Saturday, March 31, 2018

Fantasy Focus: Your 2018 Savvy Vets

So my fantasy baseball league had its auction draft Friday night, a day late, which means we don't start playing until week 2 which starts Monday, April 9.  Seems our commissioner thought the season started on April 1 when he reserved the draft time on Yahoo.  We have a 10 team league with 26 rosters spots.  We converted to a Keeper League this year(announced at the beginning of last season) with each team keeping 2 position players and 2 pitchers.  We got to keep our full $260 auction budget.  With 40 of what would have been the most expensive players coming free as Keepers, it threw any auction values owners were used to and had read about way out of whack and it showed.  I believe every single owner ended up with money on the table at the end of the draft.  My Keepers were Nolan Arenado 3B, Bryce Harper OF, Madison Bumgarner SP, Edwin Diaz RP.  I had $23 left which was about average for the other owners.  With that background, here is the team I ended up with at the end of the draft.  I will make a few comments about what I could/should have done with the $23 later.

C   Welington Castillo $6
1B Freddie Freeman $58
2B Dee Gordon $38
3B Nolan Arenado K
SS Addison Russell $12
IF  Kendrys Morales $2
OF Bryce Harper K
OF Domingo Santana $7
OF Gregory Polanco $4
UT Carlos Santana $10
UT Justin Bour $2
SP  Madison Bumgarner K
SP  Jose Berrios $5
SP  Kyle Hendricks $20
SP  Jon Lester $12
SP Zack Godley $17
RP Edwin Diaz K
RP  Kelvin Herrera $16
RP  Cam Bedrosian $4
P    Archie Bradley $6
P    Hunter Strickland $1
B   Garrett Richards $7
B   Blake Snell $3
B   Josh Bell $10
B   AJ Minter $1
B   Jakob Junis $1

Closers were going for crazy prices throughout the draft as you can see from how much I paid for Kelvin Herrera.  I was lucky to already know Strickland had been officially named Closer for the Giants so I got him very cheap.  My 2 big regrets regarding the $23 I left on the table is I could have bid higher for Didi Gregorius who I really wanted as my SS.  I also could have bid more for a better Closer, or more for Delino DeShields who I really wanted to be a 1-2 SB threat with Dee.

We have a 40 move limit once the season starts, but our commissioner is allowing unlimited moves until tomorrow night.  Here are the moves I have made so far to clean up my roster:

1.  Dropped Kendrys Morales.  Added Tim Anderson.  I was definitely influenced by Anderson's huge game on Opening Day, but I was looking at him as a possible breakout SS this year.  His K/BB is horrendous though.  Morales had done good things for my teams in the past, but seems to be losing AB's in Toronto and only cost me $2.  I'm willing to take a flyer on Anderson's breakout being real for that price.

2.  Dropped Cam Bedrosian.  Added Addison Reed.  I just think Reed is a better Closer-In-Waiting for the Twins than Bedrock Jr. is for the Angels.

3.  Moved Madison Bumgarner DL.  Added Miles Mikolas.  This was a no brainer as Bum will be on the DL for awhile.

4. Dropped Justin Bour.  Added Sean Newcomb.  In a league where rosters are reset daily, I hate using roster spots on anything but SP who I can stream in and out of the rotation.  It was a choice between Josh Bell and Bour.  I am much higher on Bell.

I am still considering whether to swap out Archie Bradley for a marginal Closer like Joakim Soria or Nate Jones and whether to stash AJ Minter as a sleeper Closer-In-Waiting.  Minter is interesting from everything I've read, but the opportunity cost might be too high.

Update:

We have 2 NA slots which I had forgotten how to access.  We have to add the player to our regular roster first then move them to the NA slot.  This morning I dropped Archie Bradley and picked up Eloy Jimenez and moved him to one NA slot.  Then I picked up David Dahl and moved him to an NA slot.  I then picked up Tyler Skaggs to replace Bradley.

No comments:

Post a Comment