After months (seemingly) of everyone getting Marcus Stroman offers, he was finally traded. $49 strikes me as a high salary for him. That being said, he probably goes close to this in auction, maybe slightly more depending on who else is in auction? Will there be a better pitcher in auction than Samardzja/Lester/Archer? Kershaw? Stroman had a sparkling 3.22 ERA last year but his FIP/XFIP suggest he was pitcher closer to a 4 ERA pitcher. The K/9 was just under 8, which is an improvement from 2018. I’m not sure Stroman and his contract would be a guy I’d target, but I also don’t hate it. Clark’s rotation got deeper and behind Flaherty, he know has Sandy Alcantara, Stroman, Wood, Houser , Mahle and Bundy, amongst a few others. Getting Stroman for Clark is at the very least a guy he can throw out for just about every start, and he needed it.
Bailey picks up a shitpick upgrade, congrats. He also made his farm stronger, a rarity for the Crapitol Shittys. KeBryan Hayes is now his #1 prospect and Nick Neidert is probably somewhere in the top 5, maybe even #2. It’s a Dynasty League after all, and you can’t always be trading for good older players and expect to be competitive forever.
I really like going after these guys. Hayes was a highly regarded prospect last year and some shine wore off, but he was a beast in the 2nd half after injury, so I this was a great buy low prospect. I hate doing the “Who will be next year’s ____” type question, because usually the type of season that prompts that question is usually in reference to something that doesn’t happen too often. That being said, Nick Neidert sure seems like a possibility for next year’s Gallen. A guy who looks clearly like a starter, but just needed his stuff to tick up a bit, and he looked great in the AFL. So two live close to the major prospects for a $49 Stroman seems like a great deal, especially since I assume Bailey couldn’t keep him.
Based on liking the two prospects here, I think I’d give the edge to Bailey here. I think there were better less salaries pitchers on the tradeblock that could have potentially been obtained without Hayes, but maybe not. I still think overall this made Clark’s team better for 2020, and if Stroman has a similar season then he might not regret any of what he gave up.
As an aside: you can probably tell by now that I don’t care too much about talking about my team publicly. Some owners are tight-lipped. Personally, I don’t think sharing my thought processes gives away any competitive advantage. If I have a thought that I think becoming public does compromise some advantage then, well, I just won’t share it publicly. Simple enough.
Coming into the auction, I hoped to get two cornerstone hitters and go from there. I did not plan for them to both play the same position.
To be clear, I love both these guys. I’m not upset that I have them. But I do wish I would’ve spent the cash — $70 went to Votto, $71 to Miggy — from one of these guys on a player from a different position. Like, say, Josh Donaldson ($68), Andrew McCutchen ($69), or Jose Bautista ($62).
In a vacuum, I’ll take Miggy or Votto over all three of those guys. But given positional need and roster flexibility, I painted myself into a corner taking two top tier first basemen.
Zips has a .336 wOBA for A-Rod in 2016. Steamer is much cooler on him. According to Steamer, he’ll be only the 105th best hitter. Fantrax, whose projections aren’t worth much, has him as the 71st best hitter. He was the 31st highest scoring hitter a year ago in a renaissance season.
No matter how you slice it, this is not a $1 player. Truthfully, $21 probably is a few bucks too much, but that’s true of a bunch of players. David Ortiz, who is A-Rod’s mirror image in a lot of ways (age, risk, production, position eligibility), went for $30. At 40, anything can happen with A-Rod. But I feel like I’ll get good numbers from him.
The problem is, he’s a utility-only hitter. And one of Miggy or Votto is plugged into that other spot, which leaves my options slim. I tend to try to accumulate talent first and worry about lineup composition later, but in this case I wish I hadn’t.
I love Patrick Corbin. (You love him too, given all the inquiries I’ve had for him already.) In his only full season in 2013, he posted a 3.43 FIP. Last year, in 16 games coming back from Tommy John, he picked up right where he left off with a 3.35 FIP. Oh, and he improved his strikeout and walk rates. He got swinging strikes on his slider 24% of the time.
The risk with him is clear. He could get hurt again, the track record is short, and he could be on an innings cap in 2016. I guess his home park is less than ideal too. But he’s also just 26 and has posted the kind of numbers most teams will seek from their SP2 or SP3.
And for $16. Marcus Stroman, who I like a lot, went for twice as much. I’ll take my $16 Corbin over a $41 Michael Wacha or $30 Masahiro Tanaka, for example. Off-season fantasy darling Raisel Iglesias, who I also like a lot, went for $29. Corbin struck out about a batter and a half less per nine, but also walked fewer and posted better FIP, xFIP, and HR/9 despite a BABIP that was higher by .041. I’m not saying Iglesias won’t be superior (because “upside!” or whatever). But $13 better? All I’m saying is I like this particular player at his particular price.
Markakis, meanwhile, is just an old favorite of mine from his time with the Orioles. Four bucks for a career .291/.359/.429 hitter makes me happy.
Of course, the “upside” here is nil and the power numbers last year were sobering. He hit three home runs all year with a .080 ISO. But in 2013, he hit 10 homers with a slightly better .085 ISO. He had a 2.1% HR/FB rate a year ago. Of players with 500 or more plate appearances, only noodle bats Alcides Escobar, Ben Revere, and Angel Pagan got less of their fly balls into the seats. Escobar went for $3 and Revere for $6, for whatever that’s worth. I don’t think getting back to double digit bombs is unrealistic — I think it’s likely, in fact — and if he does that (and frankly, even if he doesn’t) he will be a very solid starting outfielder at practically no cost.
Thought #4: I left too much money on the table.
I came in $10 short of our $500 auction budget due to trades, then proceeded to leave $21 in my pocket at draft’s end. That was very stupid.
Here’s what happened: after starting slowly, I quickly piled up some big dollar players. My first three players cost me $70, $71, and $71. Then I added a $21 A-Rod and $60 Johnny Cueto. My next two players, Sonny Gray and Tyson Ross, were had for $96 total. That was my setup through the first 98 nominees.
From there, I hybernated. I eventually grabbed Martin Prado ($4) at the 179th nomination spot. Going 81 spots and almost two hours without adding a player is a long time. The wait was deliberate. My cash was much lower than most everyone else’s, so I decided unless a player I really coveted came up, I’d sit back and let other teams spend, hopefully opening some holes for me later.
It worked, but I failed to hit those holes.
I sometimes undervalue hitters and/or overvalue my own ability to squeeze points out of lesser hitters. That cost me. I just waited and waited, and eventually the players worth spending on ran out and I was left with $21. I feel a lot better about my offense today if I’ve got an Alex Gordon ($17) or Matt Kemp ($11) to plug in. Or I could have, you know, taken that extra $21 plus the $21 spent on A-Rod and allocated it better. That’s enough to have bought a Starling Marte, Robinson Cano, Yasiel Puig, or JD Martinez, just to rattle off a few.
Thought #5: I should’ve kept pushing for Max Scherzer.
This sort of rolls into #1 and #4.
I bid Scherzer up to $85, then he went to Ferns for $86. There’s no telling how high the bidding might have gone if I’d kept pushing, but I wish I’d found out. If I land Scherzer, I almost definitely don’t get both Miggy and Votto.
I’m also not totally comfortable with Carlos Carrasco ($71) as my SP1, though I don’t mind his price. In other words, getting Scherzer would’ve likely took me out of the market for one of the hitters, but not Carrasco. Penciling him in as my SP2 behind Mad Max would’ve been fun.
Someone commented in the auction room after Carrasco went off the board that the winning bid was influenced by “hype.” To which I say: when a guy finishes as the 17th highest scorer on only 30 starts, the ninth best FIP, the fourth best xFIP, and the fifth best K/9 rate, the hype has some merit behind it. And he did all that with a high, unfortunate BABIP and elevated HR/FB rate.
I get the risks here. He’s gone over 100 innings in his big league career just thrice and has maxed out at 183.2. That’s on my radar. I won’t sleep easy knowing this. But he’s paid as a top 12-13 pitcher and all indicators are that, if healthy (a caveat that applies to every pitcher), he should produce right in that range.
Thought #7: I won’t have trouble rooting for my guys.
I don’t really believe in targeting players I “like” as in, hey, so and so is fun to watch on TV, so I should do something totally irrational to get him. It’s a tiebreaker for me when choosing between similar players. But I ended up coming out of this auction with a bunch of unheralded guys that I generally like beyond just fantasy stuff. Mike Napoli ($4), Nori Aoki ($1), Denard Span ($4), and Johnny Cueto ($60). The latter isn’t “unheralded” but I wanted to mention him so that I could link to that photo.
I remember a few years ago — I think 2011, but I’m not sure — I had Aoki on my MLB The Show team. Except I had no idea he was a real player. I thought he was one of the random minor leaguers or a fictitious rookie the game created. But he was awesome in the game. He was a slap hitter kind of like Ichiro, lashing line drives all over the place. He was fast, too. In video game baseball, I attempt a million steals. As soon as I realized he actually existed, I liked him even more and have been fond of him ever since.
I didn’t actually mean to win Dickerson. I was sort of half bidding him up, half interested in him at a bargain basement price. But I accidentally clicked him for the $10 winning bid which, actually, you know, might end up working out quite nicely.
This is a guy with perpetual health issues who is obviously going from a hitter’s park so favorable that calling it simply a “hitter’s park” isn’t enough. His perceived value is way down. But he’s still just 26 years old and has posted some remarkable offensive numbers. Of batters with 600+ plate appearance since the beginning of 2014, he has the 23rd best WRC+ (133). Because park factors play so vividly in how Dickerson’s viewed, I used WRC+ because it’s a park adjusted stat. wOBA (.390), which is not park adjusted, ranks him 11th in all of baseball under those same criteria.
Neither Zips or Steamer expect him to continue hitting so torridly, nor do they expect him to play a full slate of games. Maybe both are true. Maybe I’m trying to talk myself into the player. I mean, Max Kepler, who has logged a grand total of seven MLB at-bats, went for the same price. Depending on your lens, Dickerson at $10 is a bargain.
Closing thoughts…
Overall, I expect this team to compete. But the path will be tougher than it should’ve been, and that’s my own fault. I’m excited for the challenge.
Not that in anyone in Grinders should or does care, but I took the salaries players went for here and applied them to my team in the Dy-Nasty league you’ve heard us mention on a few podcasts, which uses pretty much identical scoring. My 25-man roster over there went for $792 total here. I’ve got another seven guys in my minors there that were auctioned off here and aren’t included in that total.
The roster I’m starting with is going to require a lot more effort and attention on my part. The margin for error is smaller. My offense is going to require patience and caffeine, because while there are quality players all over (I can’t wait until those of you who are new to this depth/scoring start seeing the types of players that become valuable), it’s a unit about as exciting as flossing your teeth.
But navigating that stuff is part of the fun, and I doubt anyone is looking at their team post-auction and seeing perfection. Everyone has work to do. I’m ready to get started.
The winner for Clayton Kershaw was always going to be a contender. As I’ve stated before and again. He’s almost guaranteed to be a value. I had him realistically rated as high as $150. Getting him for $117 hurts in some ways, but the team with a better name in the works, made out like bandits on a few auctions.
Hitting – Good
Manny Machado is a star in this league. Edwin Encarnacion is a fantasy star, his defense doesn’t play here. Carlos Gonzalez is still in Colorado, and even if he was not, he’s still a near lock for top five in left field. I’m higher on Adam Eaton and Curtis Granderson, lower on Ketel Marte and Dee Gordon. It will probably even out. Are we relying on Billy Butler to be a staple at the second utility spot here? Hmm. There is a lotto like about this line up, stealing Brandon Belt for $14 seems like a great buy, Keith Law probably still agrees.
Pitching – Great
Kershaw is the best player in the league. Danny Salazar, Marcus Stroman and Steven Matz are all really good and interesting. I consider them all tier 2 pitchers, but if they all ended up in tier one at the end of the season I will not be surprised. I do not love Alex Wood, but between him and Nathan Eovaldi you have a solid number five and I’d be okay with Jorge De La Rosa as my sixth when he’s out of Colorado. Weeks when Kershaw pitches twice, there’s not many pitching staffs that will out-duel. He’s just so damn good. The bullpen may or may not hold this staff back. Hector Rondon has a lot of good outings, and some seriously bad ones. Joaquin Benoit is pitching in Seattle, but currently does not have a secured role.
Depth – Alright
The depth here is set to be alright. The positional flexibility plays well here. There’s no backup 2b or SS here. How many plate appearances will be left on the cutting room floor, or only slightly better, left at replacement level. Probably too many. But that could be easily patched. There is a good chance a few of these guys become legit starters as well.
Why 2016 would be bad…
May the good lord forbid, but if Kershaw gets hurt. I mean I don’t even know what else to write. For any team if 22% of their budget was hurt early in the season for the whole season they would be easy choice as sunk. Same problem lies here. For the sake of the argument say the young three guys behind him hold up the pitching staff. Well it gets bad if Gonzalez and Granderson under perform. If Edwin Encarnacion goes missing, or worse, Machado has knee issues.
Why 2016 would be good…
Kershaw doesn’t even have to repeat 2015, just has to be close. Salazar, Stroman and Matz all get to 25+ starts as at least tier 2 guys. Machado remains awesome, the hitters all hit above their floors and this team should be pretty solid. The question marks are probably personal preference, but it is hard to argue against he value on almost all the buys. But it hinges on, well…