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.

Shortstop: Not Worthy of a Pithy Comment

All the experts agree: shortstop is a wasteland this year. It's almost like the old days before A-Rod, Jeter and Nomar made shortstop the nouveau power position. The plus side of having only a couple of big bats at a position in this league is that it evens the field: the big dollars that Hanley and Tulo are going to command will cripple the teams that take them, everybody else gets a space filler who may or may not be preferable to just starting nobody.

I'm serious. Here's an example from last year's draft.

Team Funkeyes goes this route:
SS Yunel Escobar, $15: .256 BA, 4 HR, 35 RBI, 60 R, 6 SB, .655 OPS
OF Carlos Quentin, $23: .243 BA, 26 HR, 87 RBI, 73 R, 2 SB, .821 OPS
Combined, $38: .249, 30 HR, 122 RBI, 133 R, 8 SB, .735 OPS

For that same $38 ($36, actually) Team Sleeves went this way:
SS Cliff Pennington, $1: .250 BA, 6 HR, 46 RBI, 64 R, 29 SB, .687 OPS
OF Adam Dunn, $35: .260 BA, 31 HR, 103 RBI, 85 R, 0 SB, .892 OPS
Combined, $36: .255 BA, 37 HR, 149 RBI, 149 R, 29 SB, .790 OPS

Who got the better deal? Even without Pennington's steals, that's a way better outcome for Sleeves. Not to mention there are plenty of $1 shortstop options out there who can pull consistent ABs and not kill you.

Here are the tiers:

6 categories:
Hanley Ramirez - $55
Derek Jeter - $32
HanRam could end up getting more auction dollars than Pujols this year because of the SS scarcity factor. Pujols will put up better numbers in every category but steals, but that won't stop the conventional wisdom crowd. Jeter is getting downgraded big time, but even a sub-par Jeter can still outperform most shortstops in every category.

5 categories:
Troy Tulowitzki - $46
Jose Reyes - $30
Tulo is worth the big price tag, but he doesn't steal bases and he's injury prone. If Hanley's the only sure bet at this position, I'm not gambling with big dollars. Reyes should still be a valuable fantasy shortstop, but I think his days of 55+ steals are over.

4 categories:
Jimmy Rollins - $36
Alexei Ramirez - $12
Stephen Drew - $15
Miguel Tejada - $10
This is the group of guys who are going to go for upwards of $20 as teams get desperate that they'll lose out on above-average shortstops. None of these guys are dominant players, but you'd never know it by the price tags they'll pull. Of the 4, Tejada may be the bargain because of his age.

3 categories:
None
Another steep talent drop-off, though the overall talent level is much lower.

2 categories:
Jhonny Peralta - $10
Juan Uribe - $1
Alex Gonzalez - undrafted
Ian Desmond - $6
Rafael Furcal - $6
Maicer Izturis - $4
Elvis Andrus - $21
Ryan Theriot - $7
Peralta, Uribe and Gonzalez all get bumped up because I'll be punting steals. Desmond is a good pick to mix speed and power, though not enough to make a huge impact week-to-week. Furcal and Izturis are more or less the same player, speed with just enough pop to get by. Elvis Andrus will get paid again to be that Chone Figgins-type one-dimensional player that I hate. If I can get Ryan Theriot at a discount - say $3 or fewer - he can start on my squad.

1 category:
Tsuyoshi Nishioka - undrafted
Mike Aviles - $1
Marco Scutaro - $14
J.J. Hardy - $2
Starlin Castro - undrafted
Omar Infante - undrafted
Asdrubal Cabrera - $13
Jason Bartlett - $22
Erick Aybar - $13
Yuniesky Betancourt - undrafted
Cliff Pennington - $1
As previously stated, I'm way up on Nishioka, but I won't overspend to get him. Barring injury, this may be the Mike Aviles breakout year we've been waiting on. Scutaro isn't worth $14, but he is very good and is a potential fantasy starter if he can hold off Jed Lowrie. J.J. Hardy in a solid Oriole lineup should get some power numbers back. Everybody loves Starlin Castro and I'm going to guess that he goes for about $18. The rest of these guys don't seem worth more than $1 to me.

0 categories (with upside):
Yunel Escobar - $15
Reid Brignac - undrafted
Alcides Escobar - $4
Orlando Cabrera - $8
Clint Barmes - $9
Escobar in Toronto is intriguing since it seems like everyone who goes there starts hitting homers out of nowhere. I like Brignac to hit between 10-15 homers this year too. Barmes would've been a great pick until he broke his hand in spring training.

Jed Lowrie won the affection of the Boston faithful filling in for the injured Dustin Pedroia last year. Unfortunately, with a healthy D.P., Scutaro entrenched at short, Youkilis shifted over to third and the addition of Adrian Gonzalez, it'll be a challenge to find playing time for Jed. He could conceivably play every day, filling in for the starting infield which makes him an interesting pick-up if he can still swing the bat while filling the utility role.