Finders Keepers

The annual Ugueth League debate has started: is this the year that we start a keeper system? Every year before the draft, somebody proposes the keeper idea and it usually gets shot down by most of the other teams. However, this year the pro-keeper faction (myself included) seems to be gaining some traction. The Commish actually started the keeper debate this year with this proposal:

We talk about this a lot, and I think it might go a long way toward making people competitive throughout the year when they are out of the mix. Is there any interest in allowing 1 or 2 keepers from your team this year to be allowed to remain on your team next year? I would think it would be at a premium, like next year you get them, but at a cost of $15 more than you paid for them in this auction, and if you want to keep a second player, you could do so for $20 more than this year's cost. I think it would be cool, and I'm guessing at that cost it would help keep some of the more big time players off of the keeper market.

Plus, it would make the auction go a little quicker with up to 40 players off the market.

Players belong to the "franchise" so if someone drops out, the new owner next year has dibs on that franchise's potential keepers.

Seems like a little more strategy involved, which I always like.

I responded:

I like the idea of keepers, but I think maybe the proposed price increases are too steep to make it worth keeping anybody. I feel like if I'm smart enough to grab a Buster Posey for $1 (I wasn't), that I should be rewarded by being able to keep him for not much more.

If I were pressed to make a counter proposal, I'd say 3 keepers max with a $5 increase over draft value. Undrafted players like Jose Bautista and John Axford should be treated as $1 draft picks.

The Commish replied:

Good input. I think it would be nice to make sure one player isn't locked into being kept forever though. So a guy like Posey, if he panned out, could be kept for $6, $11, $16, $21, and $26 over five years. All would probably be good deals if he turns into a great catcher. How about a sliding scale, like your $5 for year one, $10 for year two, $15 for year three, etc. That way you get him for a $6 bargain this year as your reward for picking him, but next year that is a still reasonable $16, followed by $31 in year three where you may have to think about it a little and a not-likely-to-keep $51 in year 4 or a no way $76 in year 5?

I think trades with non-contending teams late in the year would be a lot more legit if they were to acquire, say, a Buster Posey that they could renew the following year at a good price.

I agreed with the escalator clause, but then the more conservative element of the UL reared its head with a chorus of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The informal vote is a 4-4 tie, but the official vote will go down probably next week. I'm firmly in favor of keepers, primarily because of how I draft.

I tend to spend high on a handful of all-stars early and then wait out the middle part of the draft when everyone is getting anxious about filling out their rosters. I have no desire to spend $13 in a panic on Erick Aybar or some other marginal player. So I get the studs early and then focus on upside players: guys with good track records who stumbled the previous year, or young guys who look like they'll get a chance to prove themselves.

Last year, I had the core of my team built in the first 100 picks: Felix Hernandez for $35, Jason Bay for $32, Victor Martinez for $27, Johan Santana for $26, Matt Holliday for $40, Nelson Cruz for $25, and Adrian Gonzalez for $41. That's 87% of my budget. I had overspent my pitching allowance ($52) but I felt good about having two prime starters. 73 picks in and most of my money spent, it was time to wait for the upside guys.

I grabbed Brandon Wood for $2, hoping he would become the power 3B everyone thought he could. Didn't really work out that way.

I took a flier on Oliver Perez - who's always been a great strikeout pitcher - hoping that Citi Field would help keep the ERA down. It didn't.

I drafted Scott Feldman, a guy who had won 17 games in 2009. He got knocked around pretty good and eventually lost his rotation spot.

It gets better, I promise. You have to take the bad with the good in fantasy baseball. it's just the nature of the beast.

I spent a big $5 (considering what I had left) on Jorge De La Rosa, another big strikeout starter. He had a pretty good April, but I ended up trading him straight up for Kelly Johnson. My trade partner thought he was selling high after Johnson's 9 April homers. He ended up hitting 17 more for me. De La Rosa got hurt one start after the trade. Them's the breaks.

I also dropped another big $5 on Hideki Matsui, who was about to don a non-Yankee uniform for the first time as the Angels' DH. He didn't put up prime Godzilla numbers, but a .274-21-84 line is a pretty healthy $5 investment.

The clincher - and probably the key to my 2010 success - was how I filled out my pitching rotation. $3 on Mat Latos, the 22 year-old Padres 5th starter who returned a stellar 2.92 ERA, 1.08 WHIP and 189 Ks. $3 on Wade Davis, the Rays 5th starter who got me 12 wins with an acceptable 1.35 WHIP. $1 on C.J. Wilson, the Rangers converted reliever who surprised everyone with a 15-8 record, 3.35 ERA, 1.25 WHIP and 170 Ks.

Any of those guys would be keepers for this year's squad. Who wouldn't take Mat Latos for $8 this year? He'll probably get drafted for somewhere between $25-$30. If I could have him again for $8, that's about $20 I could spend on other talent. Keepers give your squad a better chance at competing for a good stretch of years since you've got a lock on talent at a bargain price. Pretty much the same as the first three years of any ballplayer's contract, where the owners reap the benefits of a low player salary. Eventually with the escalator clause you'll have to give up a guy like Latos because the price he commands will be too steep, but you can get around three years of value out of a smart draft pick instead of just one.

I'm not getting my hopes up that we'll start a keeper system this year, because I'm pretty sure it'll get voted down by the managers that are scared of change. That's really too bad, because I keepers add an element of stability to a very chaotic game.

To Punt or Not to Punt?

OK, Part Two of the Punter's Bible right here. Today we cover saves, but first, a quick refresher on the pitching categories:

Wins. Losses. Saves. Strikeouts. ERA. WHIP.

Let's talk about those first two. You'd think with losses in there that I should be stockpiling relievers, right? Not so much. Remember this is a head-to-head league, so you can always play the matchups to your advantage. Got Jeremy Hellickson going against the Yankees this week? Bench him. Playing your starters selectively generally will only cost you in the strikeout column, but smart management should pull you victories in losses, ERA and WHIP. Strangely enough, those are the categories that closers are supposed to help you with. So why not double your pleasure and pick up some stoppers?

Not so fast, triggerman. Here are the pitchers who finished in the top eleven in saves and their corresponding draft day values:

Brian Wilson - 48 SV, $18
Heath Bell - 47 SV, $20
Rafael Soriano - 45 SV, $19
Joakim Soria - 43 SV, $24
Matt Capps - 42 SV, $5
Francisco Cordero - 40 SV, $27
Neftali Feliz - 40 SV, $9
Carlos Marmol - 38 SV, $21
Kevin Gregg - 37 SV, $1
Jonathan Papelbon - 37 SV, $30
Billy Wagner - 37 SV, $17

Elite closers tend to go for around $20 in this league, give or take a buck, but look at the 3 guys who went for single digits. Plus, consider that Jonathan Broxton went for $27 and was terribly disappointing with only 22 saves and less than stellar ancillary numbers.

There's just too much variation from year to year in the quality of closers to invest heavily in them. Plus, with the risk of injury, there's always going to be a few guys in the free agent pool who get a shot to close at some point.

On top of that, in a weekly head-to-head league, your stud closer may never even see the ball. I completely punted saves last year and ended up tying that category at least a half dozen times with a grand total of zero saves. So what are they good for?

Well, I probably would have actually won a few of those if I even had one really inconsistent, low-dollar closer. It's probably worth the ERA and WHIP gamble (those inevitable one-inning meltdowns are much more damaging in head-to-head) as long as you have a stable of consistent starters chewing up a fair amount of innings without getting torched.

This year, I'll probably plop a couple bucks down on somebody like Craig Kimbrel in Atlanta or Jake McGee in Tampa, guys who haven't proven anything or are going to be part of a committee. Or maybe even a Rafael Soriano, who would grab the reins in case anything happened to the Sandman (I made this bet last year on Joba Chamberlain; fool me once...)

Again, with the peculiarities of a 20-team head-to-head league, I can get away with punting or gambling on some set-up guys, but I still won't be paying top dollar for a closer. I'd rather save my limited pitching dollars for a starter with a reliable track record.

Q: How Do You Make God Laugh?

A: Make a plan.

Like I said in the intro, last year I finished second in the Ugueth League (which I'll abbreviate as "UL" from here on out because I'm tired of seeing the red squiggle under Ugueth.) Before I go into what strategy got me there last year and how I intend to match or better last year's results, let's delve into the innards of the UL.

The Ugueth What U Pay For League is composed of 20 teams that draft the following roster positions through an auction draft ($260 budget per team): Catcher, First Base, Second Base, Third Base, Shortstop, three Outfielders, one Utility player, three Starting Pitchers, two Relief Pitchers, three additional Pitchers, six bench players (either batters or pitchers), and up to four players on the Disabled List.

We play head-to-head weekly with a 6x6 scoring category format. Batting categories are Runs, Home Runs, Runs Batted In (RBI), Stolen Bases, Batting Average and On-base Plus Slugging (OPS) Percentage. Pitching categories are Wins, Losses, Saves, Strikeouts, Earned Run Average (ERA) and Walks + Hits/Innings Pitched (WHIP.)

Teams may make daily transactions and there are no limits on the number of transactions a team may make over the course of the season (the median number of transactions made by a team last year was 40, though the league champ made a whopping 324 transactions. I made 86.) There are no games or innings pitched limits, though each team must reach a minimum of 25 innings pitched per week, ostensibly to keep teams from activating only relievers so they can take the Losses, Saves, ERA and WHIP categories without much investment.

At the beginning of the 2010 season, I decided to punt steals and saves. If this were a roto league I'd be signing my own death warrant, but in head-to-head where each category counted for a win or loss, I was basically saying that I'd be content with a potential for 10 wins and 2 losses per week instead of 12 and 0. Overly optimistic, yes, but let's examine the logic behind the idea.

Steals end up being a very expensive commodity, but the players who provide the the biggest returns in the SB column tend to be very one-dimensional. Let's take the player who led MLB in steals in 2009, Jacoby Ellsbury. His 70 steals drove his auction price up to $34, and indeed only 30 players were drafted at a higher price, a testament to how Ellsbury could single-handedly deliver a win every week. In addition to the steals, he scored 94 runs and hit a respectable .301, but without much power (8 homers and .770 OPS) and a weak 60 RBIs.

Let's not even consider his injury-riddled 2010 campaign, but focus on the 2009 numbers. A player like Ellsbury (substitute Juan Pierre, Michael Bourn, Rajai Davis, or even Ichiro) is unmatched in the steals category, and is generally helpful in runs scored. However, batting average is usually hit or miss (Ichiro = .315, Chone Figgins = .259, both had 42 steals in 2010) and they are usually detrimental in the three power categories, with the notable exceptions of players like Carl Crawford ($39) and Hanley Ramirez. ($55)

So is it worth it to spend $34 on Ellsbury, $30 on Ichiro, $25 on B.J. Upton, $23 on Figgins, $18 on Nyjer Morgan, $17 on Bourn, or even $11 on Davis when you're only paying for one or two categories? Let's look at how helpful base stealers are in the runs category. Of the top 25 in SBs in 2010, the average number of runs scored is 82.8. By contrast, the top 25 home run hitters scored an average of 94.64 runs while contributing to a significantly greater degree in RBIs and OPS. So a non-thrilling power hitter like Nick Swisher - drafted for just $12 - scored 91 runs in 2010, higher than the speedsters' average. He also hit 29 homers and drove in 89, while posting a .288 batting average with an .870 OPS. Compare those to Nyjer Morgan's 60 runs, 0 homers, 24 RBIs, .253 average and .633 OPS. Are those numbers plus 34 steals (compared to Swisher's 1) worth $6 more on draft day?

The scoring categories in the UL favor power hitters and marginalize steals, yet these guys routinely go for higher dollar values than they end up being worth. There are always exceptions, of course: Juan Pierre was drafted at $3 and returned 68 steals. Coco Crisp went undrafted because of a broken finger and didn't see regular game action until late June, but I picked him up from the free agent pool for free and he got me 32 steals in the second half of the season. On the whole, however, I don't see a reason to spend money on steals unless they come attached to other categories. Due to the nature of head-to-head, a couple of 15-20 steal players can be more beneficial in a specific week than a player in the Ellsbury/Pierre mold due to matchups. Plus, there just aren't enough of those guys out there for one team to dominate the category in a 20-team league.

I'll cover saves tomorrow, as that's a little more complex.

The Amazing Disappearing Man

That's Pablo Sandoval (aka Kung Fu Panda) in September of 2009. Dude finished 7th in the MVP voting and pretty much came out of nowhere. I don't have the 2009 Ugueth League draft results in front of me, but I'd bet he either went for $1 or was undrafted.



Here's Sandoval 7 months later in May of 2010. Reports are that as the season progressed, he actually got too big and immobile to even field ground balls at third base. Literally, too fat to play baseball. John Kruk, take note.



And here's Sandoval earlier this spring. Andrew Baggarly from the San Jose Mercury News reports that Sandoval has lost 38 pounds total since the end of last season and that he's actually gained muscle mass.

What does it mean? In 2009, Sandoval hit .330 with 25 homers and 90 RBI, scored 79 runs and posted a .943 OPS. Big man even stole 5 bases. However, the larger 2010 version of Sandoval declined precipitously, hitting .268 (-62 points) with 13 knocks, 63 RBIs and 3 lucky steals. The biggest disappointment for the owner who paid $39 for the powerful third sacker was the .732 OPS, a drop off of over 200 points.

Third base looks good at the top of the talent pool, but there's a steep drop-off after the Jose Bautista/Adrian Beltre tier. I mean Neil Walker is going to start for someone in this league and he put up better numbers than Sandoval in 2010. However, if the slimmed down Panda Express is able to regain some of his 2009 form, I'd imagine he could easily join that tier and be worth a $27-$29 bid on draft day.

2011 Projection: .290 BA, 25 HR, 85 RBI, 75 R, 3 SB, .875 OPS

Prologue to the Most Boring Thing You May Ever Read

"There's nothing more interesting than your own rotisserie team and nothing less interesting than someone else's."
-Daniel Okrent, inventor of Rotisserie League Baseball

And it's true. I've been playing fantasy baseball for years and I've seen the glassed-over eyes of co-workers, best buds and (especially) girlfriends whenever I get amped up about a potential trade or a spring training position battle that goes the wrong way. So it only made sense that if I'm going to vent about my stupid, nerdy hobby (read: incurable, lifelong obsession) I may as well make it as public as I can, so that the entire world can ignore it.

A not-so-brief history of your narrator's fantasy baseball credentials:

1984: On a Saturday afternoon at my grandma's house, my 5 year-old ears hear someone on TV talking about some guy named Strawberry. I thought that was a really stupid name.

1986: That guy named Strawberry ended up being my favorite baseball player and his New York Mets won the World Series. Darryl was 4-for-20 with no home runs and 6 strikeouts in the Series when Davey Johnson removed him in a double switch in Game 6. I think we know how that turns out...


1988: I begin my non-illustrious, inconsequential, and mostly uneventful 6 year baseball career. I am the fat kid in right field. This should tell you pretty much all you need to know about me.

1992: My baseball fandom knows no bounds at this point. I have a subscription to Baseball Weekly and start paying attention to the sections pertaining to a game called Rotisserie Baseball. Further research exposes an itch to actually play it and I attempt to organize a league with my 7th grade classmates. However, the powers that be at St. Joseph's middle school are concerned about the illegal gambling ring that I am heading up so the league never gets off the ground. I also receive a pretty severe punishment from my parents.

1998: Thanks to the burgeoning internet and access provided by my college alma mater, I finally realize my dream of playing fantasy baseball. My first foray into the game is a salary cap league hosted by some website that I can't even remember. It may or may not even still exist. My team - named "The Masturbating Bears" after the Conan O'Brien sketch - was not competitive, but I was captivated by the game.

2001: A friend from work invites me into his fantasy baseball league and I do my first in-person draft. This was an AL-only head-to-head league, but each team was allowed to carry 3 NL players at any one time. Needing speed, I used one of my picks on Rafael Furcal, the 2000 rookie of the year. I got guffaws at the draft table from the league vets and endured not only season-long taunts, but also a dismal campaign from Furcal who got hurt and played in only 79 games. Despite my rank amateurism, I am allowed to stay in the league, probably since I appear to be easily separated from my money.

2002: I begin my non-illustrious, inconsequential, and mostly uneventful 3 year softball career. Several of the guys on the team are in a fantasy league, which I quickly join. This is the first time I'm playing in a league composed almost entirely of people that I know, which makes it much more fun though not any easier. I quickly come to the realization that I am a terrible evaluator of pitching.

2004: In a cruel twist of fate, I have hit the nadir of my fantasy addiction but also the apex of my fantasy success. I am managing 6 teams in 3 private leagues and 3 public leagues. The "Furcal" league - or as it is properly recognized The Ugueth What U Pay For League* - has expanded to 16 teams and now uses all AL and NL players, not that it helped me. However, I end up winning a small AL-only league with ease and finishing second in my softball team league only because we counted complete games. In the Marlins' 161st game, my pitcher Josh Beckett was winning 4-2 after 8 innings and 96 pitches when Jack McKeon pulled him for Armando Benitez, costing me the title. I hate you, Jack McKeon.

2005: After moving away from all my friends, I decide it's time to cut back on fantasy baseball. I'm only in two leagues this year, both with the group from the Ugueth League. One is an 18-team behemoth with a standard draft, and the second was a 12-team league with an auction draft, my first. I remember the software we used was glitchy as hell, to the point where we actually got a full refund and a free draft for the next season from the company that sold it. They're out of business now. Still, the auction draft was the most fun I had ever had at an online draft and we ended up consolidating these two leagues with the auction draft the next year.

2007: I start working with the Obama campaign in January and am so overwhelmed with work that I don't have time to play fantasy baseball. It's a dagger through my heart not to be able to do it, but at this point, I assume that Hillary Clinton will drub him in the Iowa caucuses and I can get back in the league in 2008. I think we know how that turns out...


2009: After a two-year absence, I rejoined the Ugueth League, which had now grown to 20 teams. The group from 2001 had dwindled to a mere handful - only five of the original ten - which makes me feel a little distant, nothing like the old softball team league. On the plus side, these guys don't mess around. It's a $50 buy-in with 20 teams. If you're not math inclined, that's a $1000 prize pool. No chump change.

2010: My 8th season in the Ugueth League and I finally win some money. I split my draft budget about 70/30 in favor of hitting (I intended to go 80/20, but that went out the window after I blew my entire pitching budget on Felix Hernandez and Johan Santana) and invested in a lot of "upside" players late like Mat Latos and C.J. Wilson. We play 6x6 head-to-head (R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG & OPS for hitters, W, L, SV, K, ERA & WHIP for pitchers), so I decided to punt both steals and saves since they're not as valuable in this format. It worked: I won my division (worth $100) and finished 2nd in the playoffs ($175.)

Now that you're caught up, let's explain the purpose of this blog. I intend to essentially live-blog my entire fantasy baseball season in the Ugueth League, starting from my draft prep and finishing at the end of the playoffs. Every match-up, every lineup change, every waiver acquisition, trade proposal, etc.; I'm writing about it all. I don't expect anyone to find my team altogether interesting, but maybe you'll enjoy the insight and the process into drafting and managing a fantasy team. Maybe I'll write something that changes your opinion about a player and he ends up helping your team. Maybe you'll figure out quickly that I don't know what I'm talking about (who does?) and doing the exact opposite of what I do reaps you dividends.

I'll post as often as it makes sense here. I've also got a Twitter feed that I'll be posting quick hits to: http://twitter.com/chinmusicftw. Hope you'll join me for the next 7 months or so.

*The name of this league and any of its participants have been changed in order to protect the innocent. No, scratch that, I just want to win so it's probably best if they don't ever read this...