A Matter of Trust

Looking at the matchup situation on Saturday morning, it seemed like an easy call. My opponent this week (last year's champ) had Indians hurler Josh Tomlin and inconsistent Royals pitcher Sean O'Sullivan going on Saturday with the less-than-stellar D-backs righty Barry Enright scheduled for Sunday. My Saturday had Derek Holland against the Yankees, James McDonald against the Reds and Kyle McClellan matched up against Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers. On Sunday I'll have my aces - Jon Lester and Dan Haren - as well as the surprising Jeff Francis against the anemic Seattle offense. All categories (except saves) are either close or competitive, though I'm leading all of them going into Saturday's games.

Thinking about last week, I decided to play a little closer to the vest: Holland has been very good, McDonald has been lackluster, and McClellan has been lucky but effective. I start Holland on principle, well, two principles actually: he's throwing well and screw the Yankees. I bench McDonald against the red-hot Cincinnati offense. I vacillated on McClellan: he's getting wins, but matched up against Kershaw makes his probability of losing much higher. Ultimately, I benched him.

Holland guts out seven strong innings against the Bombers, only to give up a 2-run homer to Robinson Cano in the eighth. Loss.

McDonald gets lit up by the Reds, giving up nine hits and seven runs (six earned) in 4-1/3 innings. Benching him turned out to be a very smart play, but now I also have to think about whether he's worth keeping on the roster. I'll have Andrew Cashner back in a couple of weeks and I'll likely have to make a roster spot for him.

All Kyle McClellan did was beat the Dodgers, holding them to one run and six hits over seven innings, lowering his ERA to 1.89 on the season. Kershaw did not fare so well, giving up five runs on six hits and five walks. He did strike out five, but had to be lifted after 4-2/3 innings and 111 pitches.

Part of my draft strategy was to rely on young pitchers with upside. That's how I got guys like McClellan, Kyle Drabek, and Phil Coke on this team. Same way I got Mat Latos, C.J. Wilson and Wade Davis on last year's squad. In the early going, I need to learn to trust these guys more. I'm going to get burned every once in a while (see Erik Bedard) but there's really only one way to let these bets pay off: let them play.

So going into Sunday's games, I'm down 4-3 in wins and tied 3-3 in losses. I have pretty safe leads in strikeouts and ERA and a smaller lead in WHIP. I'm in the exact same spot I was in last week, sitting on a loss and a tie with three starters to go. I'm going to let it ride again, though it's not that tough a call to let Lester and Haren throw. I've got some faith in Jeff Francis against the Mariners, though if it were just about any other team, I'd sit him down.

My offense still isn't showing much, though there have been a few bright spots. Aaron Hill lit up the Red Sox the last couple of days, bringing his average up to .241. The OPS is still a dismal .555 and he hasn't left the yard yet, but he does have five steals on the young season, only one short of his career high. Shin-Soo Choo is showing signs of breaking out of his slump, going 10-for-29 (.345) in his last 8 games. Andre Ethier's .386 average is somewhat deceiving, as he's hitting a blistering .500 off righties, but only .190 off lefties. He's a career .245 hitter against southpaws, so I'm expecting an overall dropoff at some point since that .500 against righties is wholly unsustainable.

It's All Downhill From Here

Wednesday night's Ugueth League auction draft was, quite simply, bonkers. With 20 teams, price inflation is an expected part of the game. There's only so much elite talent to go around and if you want the edge, you've got to pay for it. In last year's draft, 4 players commanded salaries of $52 or more: Albert Pujols ($57), Hanley Ramirez ($55) Ryan Braun ($52) and Ryan Howard ($52). Each team gets $260 to spend, so dropping 20% or more of your budget on one player is a generally risky move. Improbably, in the 2010 draft, Pujols and HanRam were both drafted by the same team; they finished 7th.

In the 2011 draft, 10 players earned a $52 dollar price tag or higher, and two of those eclipsed the $60 barrier:
Troy Tulowitzki - $61
Carlos Gonzalez - $60
Albert Pujols - $58
Robinson Cano - $56
Carl Crawford - $56
Alex Rodriguez - $54
Adrian Gonzalez - $54
Hanley Ramirez - $54
Josh Hamilton - $52
Evan Longoria - $52

I expected Tulo and HanRam to command a lot of bucks considering the thin talent pool at shortstop, but I never would have guessed that anyone would have dropped $61. I went into this draft with the intention of not spending more than $40 on any one player, but the price tags on these top-tier players made it difficult for me to stick to my guns.

Part of the inflation probably had to do with the league's new rules on transactions. We've capped pickups at 4 per week in order to keep people from streaming pitchers. It's already hard to work that strategy in a 20 team league, but it definitely favored people with consistent internet access. And no kids. And no real life. Naturally, I was against the rule change. As another deterrent, rosters were expanded from 23 to 25 players, which means the available talent pool got a little shallower. Teams now need to draft what they need instead of relying on free agents and waiver wire.

My underlying goal was to model my behavior on last year's champ, and I think I did a pretty good job. I think we had similar strategies (don't overspend, focus on infielders, relatively low pitching budget) though he's always been a collector of closers and I abhor spending money for saves. We ended up with similar looking teams and throughout the draft we were within $10-15 of each other. He spent $64 on pitching, I spent $69. His highest paid player is Ryan Howard at $42, mine is Adam Dunn at $43. Both infields are solid, though he's got a hole at third base (Placido Polanco) and I've got a hole at short (Jhonny Peralta/J.J. Hardy). We also both took shots on injured pitchers (Brandon Webb for me, Johan Santana for him). It'll be really funny when we both finish in the middle of the pack.

One of the team owners didn't even bother to show up, so Yahoo was auto-bidding on his behalf. Since the Yahoo draft values didn't take into account the inflation of our 20-team league, he ended up with an injured Chase Utley for $18 (possibly a steal, if he gets on the field sometime in the next two months), a questionable Carlos Beltran for $6 and a bunch of $1 and $2 guys to fill out the roster. Yahoo only spent $78 of his $260 budget. The new roster size and transaction limit rules are going to make it really hard for him to build a competitive squad. The lesson: DON'T MISS YOUR DRAFT!

I made a couple of tactical errors over the course of the draft. After I grabbed Shin-Soo Choo for $38 and Dunn, I got Andre Ethier at $29. I fully intended to not spend more than $15 on my second outfielder, but I got caught up in an early bidding war. I would've rather spent that money on Buster Posey (who went for $32), Victor Martinez ($28) or even a second tier catcher like Carlos Santana ($19), Geovany Soto ($12) or Jorge Posada ($12).

I also overspent on a couple of low-dollar guys. I got into another bidding war over Kila Ka'aihue, who got nominated early (50th overall) and I was pretty high on as a sleeper this year. I certainly didn't want to spend $8 on him though. I also nominated Adam LaRoche about halfway through in an attempt to get one of the richer teams to spend their money, but I ended up "winning" him for $6. He and Ka'aihue will end up splitting time at my utility spot.

At the end of the draft, I still had $5 left which basically means that I messed up in the early part of the draft. I wanted to have some money left toward the end of the draft for some of the sleeper/upside pitchers I was going to need to take, but I didn't anticipate the wild spending spree in the early part of the draft and how it would impact the endgame.

I drank 7 beers during the draft, 6 of them were Pyramid Apricot Ales. Those little bastards are delicious.

Chin Music 2011

I'll write up a full draft recap tomorrow, but here's who I ended up drafting and for how much. Before the draft, I resolved not to spend more than $40 on any single player, focus my investments on infielders and spend no more than $60 on pitching. As you will see, I broke all these rules, but not too badly...

C - Jarrod Saltalamacchia - $1
1B - Adam Dunn - $43
2B - Aaron Hill - $19
3B - Casey McGehee - $25
SS - Jhonny Peralta - $4
OF - Shin-Soo Choo - $38
OF - Andre Ethier - $29
OF - Nate McLouth - $8
UT - Adam LaRoche - $6

BN - Kila Ka'aihue - $8
BN - David Murphy - $2
BN - J.J. Hardy - $2
BN - Melvin Mora - $1

SP - Jon Lester - $30
SP - Dan Haren - $20
SP - Kyle McClellan - $3
RP - Jonny Venters - $2
RP - Joaquin Benoit - $1
P - Erik Bedard - $2
P - Derek Holland - $2
P - Kyle Drabek - $2

BN - Phil Coke - $2
BN - James McDonald - $2
DL - Brandon Webb - $2
DL - Justin Duchscherer - $1

I feel pretty good about my draft. I didn't overspend on any single player (11 players went for over $50 and two - Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki - went for over $60), I only overspent my pitching budget by $9 and the only hole in my starting lineup is at catcher. Regardless, I came really close to hitting the stat levels I thought I would need to be competitive. Batting average is about 10 points too low, I have about 30 homers and 40 RBI to spare, runs are 35 short, steals are low by 50 and OPS is only missed the mark by 10 points. If I could swing an Adam Dunn for Carl Crawford trade, I'd just about exactly hit my marks.

Pitching is another story. I punted saves again this year, but I did grab Venters who should get some chances in Atlanta. I grabbed Lester and Haren as high strikeout anchors and filled the rest of the staff with speculation picks. Webb could be the third ace this team needs, but we won't find out until at least May. Duchscherer could be a helpful ERA and WHIP balance, but health is an issue with him too. I'm expecting big things from Erik Bedard, which is terrifying. The rest of my starters are all "upside" guys who haven't proven anything yet. Pitching propelled me last year (Felix Hernandez, Johan Santana, Clayton Kershaw, Mat Latos & C.J. Wilson), but I also took way more chances on young guys, converted relievers, and injured hurlers this year. Not sure how that's going to play out.

In 11 hours, I guess we'll find out...