Failure To Report, Part I

So, the draft was a good 10 days ago and I have failed to achieve the modest task with which I was charged: reporting on the much-anticipated auction. I moved, plus there was the task of winning my March Madness pools for a combined total of $335. Without further ado:

Early on the morning of March 28th, I traveled to the corporate headquarters of Muckety Muck, LLC to partake in their 17th annual fantasy baseball auction. Upon reaching the 29th floor at about 7:45 a.m., I was ushered into a large conference room by a very nice 60ish hostess named Mary and her team of able assistants, where I found my large desk with two chairs, two notepads, two pens, two coffee mugs, and a power strip waiting for me. The identical set-up was multiplied 17 times around a large rectangle where other teams were setting up shop. A full array of assorted baked goods was on hand (including a decent spread of lox), along with coffee, juice and water. After some technical difficulties involving wireless for my two computers (one for draft software and one for online research), I was good to go. Then my knight in shining armor strolled in: Adam.

Oh, lord, had Adam not decided to come, then stay for the ENTIRE twelve hours of the auction, I might have spontaneously combusted. Occupying the seat next to me, Adam helped research players, keep tabs on other teams' budgets, remind me who the hell I was bidding on, offered emotional support and did my taxes. Okay, the last part isn't true, but he was my cut man, through and through. Mad props to Adam for sacrificing Elite Eight Saturday to help me. He even was able to get my computer to show streaming video of the basketball games online.

The way the auction was operated was that each team went in order around the room, nominated players and starting the bidding, sometimes as low as $1, or other times cutting to the chase with a $10 first bid. The latter approach is a little risky, as evidenced by one team's opening bid of Randy Winn for $10. No one so much as raised a finger to up the bidding and Randy Winn was sold for $10 to the opening bidder, who likely spent the rest of the day wondering if he could have gotten Winn for less (answer: yes). In any case, it took me awhile to get used to the nominating and bidding procedure and I often lost track of who was being bid on because I was still recording the information from the previous bid, i.e. putting the name of a player into the appropriate fantasy team's roster for the amount of money spent, so that I could keep track of everyone's needs and budgets (a plan that was later virtually useless). When the player's bid comes around, each team must either raise the bid or put down their team's sign that stands on the desk, signifying they are out of the auction. As Team 8, I would wait for Team 7 to make a bid and then make my move and then watch as the bidding continued around the room until it got back to me or (if I had folded), ended with someone else's winning bid. The biggest problem with this relatively orderly approach was the fact that there was no official auctioneer, announcing clearly who was being bid on and for how much, so there was a lot of "Who's the player?" and "What's the bid?" being asked all around the room. There was, however, an official budget-keeper, so that everyone could see how much money everyone had left (but not who their players were; that was our own responsibility).

Once the auction began, my carefully-crafted plan disintegrated like a clay pigeon in the Texas sky. I was confident that starting pitching was deep and that I would not need to spend very much of my budget on my mandated 9-man pitching staff. I was hoping to spend about $80 on pitching and the remaining $180 on the 14 hitters I needed. Instead, I spent $94 on pitching and $166 on hitting. Not terribly off-course, but my money certainly could have been spent more wisely. Part of the problem was Johan Santana.

Jose Reyes had already gone for $41, Hanley Ramirez had gone for $37, and Albert Pujols had gone for $36, so the market was set for the consensus top 3 players (even though I think Hanley is more valuable than Reyes and certainly not worth $4 less; this is a NY-based league, after all). When Johan's name was called out, I had no intention of bidding on him, much less getting him on my team, especially since I knew that he had gone for $40 last year. But, for some reason I stayed in the bidding, just to see what it would be like and the final number landed on $33 and Santana was mine. If the other person bidding on him had gone up to $34, there was no way I would have gone up to $35, but I was pretty pleased with having an ace to anchor my staff for what I thought was a discount. Tim Lincecum and CC Sabathia ended up going for $33, too, so that appeared to be the max number for top starting pitching. I felt confident that I could get other pitchers for cheap, so I wasn't too worried about using over 41% of my pitching budget on one guy. Plus, he's a Met, so I knew that would make my owners happy. However, blowing through another $107 in the next hour was definitely not part of my plan.