And Now Back To Fantasy Baseball

Okay, a lot has happened in the fantasy baseball season since I last wrote. The Cobble Hill Gang of my Yahoo! league is once again near the top of the standings. I've been in first place for most the season, and am momentarily in second place. This won't last long.

The league of Lumbergh and Tweedledee, however, is another matter altogether. It became clear in the first month that my strategy was doomed to fail. Most of the other teams in the league have essentially punted the saves category that I coveted so dearly during the draft and are instead racking up wins and strikeouts at an alarming rate. To compensate, I ended up trading Matt Lindstrom for Barry Zito and the injured Franklin Morales, who should come off the DL shortly and force me to make a difficult roster move. At the same time (about a month ago), I also traded for Dontrelle Willis, who might become a roster casualty when Morales comes off the DL. I need strikeouts badly, and Willis has been very inconsistent. I may have to trade him or possibly drop him soon.

I have also been burned by season-long disappearance of Big Papi. Certainly, I was not expecting a mere 3 home runs through the first two months of the season. I am hurting in virtually every category, except for Saves, ERA and RBI. No one is stealing bases for me, either. When Nate McLouth became eligible for the league by being traded the Braves, he was picked up off waivers for 93 units! We only have 100 to use for the whole year, give or take, since units can be traded. David Price went for 92 units. Comparatively, I bid 9 units. So, there is very little hope of me making a big move to rise in the rankings, where I currently sit 14th out of 17. Soon, I will have to trade Brad Ziegler, who has very little value anyway since he's on a team with few wins to save. I need starting pitching, but there aren't very good options out there. Hopefully, my hitting will turn around and I will have a chance.

Lumbergh Calling

Lumbergh says whatever Tweedledee and I decide is fine. Tweedledee doesn't respond. Methinks it's time for a renegotiation of the terms of our contract...

Call Me?

Now that the season is underway (we're in 3rd place, but it's early), I want to make a few changes to the team. I wrote an e-mail to Lumbergh and Tweedledee, outlining my proposal to pick up a replacement for Jeremy Bonderman (who is on the DL) and trading a closer for a starter. 24 hours later I get an e-mail from Lumbergh asking me to call him. I call him and he's in a meeting. Meanwhile, roster changes can only be made on Thursday by noon. It's currently 11:29 a.m. and I still haven't heard back from him. All he had to do was say "yes, go for it." Instead, I get "call me." Not very efficient. I don't even think they've paid the league dues, which would mean that we can't make any moves, anyway.
Wonder what he wants...

Failure To Report, Part II

After the experience of getting Johan, I became giddy with bidding power. Ryan Braun (The Hebrew Hammer), Matt Holliday, Lance Berkman and David Ortiz all became members of Team 8 within the span of an hour. Braun for $34 was probably a buck or two more than I would have liked, but I didn't want to be left out of star power. Holliday for $28 I thought was a good deal and the same goes for Berkman for $25. Big Papi could be a steal at $20 if he stays healthy, but I didn't realize that I could no longer bid on a DH for the rest of the draft, since he occupied the only DH spot on my roster. This left me out of the game when it came to bidding up players. The same thing happened when I later snatched up my two catcher spots relatively early.

So, now I've got 5 players I'm really happy with, with 4 of them being consensus first or second round picks in a regular fantasy draft, but I've already spent an incredible $140 for them, leaving me with a mere $120 to spend on the remaining 18 players I need on my roster, an average of $6.66 per player. Yikes! One would think that I would proceed with caution and, in a way, I did. For the next two and a half hours, exactly zero players joined Team 8, as I rued feeling handcuffed by my budget and leaving the bidding early and missing out on players that went for far less than their value, such as Jason Bay for $23, Bobby Abreu for $19, Miguel Cabrera for $31, Manny for $28, and Mark Teixera for $27, to name a few.

Once I let other teams' budgets catch up with mine (albeit with more players than me), I re-entered the bidding and again spent wildly, acting on my fear that the top closers were disappearing from view and grabbing Jonathan Broxton for $18 and Bobby Jenks for $14. I now had 7 players on my roster and $88 to play with, lowering my average budget per player to $5.50. In my crazed state, I deluded myself into feeling comfortable that my total amount left was on par with the other teams, while Adam kept pointing out the inconvenient truth that I had more players left to get than other teams. Details, details...

Matters were not helped by my overzealous purchase of one Bengie Molina for a whopping $11. Yes, he's a cleanup hitter, but it's for the San Francisco Giants, not exactly a dominant offensive team. I also wanted to make sure that I got two regular starting catchers for my roster, since only 24 starting catchers were available for 34 roster spots (2 each for 17 teams). I rationalized that Molina pick with a reasonable $6 for A.J. Pierzynski, but I later learned that other slightly lower-tiered catchers were going for $3 and I probably could have saved some valuable money there.

I was pleased with my purchase of J.D. Drew for $8. If he stays healthy, it's a fantastic buy, but that's a giant if. Comparitively, I don't think he's less than a quarter of the player that Ryan Braun is, so I felt good about it. I filled out my 5-man outfield with the immortal Ryan Spilborghs and Ryan Church. Three Ryans in the outfield must be good luck, right?

I was getting down to the nitty-gritty and really had no money left for top players, but as it was most of the top players were gone by this point in the draft, which had stretched on about 8 hours at this point. Marlins closer Matt Lindstrom for $7 I thought was a good buy, though I perhaps chose poorly with the remainder of my starting pitchers: Jeremy Bonderman for $5, Anthony Reyes for $5 and Jorge De La Rosa for $4. None of these pitchers are particularly impressive, nor were they even targets of mine in the first place, but it's just where the panicked chips fell. I later filled out my pitching staff with Hong Chih Kuo for $1 and Brad Ziegler for $7 (though I could have gotten him for less, but he was the last player I had left to pick and I had $7 to spend, so I just nominated him with an opening bid of $7 when it came to my turn at around 8:00 p.m.). In retrospect, my plan of securing first place in the saves category and lowering my ERA by drafting relievers might be undone by placing last in wins and strikeouts, as most other teams focused on starting pitching, with virtually no relievers. As a result, I am going to blow everyone away with saves, but that doesn't help much, so I going to look for a way to trade my top closer for a top starter.

The biggest trouble I had was filling out my infield. I already had Berkman, but the top or even middle-tier infielders mostly went during my spending moratorium, so I was left with the following slim pickings: Luis Castillo for $7 (a special request of Lumbergh and Tweedledee), Nick Punto for $3, Josh Fields for $3, Mark Ellis for $2 and Casey Blake for $6. I'm hoping I was able to get serviceable speed and/or power from each of those spots, without killing my batting average. I'm relying on the big guns I got at the beginning of the draft to carry the weight of the hitting categories.

Meanwhile, throughout the day, food and beverages were trotted out with much appreciation from the exhausted and punch-drunk drafters. Cheesesteaks and lobster rolls were the lunch feature (obviously, not a kosher law firm), and later a popcorn machine was rolled into the room, with accompanying baseball-themed snacks such as Cracker Jacks, beer nuts and baseball-shaped Baby Ruth packs, along with an array of brownies, blondies and cookies. My decision to load up on coffee (partly for energy, partly to stay warm in the freezing cold room) backfired on several occasions as I had to bolt the draft to hit the men's room when players I wasn't interested in were being bid on. Luckily, I needed no extended stays in the restroom, though I'm sure Adam could have handled it in my absence.

All in all, it was quite a grueling 12-hour experience, but it was also a lot of fun. I enjoyed being able to have a shot at every player available, rather than the regular draft structure of picking players in turn. It was frustrating at times to have those 6 MLB team's players excluded from the bidding, but I guess that just added to the challenge. With our pick of Brad Ziegler, Adam and I quickly packed up our computers, bid a hasty farewell and headed for the nearest pub to watch the second half of the Pitt-Villanova Elite Eight matchup, which ended in spectacular last-second fashion. Over a couple of refreshing beers, we unwound ourselves from the hectic pressure-chamber of the draft room and congratulated each other on a job well done. Again, I couldn't have done without Adam, and I can't thank him enough for all his help.

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.

D-Day Approaches

The draft is tomorrow and I'm exhausted already.

On Tuesday, I met with Lumbergh and his co-owner, who we'll call Tweedledee, mostly because he failed to reveal any distinguishing characteristics about himeself during the meeting. We gathered at the same midtown pub/restaurant where Lumbergh and the Thin Man met me a few weeks ago. This time, I followed Tweedledee's lead and ordered a beer. I needed it.

I had just finished my own league's fantasy baseball draft the night before and had spent that entire day furiously cramming for the draft, which didn't do me as much good as I would have liked. My team is fine, but I've left myself plenty of work to do during the season to make sure I win. That's fine, a little competition isn't bad. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time for it with the two other leagues I'm in, plus a baby's imminent arrival.

In any case, I came to the lunch meeting prepared to talk about my auction strategy and the kinds of players we should be going after. I waxed poetic about the economics of the salary cap and how we should be conservative with star players and instead target below-market values across the board. With 17 fantasy teams choosing from a pool of 24 major league teams to fill 23 roster spots, it's going to be challenging to find quality players at each position. The fact that 6 major league teams are left out of the bidding is a little discouraging, since so many good "sleepers" are on those teams: Royals, Orioles, Mariners, Nationals, Pirates and Padres. To be sure, those are the worst teams in baseball, but there's no need to leave them out.

My strategy session was met with approval from Tweedledee and complete bewilderment from Lumbergh, who was only interested in whether I thought Luis Castillo and Daniel Murphy would be good players to have. Clearly, I am going to have to balance their desire to win with their preference for crappy Mets role players. But with 391 players being drafted tomorrow, I'm going to have scrape the bottom of the barrel at some point, so it might as well be with Mets.

After a long, trying ordeal, I was able to download a fantastic auction draft software that will really help me during the draft. For some reason, it's only compatible with Windows, and I have a Mac, so I had to dig deep into the abyss of moving boxes in my apartment to resuccitate my old Dell in time for tomorrow.

Adam is going to come and be my assistant GM for a bit tomorrow, which will be helpful as I get my feet under me in this foreign auction format. I think it will be a lot of fun, but also incredibly draining. 12 hours of constant chess matches and poker faces with a room full of hardcore lawyers. I am counting mostly on my knowledge of baseball to keep from being eaten alive. I'm well prepared, but it's also my rodeo, so we'll just have to see how it all plays out.

8:00 a.m. tomorrow it begins. Nice way to start the weekend.

A Different (And Bizarre) Kind of Fantasy Baseball

That's why I get it in 'til the sun rise
Doin' 90 in a 65
Windows rolled down screamin' "Ah!"
Hey-ey-ey, I'm so paid.

- Akon

A few weeks ago, I was approached by a pair of partners at a high-powered New York law firm to draft their fantasy baseball team for them. They had heard of my fantasy prowess from a mutual friend and had scheduling conflicts with the draft date and wondered if I might be available to run their team on draft day. Ordinarily, it doesn't take much arm-twisting to get me to draft a fantasy baseball team; I am a three-time champion and three-time runner-up in my six year-old 12-team rotisserie league, after all. But, this draft is different. This league is different. We're talking about a 17-team auction draft. We're talking about a draft that could take twelve hours. On a Saturday. In an office.

Lumbergh's gonna have me come in on Saturday, I just know it.

Originally, this plan was pitched to me as a networking opportunity, being as I am, in fact, looking for a high-paying full-time job. Networking is nice, yes, but 12 hours! And unfamiliar rules in a format I've never played before? That's gonna come at a price. I'm no fly-by-night fantasy ride. I put serious work into this. Let's try this again.

"You won't have to pay in to the $550 league fee, and it'll be fun!" Uh huh.

"We'll give you 10% of the pot. Last year's winner won $3800." Keep talking.

"All right, what's it worth to you?" Well, I might have to take a day off of work (at the time, not a lie). How about you pay me a flat fee for the draft prep and the draft day work, plus the 10%.

Boom. $200 in my pocket.

The next step was meeting one of the co-owners and the person who founded the league to explain how everything will go down. We met this past Monday for lunch at a Midtown tavern. Me, two lawyers who make more taking a leak than I make all week, and serious fantasy baseball. In retrospect, I'm just a cheap $200 whore. Gotta start somewhere, I suppose.

In any case, it was immediately clear that the bossman (we'll call him Lumbergh, after the aforementioned "Office Space" character) knew absolutely nothing about fantasy baseball. Very nice guy, late 50's, Mets fan, but fantasy baseball savant he is not. That's okay, that's why he hired me. The founder of the league (we'll call him The Thin Man, because, well, he's thin) has been doing rotisserie baseball in an auction format for 25 years. He won last year. He knows what he's doing, but he approaches fantasy baseball with all of the joy of a doctor cupping a pair of testicles and asking for a cough. Out come the charts and the graphs and the droll, soul-sucking description of how exhilarating it's all going to be. Thanks, Thin Man. Let's get together for a discussion of the ancient Roman tax code next week!

After the meeting, Lumbergh walks me to an ATM and handed me a wad of bills I didn't even bother to count. All I know is it's four days later I haven't had to go to my own ATM. He then took me up to the offices of the firm, which occupy several floors of a very tall building. He showed me the conference room where the draft will go down on March 28th. Food and beverage will be provided. Oh, one more thing! There are no breaks. The Thin Man advises me that most teams have two representatives on draft day so that one or the other can use a restroom instead of the diaper I will apparently be using. Fortunately, my good brother Adam has volunteered to assist me on draft day, and at least let me relieve myself like an able-bodied human being.

Like any good office meeting, we adjourned by establishing when our next meeting will be: March 23rd. For lunch, of course.