With the amount of justifiable attention placed on Joshua Baez's historic debut, it might have been easy to overlook other useful players in this week's series of FAAB bids. In some leagues that indeed occurred, but sadly in other leagues, my leaguemates were up to the task, occasionally to my chagrin.
AL Tout Wars
I spent big the last two weeks, so I'm down to minimum bids and hoping they slip through. I ended up with Brock Rodden of the Mariners, who's up with both J.P. Crawford and Colt Emerson on the IL. Rodden isn't a big-time prospect, rather a 26-year old making his debut. He can still be useful in an only league for the short term.
My Sad Drop: Luke Raley. Raley is out for the season with a forearm strain. He got off to a really nice start, but had just one homer since June 11. Still not a bad $2 buy in an AL-only league, but we move on.
NFBC Main Event
This was one of the 40%+ Main Event leagues where Joshua Baez was already rostered. A reminder, the NFBC rule is that if a prospect was drafted and dropped, you can pick him up in FAAB even if he hasn't yet played in the majors. Otherwise, you need to wait until he gets called up and plays. This league is the only one of my on the NFBC platform where Baez was not available this week.
Zac Veen was our top target
With the amount of justifiable attention placed on Joshua Baez's historic debut, it might have been easy to overlook other useful players in this week's series of FAAB bids. In some leagues that indeed occurred, but sadly in other leagues, my leaguemates were up to the task, occasionally to my chagrin.
AL Tout Wars
I spent big the last two weeks, so I'm down to minimum bids and hoping they slip through. I ended up with Brock Rodden of the Mariners, who's up with both J.P. Crawford and Colt Emerson on the IL. Rodden isn't a big-time prospect, rather a 26-year old making his debut. He can still be useful in an only league for the short term.
My Sad Drop: Luke Raley. Raley is out for the season with a forearm strain. He got off to a really nice start, but had just one homer since June 11. Still not a bad $2 buy in an AL-only league, but we move on.
NFBC Main Event
This was one of the 40%+ Main Event leagues where Joshua Baez was already rostered. A reminder, the NFBC rule is that if a prospect was drafted and dropped, you can pick him up in FAAB even if he hasn't yet played in the majors. Otherwise, you need to wait until he gets called up and plays. This league is the only one of my on the NFBC platform where Baez was not available this week.
Zac Veen was our top target this week, but we also were low on FAAB dollars, so our $19 bid on him fell woefully short.
Our Drop: Yennier Cano. I predicted that my relatively large exposure to Cano last week wouldn't go well and sure enough, he lived down to that prediction.
NFBC Auction Championship
I got shut out on all of my bids in this league, and that's not the first time. One of the areas where I need to improve my game is in FAAB bidding. I'm getting outbid on key players, yet still running short on my FAAB budget compared to the competition. One of the solutions will have to be to bid on more players, and lengthen my "waterfall," so that I have more contingencies in place and take more opportunities to recycle the bottom part of my roster. Overall, I need to do a deeper dive on my FAAB process this offseason.
My Drops: None - but had I won a player, it would have been Nick Kurtz.
Beat Jeff Erickson1
Joe Ryan went on the IL on Aug. 7 with a glute strain, and was cut last week. I decided to put in a bid on him after seeing that he wasn't shut down from throwing long-term, and is already throwing from flat ground last week. The Twins remain in the race for a Wild Card spot, and were (small-time) buyers at the deadline. I think they'll get Ryan back in there as soon as it's prudent.
My Drop: Adrian Morejon. Morejon was a specuative add a couple of weeks ago before the Padres fully caught fire. Clearly they did not trade Mason Miller!
Beat Jeff Erickson2
Just what John Pausma needs - the FAAB budget to outbid everyone on Joshua Baez! This is the first of my Kodai Senga pickups - he grabbed three saves last week, and while he's not the sole closer on the Mets, I think he's the choice when available to pitch. That said, even though I understood why he didn't pitch, I didn't love seeing Daniel Duarte pick up a clean save on Monday night when Senga couldn't pitch.
My Drop: Hunter Greene. I waited until hearing the full prognosis on Greene, but I had a good hunch that this was coming. Sigh.
TGFBI
Here's my only FAAB pickup of Baez, and it was a pretty efficient bid. I also have Baez in a Draft Champions League, and a first-come first-serve league on Yahoo where I grabbed him after his first homer (when really I should have grabbed him on Friday when the Cardinals announced the move. I wouldn't have gotten Saturday's starts regardless.
My Drop: Justin Wrobleski. Thank you Justin, for four great months, and a terrible last three weeks. Now we know why.
SCARF
Sure, I got outbid on Baez, Senga, Zac Veen and Aaron Nola, but I won the services of Jeff McNeil, who has already homered this week. Great success! Pay no mind to my precipitous drop in the standings in this league, please. My first two picks in this league were Elly De La Cruz and Cal Raleigh, so it's been a pretty tough last six weeks - and whole season in the case of Raleigh.
My Drop: Caleb Kilian.
LABR
It appears that I vastly overbid on Kodai Senga here, but if I get 3-4 saves in the next few weeks before Devin Williams, I won't regret the bid. I have two categories where I can gain the most points in my quest to catch Derek VanRiper for first place - stolen bases and saves. Senga is the only pitcher picked up this week that is projected to close this week. I'm rolling with three relievers this week - Aroldis Chapman, Yoendrys Gomez and Senga. I'm sitting at 42 saves after Gomez's save Tuesday night, with teams ahead of me at 45, 47, 50 and 51. If I can roster a fourth pitcher to get saves, I'll do that, too.
My Drop: Carmen Mlodzinski. No truth to the rumor that he needed a day or two away from the Pirates to process this news.
RotoWire Staff Keeper League
My quixotic attempt to win third or fourth place is flailing right now. My team has had 10 injuries in the last three weeks, plus a couple of sneaky Monday demotions of players I had previously rostered as stopgaps.
Even accounting for that, I and most of the league had a massive oversight, not seeing Blake Snell sitting on the waiver wire. Congrats to RotoWire's Tim Schuler for scooping Snell up at a keepable price for next season, and shame on the all but three of the 18 teams in the league for not competing for Snell.
We have an August 31st trade deadline in this league, so it looks like I might pivot to selling my expiring contracts if I can find takers. Edwin Diaz left me a nice parting gift on Monday night before going on the IL. That sure was an awful trade to get him.
My Drops: Spencer Steer, Alejandro Osuna.
