, they may get many new offers this week.
Bottom line in my opinion is even if they can’t complete the Upton trade, both the Diamondbacks and Mariners made other strides in trying to better their respective teams.{jcomments on}
If you are frantically searching for news from MLB teams, relax and enjoy a few days of either presents or silence and maybe work on your lists (you can never have too many lists or update them often enough). Part of the delay in new signing or trades is because the MLB offices in New York are closed until Wednesday.
There is another reason that Michael Bourn and others haven’t been signed yet – the new rules on draft pick compensation require that to be eligible for an extra draft pick teams must have made a $13.3 Million qualifying offer. While this part of the changes is good in eliminating compensatory picks for good middle relievers, there is a downside – in order to sign of the players who was made a qualifying offer that team would forfeit its first round pick (unless they have a top ten pick in which case they forfeit their second round pick.
In addition to the huge amount of money to sign Bourn a team also had to give up a first round pick AND the associated money to sign that draft pick. That is quite a heavy investment. Teams who have a top ten pick – yes like the Cleveland Indians won’t lose their top ten pick but will forfeit their second round pick and slot monies. This not only makes it advantageous for those teams but now enables them to make some very creative trades.
We haven’t seen this yet but I will guess we see at least one of these “sign and trade” deals made soon and Cleveland is in the primary position because now they would only lose their third round pick. So they could sign Bourn, forfeit the third rounder and then trade Bourn to a team that doesn’t want to lose its first round pick for a very good minor leaguer – a better player than they would have been able to draft.
Now we just have to wait until Wednesday to see if teams are smart enough to make one of those trades.
Another team that looks to be on the verge of a trade is the Arizona Diamondbacks who recently signed OF Cody Ross to a three year deal. The problem is that Ross is now the fifth outfielder on that team along with Justin Upton, Jason Kubel, Gerardo Parra, and Adam Eaton. Ross would be a fine platoon partner with Parra so the most likely player to be traded would appear to be Kubel who has one year left at a reasonable $7.5 million. Tampa Bay is a team looking for more power so that might be a good match but any other AL team that has the DH slot might also be interested in Kubel. Of course there is always the chance the Diamondbacks finally find a team that wants to overpay for Upton but the matches there seem hard to find. Having “invested” a lot in SS Didi Gregorius the only thing the DBacks could really want to upgrade their lineup would be a STUD third baseman. Hard to see that trade or one for a number one SP.
We will just have to wait and seeThe American League in LABR had a fantastic finish this year, with the team that held the league lead since June sitting in first by only a half-of-a-point heading into the final three-day week, with three teams separated by only a point-and-a-half. For a detailed look, click here
Just watching that fabulous finish while my team was in 5th place motivated me to take a look back at the auction last March and see what worked, and what prevented me from being amongst those teams fighting for the title.
While the complete draft review is archived if you want to read it, I would summarize by saying my offense was good with Adam Jones ($21), Alex Avila ($17), Alcides Escobar ($13), and Andy Dirks ($4) being the best buys. Brett Lawrie ($28) didn’t live up to my expectations, but he and Matthew Joyce ($21) and others were not the reason I lost the league. Even the few disappointments--Jeff Francoeur ($17) and Casey Kotchman ($6)--did not lose the league.
One roster move and the saves I thought I drafted really jumped this team off the tracks. My starting pitching selections – Jeremy Hellickson ($14), Matt Harrison ($6), Jarrod Parker ($4), and (at the time) Alfredo Aceves ($2) were the first of the two strengths of the team. But, those relievers I counted on for my saves--Daniel Bard ($13), Jordan Walden ($16), and even Kyle Farnsworth (only $4)--really disappointed. If not for Aceves being moved to the bullpen in Boston and a nice free agent pickup of Jared Burton, I would not have finished with 31 saves and five points in the category.
The other strength of the draft was my six reserve selections – especially with the 11th pick in that snake draft. The reserves in LABR are far more than just some players who might help during the year because a reserve player can be moved from active back to reserve then back to active in any given week. Other players cannot be reserved unless they are sent to the minors (players who are injured can be put on the DL).
You will see that only half of my six reserves among Kelly Shoppach, Mike Montgomery, Alex Liddi, Luis Mendoza, Vinnie Catricala, and Drew Smyly even played in the majors this year, but that trio were key additions. Shoppach, because he backed up my cheap second catcher play of Josh Donaldson ($3), would play for the rest of the year for me; Mendoza because not only did he start a number of games for the Kansas City Royals but because I could reserve him for a tough start or when he was sent to the bullpen; and, Smyly because while he did not make the Opening Day roster for the Detroit Tigers, he did make the rotation and was called up by Jim Leyland (andme) in short order, and at least for the beginning of the year he was quite valuable for a reserve.
There were many good free agent additions and roster moves. But, one truly terrible move cost me a lot of home runs and runs batted in and countless hours of rest. You see, I had filled my middle infield slot in the auction with one Minnesota Twin named Trevor Plouffe. Quite a pick in early March, but early in the year Plouffe was benched and that empty spot (and the devil) made me cut him (if only he had been sent down right away) in the first week of May to add Wil Rhymes. UGH: Had I held onto Plouffe I might have finished 4th, and together with those missing saves, who knows? But, such is rotisserie life. {jcomments on}