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.