Rates & Barrels - Auction Strategy & LABR Review

Episode Date: March 3, 2020

Rundown2:51 Eno's AL Strategy7:48 Are Low IP Starters More Viable in Mono Leagues?10:47 The Bat Plan21:19 Managing the Middle Stages of an Auction27:47 Other AL LABR Observations33:29 DVR's NL Strategy39:19 The Pitching Staff48:44 Figuring Out Catchers in Deep Two-C Leagues54:59 Other NL LABR ObservationsFollow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/25VZGGQAL LABR Results: http://bit.ly/LABR-ALNL LABR Results: http://bit.ly/LABR-NL  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 74. It is March 3rd. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. We are back from Florida. It was a great trip. And as a result of that trip, we're going to talk about can talk about what we did what went right what went wrong and hopefully pass along some ideas as your own auctions come up here in the next few weeks if you're listening to this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it please take the time to do that we really appreciate it and if you listen to this show for the very first time you can get a subscription to the athletic 40% off at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. You know, how was your trip back from Tampa? Was it uneventful?

Yeah, for the most part. I watched a mediocre movie, Gemini Man. And yeah, I got a little bit of work done, I guess. Success. That's a good flight, right? Like you, you watch a bad movie or a mediocre movie.

Yeah. And, uh, just get a little work done. It's about as much as you can ask for. Uh, I got strump waffle. United has the strump waffle that they offer.

So I was, uh, I was pretty excited about that. I have great strump waffles. Really? I am, I am not for the Stroopwafel. How could you possibly be against them?

They're bland. What? And they're just calories. That's how I, when I'm eating a Stroopwafel, I'm like, this is, I'm wasting calories. Hmm. That's how I feel. All right. I love them.

I think they're delicious. Calories will spend. Okay. This partnership may no longer work. Oh, is that serious? Okay. I'm the guy that's buying the 70 pack of stroopwafels at Costco.

Oh my God. Seriously? Yeah. It's my heritage. All right. Oh, well, Hey, at least you get your heritage, right? I got, I got marzipan wrong. Apparently. Yeah, it's my heritage. All right. Well, hey, at least you get your heritage right. I got marzipan wrong, apparently.

I got wooden shoes. It's pretty true that marzipan was hazelnuts, but I got Nutella right, man. That's hazelnuts. Yes, Nutella is definitely hazelnuts. I didn't know what marzipan was. I had no idea that you were wrong. Germans bleed Nutella for the most part. Italians too, I'm told. Yeah, it's big there.

Let's talk about our auctions. Ale-only auction. Let's. We'll lead off with your team. And you gave me some ideas as to what you wanted to do. And you talked a lot about pitching, especially the late pitching you were thinking about, rounding out the roster.

You had a few decision trees. We talked about decision trees on our draft strategy show that we recorded in Florida on Friday. And the auction is like the ultimate decision tree because you have so much flexibility over what you can accomplish. You can employ a few different strategies that sometimes are just completely unviable when it comes to a snake draft. You just kind of get boxed into a corner where you can't pull off the combinations you want. So as you set out to build this team, what was your initial strategy that you finally landed on? Because I imagine it changed even a couple of times from when we last spoke about it prior to the auction on Saturday night.

Yeah, in terms of pitching, I pretty much did what I wanted to do. I could have written down this staff in pen before I got to the auction board, and I pretty much got who I wanted. The names aren't exactly right, but I wanted to get two starters for about $40 instead of Garrett Cole for $40 because I just didn't like a lot of the $1 starting pitching options. I didn't want to have a lot of those guys on my roster. So I got Jose Barrios and Jesus Lozardo in my plans. It was like Barrios and Carrasco, but Carrasco's hip injury was kind of on my mind. There were a couple other guys that I was hoping to slot in there that kind of kept getting pushed for a dollar. And I know Jesus Lizardo is not a guarantee for a lot of innings, and neither is the guy behind him, Lance McCullers.

So I got some pushback on Twitter about how risky my staff is. But to me, the back end of my staff, John Means and Spencer Troneball in particular, who I got for a combined $8, they're not very risky. I don't think that they're necessarily going to be stars. I mean, in my rankings, they're like sort of around 75, 80. But there's no reason to limit their innings for the most part. There are things that you could see them tweaking and being better. So I kind of see them as guys who are going to give me 150 innings plus and probably around a 4-2 ERA or something. But maybe they surprise us a little bit. Turnbull's throwing a little bit

harder. He's got a lot of pitches. If he tweaks one of those pitches, they could have success there. Means is throwing a curveball. If he has a curveball slider and that macro strata change uh he could be better he could get past the fifth and get you know a few wins maybe so i kind of thought barrios to me is one of the safest uh health wise i know i just doomed him but uh that i thought was like a high floor in terms of innings and health and then he showed up in my command stuff as one of the very few pitchers that had both elite stuff and command so I thought of him as high floor and high ceiling and relatively safe and that's why that allowed me to take the shots at Lizardo and the Colors, who I think will probably get maybe 250, 275 innings combined.

But these days, you know, nobody's throwing innings. The only thing that was weird to me on the pitching staff was I didn't expect to get Liam Hendricks for 17, but I didn't really want to go to Chapman, who went for 21, and I didn't really like the $15 options. So if I hadn't done Hendrix, I would have done like Leclerc and somebody else. And I might've spent, um, I might've spent my money better to, to spread the risk around it. I see somebody has Leclerc and Columet for $20 combined. I have Liam Hendrix and Aaron Bummerummer for $23 combined. I could see preferring the Leclerc combo. But in general, I love my staff. And I even did a modified Derek Carty in reserves.

Derek Carty over in the NL usually has pretty much all reserve pitchers and uses those zero dollar pitchers to kind of stream. I didn't want to do that fully because I had a couple holes on offense that I wanted to maybe be able to patch. But I got Logan Allen, Hooli Shasin, and Carl Edwards, and Michael Fulmer is one of my dollar pitchers, so I'm going to DL Fulmer. And you look at Shasin and Allen's early matchups, if Allen's playing at home against a bad team or Shasin's playing in cold Minnesota against a bad team,

they'll be in. And if not, I've got a relatively safe Carl Edwards, who I like. So I think he might be the favorite, actually, for saves there now that Matt McGill is hurt. So pitching staff I like. Hitting staff I feel like I made some mistakes. I think your pitching staff is good. And I think the kind of counterintuitive place

I've come to with Lance McCullers in particular, a particular set of skills that's pretty good, but also problematic because of the workload, that worries me a lot less in a very deep format where the threshold of innings you need per active roster spot goes down so much. I mean, the Lance McCullers 120 to 130 inning workload seems very likely at $10 in this league. I think you can be fine. I think you could actually be a little bit profitable here. And I'm not as worried. Especially if those innings are good, right?

Yeah, especially if those innings are good. You can cycle in a reliever if they IL him for the occasional break or if they were to option him just to control his innings that way, send him down, not really use him, bring him back up. You can stream your Carl Edwards Jr. You can throw in Logan Allen if he's up. You just have a few different ways you can attack it. Shasin potentially helps you out,

but I think it's totally fine to go after McCullers in a league this deep. I think it becomes a lot more problematic to roster him in 12 and 15 team mixed leagues and try to hold on to him all season long because of all those workload-related issues that we've talked about and the uncertainty as far as how exactly those innings come together. So the same kind of principles hold true for Lizardo.

So I do like the way your staff came together. It is, as you said, it really is to a name, especially in the bottom half. It's all the guys you were hoping to get at the prices you were hoping to get them. I have said many times Aaron Bummer is one of my favorite closers and waiting you know the white socks are a much improved team this year and i'm just very skeptical of alex colomay holding onto that job all season long and it burrios goes i think he he is an ace in an only league he's probably a great sp2 for most knicks leagues i think he does have a very high floor. Being on the Twins, he gets to face the other four teams in that division. So everything just lines up so favorably for him this year.

I definitely like the idea of building a staff around him. I mean, Hendricks at 17 probably is your most risky pitching buy of all. I think there's actually more risk with him than there is with Lizardo and McCullers. Just from a pure like skill standpoint right like pop-up guy that got velocity out of nowhere if that velocity goes away they've got Trevino you know there's there's um yeah that one I don't even know what happened like I blacked out or something I feel like I I do that for five hours for auctions sometimes too. I wake up and I'm like, that's what I did. But by the way, we're going to post a link to both of these

auction boards in the show description. So on your device, if you look at the show notes, you can just tap on that link and actually check out these results. Look at what Eno did and look what other teams did in the AL and do the same with mine with the NL once we get to that. Why do you feel like you messed up the hitters? What was your plan going in with the bats and how did you fail to live up to your own expectations, I guess, in that regard? Well, I failed to implement one key part of my decision tree strategy, which was to throw Rafael Devers before Jose Ramirez. And the reason I was going to do that was I would have to know a little bit more about what I'm going to do about steals if I take Devers versus Ramirez. But I had them as very comparable in dollar values. So, you know, if Devers is going

to be cheaper, then I would have saved some dollars to spend later. And that ended up kind of filtering through, you know, kind of creating the other mistakes that I made, I think. So, you know, by not throwing Devers first, who went for 30, I threw Ramirez first, who went for 35. So there's $5 I've left on the table, basically.

And those $5, you know, they don't seem like that big a deal at first. And you're like, ooh, I got the steals that I wanted. And yay. And that's great great i think my team is like actually for once uh not projected to be bottom of the pack and steals but the other things i was worried about were a second base and there came to a point on brandon lau who went for 12 and was like sort of at the peak of what my numbers said. And because I didn't have those $5, I didn't go to 13 or 14 on Brandon Lau. And I wish I had because I ended up with Tony Kemp as my second baseman. And I kind of flashed back to what you

were doing when you needed a second baseman last year. And the thing that just, I told myself was keep calm, you know, keep calm. Shedlong went for like 10 bucks. And in my value sheet, he was like a six and Shedlong was like the last second baseman I wanted. And I said, just don't do it. Keep calm, keep calm. And I think Tony Kemp is going to win a lot, like the larger part of the at-bats there at second base. And my backup plan, it's not a very good one, but Daniel Robertson is an injury away from playing a lot in Tampa. And he's in my reserves. And, you know, just hope that maybe, you know, somebody else on my roster plays at second base, like Jose Ramirez.

If he went back to second base, I would love that. Or Gurriel Jr., if there's a BGO injury, I don't know. But if there is a second baseman that becomes available in trade or on FAB, that'll be definitely a focus for me other than saves. But one thing, those are the things I don't like. I think maybe Hunter Dozier for 15. I'd rather have Brandon Lau for 14 and be able to go shopping because I got Heimer Candelario for $3 at the end and he could have been my corner infielder. So you give me Brandon Lau for $14 even, that gives me $3 to go get a util of any sort, you know, with no positional value instead of Heimer Candelario. So, you know, you see how these things compound, you know, it's like one little decision in the beginning, you know, you're $5 short, so you don't go all the way on Brandon Lau, so then do-do-do-do-do-do,

so I see flaws in my hitting, and I really wish I wasn't staring at Tony Kemp at second base, but if I get lucky there, that's the kind of, that's the kind of one, if I get lucky and he plays like 500 ABs and steals, you know, 25 bags and hits five. Like I got my $2 back. I got like a viable starter in a league like this and I could win. I think generally though, in keeper and in mono leagues of this size, everyone's going to have a flaw or a hole coming out of the auction.

They're going to have a position where they're rolling someone who maybe doesn't play enough. I mean, Kemp could be on the big side of platoon at second base, but he could also just be a bench guy that makes a couple starts per week at multiple positions. That could play out too. That shouldn't sink you. I think the interesting thing here for me,

Tim Anderson at 25. He's just a difficult player for me to figure out because I didn't see anything quite as good as last year coming. I don't think anybody necessarily did, but there's obviously a really nice set of tools there. The lineup around him is getting better. Was he a target for you? Is that a guy that you really wanted to have because he can be a positive contributor in every single category or was that just a case where bidding just happened to kind of fall that way and it made sense he was an at-price acquisition that gave me some steals you know there are cheaper guys like Adamas that I liked that would

have given me some money to spend elsewhere but um and I know that Anderson stopped stealing in the second half a little bit but I do think he'll steal at least 15 bags this year and i know that anderson stopped stealing in the second half a little bit but i do think he'll steal at least 15 bags this year and i wanted that i think he'll play a lot i think he'll be a volume guy he's too young uh i think to sort of consider uh injury risk very high so it kind of glued my staff together i did want boba shett there uh at similar values on my sheet, but Boba Shett went for $32, which was, you know, I had Anderson and Boba Shett like right next to each other at around 25. So once he went for 32, I thought, hey, I'm getting a guy who could do similar things for $7 cheaper don't i don't hate that one um in fact i like that one uh enough you know it's it's more the the dozer lao uh decision i think that i regret the most if there's one decision

yeah i think everybody comes away with at least one thing sort of like that and the thing you have to keep in mind when you're reviewing auction results the order in which the players are thrown especially in the middle and back third of the auction is really important you know i just i think it gets increasingly important the further you go into the auction so you're going to see things that look like really good nice values because people didn't have money left like that's just the way it was everybody in the room wanted to bid more, but they couldn't. It was just the way 10 of those teams came together. Actually, that is something that I thought about more this time

because in the past I've been like, oh, I don't want dollar players, but if you actually look at dollar players, especially dollar outfielders and dollar utility type players, there's a lot of value in them. I'm really happy with Kyle Lewis and Kristen Stewart for a dollar each. And you can look around and find other dollar type players that like Delano DeShields for a dollar, Alex Gordon for two, Brian Goodwin for one, you know, Derek Fisher, who was on all my lists as somebody I liked because of his exit velocity and his sprint speed. Derek Fisher for $1.

Aaron Hicks for $1. Chad Pinder, Cameron Maven. These are not studs. Jared Kelenich for $2. So there's a lot of value in the $1 and $2 players, and I didn't want to leave too much money there. So what did happen with Dozier is Lau kind of went in the time when people

have money and we're spending in the middle. Dozier was my hammer. So when I passed on Lau, Dozier was the last piece that I could get. So passing on Lau got me Lourdes Gurriel Jr. for 15, which I really liked the Gurriel by. So it is not, you're right, it is not just I passed on Lau and spent the money on Dozier. It's I passed on Lau, spent the money on Gurriel, and then had enough money for the hammer on Dozier because the Dozier was the last 25 homer hitting regular on the board when I got him. So maybe I overpaid a dollar or two because I used my hammer, but I kept a hammer and used him on Dozier

because I wanted the power because I had built a lot of speed. So there's that. But then sitting next to Brett Serra was really interesting too because we had opposite cadences in terms of building the team. He went really hard at the beginning

and had no money in the middle. So Brett Serra spent $34 on Alex Bregman, $33 on Adalberto Montesi, and $27 on Xander Bogarts, $25 on Sale, and $20 on Clevenger. And he did that before the first break. before the first break you know so he'd spent 45 uh 60 so 105 he'd spent 139 dollars before the first break and by that point i had jose ramirez and i don't know maybe tim anderson because i i threw jose barris kind of late so uh you know so what threw Jose Barrios kind of late. So, you know, so what happened then is I kind of dominated the sort of second and third round players. That's why I have Ramon Laureano for $25, Eddie Rosario for $23, Gurriel for $15, Tim Anderson for $25, and, you know, had enough money for Sean Murphy at 11. So, and had enough money to kind of buy those mid-round pitchers.

And he was piecing out on all that with his extreme stars and scrubs. Now, he came back at the sort of $9, $4, $5, $9 level, which I don't have a lot of players in there other than Means and Turnbull. And he spent $9 on Brett Gardner and $14 on Mark Canna and $9 on Anthony Santander and four dollars on Jacob Jones and there's some good buys in there but what I wanted to make sure was that I wasn't buying at the two dollar level because there is money at the one dollar level so we got back at the one dollar and zero dollar level we were actually competing again for players

and like he was mad that I got Chassin and Edwards right before him in the reserve pick. We were both throwing similar players in, like, Kyle Lewis and Kristen Stewart. He had Clint Frazier for $3. And he said the next day that that was a regret of his because there was so much value in the dollar players. Why did he spend $3 on Frazier? of his because there was so much value in the dollar players. Why did he spend three on Frazier? So it was funny to see that cadence in effect where it's like, I was bidding, then he was

bidding, then I was bidding, then he was bidding, but then we both came back for dollar days. Yeah, it's funny how it comes back around. And I think depending on how many auctions you've been in, maybe you've been in every position as far as how your spending has gone over the course of a four or five hour auction where sometimes you've spent really aggressively and early like Brett Sayre did in this particular auction. is actually painful. Yeah, because you really don't know if the values are going to be on your numbers, maybe above your numbers, people are going to overpay, or if they're going to be below. And I just think the most challenging thing as you sit and wait is to not talk yourself out of the strategy that you've already implemented. You don't want to sit there. Not start spending again.

Yeah, and overspend. Because if you see a player you really like and he's three or five bucks undervalued, maybe it's like an $18 to $24 player, a good player that can help you a lot, and you're sitting there and you're saying, I can't spend another $18, can't spend another $20,

whatever that number is, and you do it, you're saying i can't spend another i can't spend another 18 can't spend another 20 whatever that number is and you you do it you're screwed like you you can actually overspend in the stars and scrubs model to the point where you end up too thin in the back end and you're you're chasing maybe six or seven dollar days players instead of three four or five like i think five is about as many as you can get away with. These rooms, the labor rooms in particular, tend to be pretty predictable from year to year. I've felt like this auction, and it's kind of like being in a home league for me now because I've been in it for a while. I just look at it and I have a feel for what just about

everybody in the room wants to do, but I also have a good sense that people aren't going to stray too far from their valuations. Unless valuations start to change dramatically from player to player, like sitting around that table, I don't think I have a whole lot to worry about. I don't think I'm going to be caught off guard by what people are willing to pay for certain types of players in this particular auction. I think that's what's made me so comfortable having a really firm plan going into these auctions the last few years. Yeah. The one thing I would say a little bit different than that is that there is some movement. So Jason Collette had a really interesting cadence that threw me off a little bit. He kept throwing down ballot,

down ballot, political, super Tuesday, down, what would I say? Like, down list, down rank.

Yeah. Down list guys early. And it just threw me off a little. Like he threw Chris Davis when we were bidding on like $30 players. And he threw CJ K when we were bidding on like $30 players and he threw CJ Krohn early. And I was hoping to hold onto him to later and get him in at like 12, 13 instead of paying full price at 15.

Like he got him for, um, who else did he throw? He, he lost some. So I can't remember exactly. Uh, and that's why I didn't like the strategy so much is that he lost some and he lost some because everybody had money.

I've always wondered though is it just the particular player that everybody likes or is it everyone having money? I kind of wonder if it's actually more the former than the latter. The money is fixed. Everyone has the same budget going in. There used to be this idea. Everyone feels differently about the level of money

they've got at different points. Yeah guess i guess it can just make you it can just make you feel more comfortable spending when you have plenty left if those players come out when money starts to get tight they might not go the extra dollar i could see it being that could be the case right so i don't know chris davis for 19 is fine in the value sheet, but he might have gone for 15 later. Maybe, but at the same time, what you do run the risk of, if you hold players too long and money's not coming out as much as it should be on early players... You end up with 20 cap in a second because, yeah. Or, sometimes, this happened in the NL, like Reese Hoskins goes for $28. Someone goes way over

because of that thing you described earlier. Last player in a position group, last player in a category. Which I was just like, I'm not going to do that. That's how I, that's why I ended up with Kemp, which may not be a big deal in the end. He should, I think he's going to make the roster, he's going to play, but like, you're right.

Like, I think Shedlong for 10 was kind of like a big deal and second base man, if you're doing an AL only thing think about your second base plan that's the advice I'd come out of on this it's just a very particular little thing

but second base is not like a sweet position no, it's not as bad in mixed things. Odor went for 12, and he might lose his job. I literally heard that he has about a month into the season. If he's doing as bad as he did a month into last season, he's gone because he's been a replacement level player

two or three out of the last four seasons. Yeah, I think that's a weird thing to deal with, too, with Rune Odor right now. He's such a good compiler, even when the batting average is bad. That's been something that's kind of held together for him in down years in the past, but now the down year includes being a $2 player. Yeah, now they have Solak.

They have a guy who can just step in right away. I like Solak a lot. He went for $11 in this auction to Todd Zola. UT only for now, but could pick up multiple positions within the first few weeks of the season. And Miguel Andujar, he kind of looked like he was going to do that, but we've got injuries now with both Stanton and Judge. So I think that might free up the DH spot,

at least to begin the season, to the point where we have to wait a little longer for Andujar to start picking up position eligibility. Yeah, the problem for me with Solak is he has a noodle of an arm, and he has his bricks for hands. So that combination is a little bit tough, because that means to me Danny Santana is going to take the job in center. And that it's going to be hard for Sollock to take the job from frazier at third if he can't throw it across the diamond that means basically he's waiting for ruji to fall apart which you know high probability considering how close to replacement level uh odor has been however you know not you know going for a dollar less than odor doesn't i don't think reflect the

risk of him not getting one of those jobs. No, no, it doesn't. Anything else from this auction that really stood out to you about the player pool or just about some strategies that you saw implemented? Anything else that's noteworthy? No, not really. Nothing really surprised me. If you look at reserve rounds, there's definitely a few different strategies. Tristan Kofroff went to the full cardi and just only has relievers and starters on his reserve thing.

Then there's a lot of people who took shots at prospects, but the prospects more these days, the good ones, are going for dollars. You know, like, I can't, Joe Adele went for eight. And I don't know if Kyle Tucker counts anymore, but 14. Kelenich went for two. So, like, you know, I think that's a thing that people are doing is, you know, Jake Fraley, three, I think he'll actually play. The good prospects are going for dollars,

so I would actually buy a good prospect for dollar days and then get a usable veteran in reserves because the only good prospects that went in uh reserves um i don't even i don't have a good trust in mckenzie uh on cleveland but he may not even come up this year i got randy a rosarena for for zero uh i'm thinking he's an injury away um khalil lee's a prospect i saw him go in the reserves but but you know the the the quality of prospect is... I'm more happy about Shaseen, Edwards, and Allen than I am necessarily Arazarena

because those guys will be very useful to me. And $0, like having a $0 player, the thing that's unique about the $0 player is not that you own him, it's that you can put him in and you can reserve him. So to me, that's the way the correct way to use zero dollars is to have players that you can plug and play so daniel robertson for me is i'm hoping like a utility guy that i can plug in if somebody gets injured and he's gonna have eligibilities all over uh and he's an injury way i'd rather have like somebody like chad pinder there but pinder went for dollars but i think the correct use of it you know like willie castro jason collette got

willie castro for zero dollars i think that's a perfect place to have with a castro not really a prospect so much anymore these days probably not very high ceiling but he's a shortstop for for zero so there's an mi he has miles straw at his mi position or at his maybe starting shortstop position actually unless it's nikki lopez so he's a little weak there at mi so having willie castro and reserve allows him to kind of put someone in and take someone out so that's what i think is the best way to do reserves is have guys that'll that you can plug and play that you can be find useful that you can demote when you need to. Yeah, one key thing to keep in mind also as you look at these

results, labor has some very unique rules. I think these are the original rotisserie rules in that you can't reserve a player that you purchased in the auction unless they are sent to the binders. You can't reserve anybody. Even if you reserve an FAB guy,

you can't reserve an FAB guy. Right. Those guys have to go in your active lineup, but if you buy an FAB guy, you can't reserve an FAB guy. Right. Those guys have to go in your active lineup. But if you bought someone in the auction, they can only go out of the lineup if you release them outright. You can reserve them if they're released by their major league team, if they're in place of that injured player or demoted player until they're back and ready. Once they're back or once they're called up, then you have to go ahead and put them back in your lineup and use them. But those are high-risk, high-reward kinds of players like Andrew Vaughn for $1 to Brett Sayre. It's a great $1 play.

It's going to take an injury to Abreu or to Edwin Encarnacion for him to get a chance, which is not out of the question. If one of those guys gets hurt for a significant period of time, Andrew Vaughn might be ready this year. So thinking kind of along those lines is a good way to go. And until that happens, he can go to his bench, he can throw in a corner guy, or he can move. If he has someone else in his active lineup who's eligible there,

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That's GetRoman.com slash rates for a free online visit and free two-day shipping. That's getroman.com slash rates for a free online visit and free two-day shipping. All right, let's move on to the NL only auction. We talked about my plan a little bit going into it. Mostly, it was an attempt to replicate what worked for me. A year ago, I was a defending champion in the league and Stars and Scrubs went extremely well, in part because of those minor league players. I bought a few minor league players in the auction, Keston Hira, Austin Riley in particular, uh, hit on Hingen Ryu cheap last year that obviously helped as well, but going real top heavy and filling it in with high risk, high reward plays late definitely paid off in a big way. There was one example, Luis Urias last year.

He was that second baseman I had to chase. You mentioned that I didn't have a second baseman late in the auction last year. It didn't really work out with him, but two out of three in that case I think was pretty good, especially with Hira being as great as he was once he got up and got that opportunity in Milwaukee. So the thing that surprised me the most in reviewing what I did last year was seeing that I had thrown $15 at Corey Knable. I had Kenley Jansen and Corey Knable, and Knable gave me almost nothing. So I had two closers last year. It didn't work out at all. And yet, here I go.

So you did it again. I did it again. I was just throwing my pitchers down. You got Urias again, too. Yeah, I'm running it back. A lot of holdovers from last year's team. A lot of guys want another ring, but I spent a lot early, as I tend to do. It doesn't

always work out that way, but it certainly worked out on Friday night. Ronald Acuna goes for 42 in this one. Max Scherzer for 34, and Fernando Tatis Jr. somehow ended up on my team at 31. So I think out of the first eight players nominated, I bought three, and one of them was Tatis. If you said we're going to simulate the NL labor auction 100 times, I don't think any of those simulations would have put Tatis on my team. No, and I came running into the room

and was like, you got Tatis? And you're like, what? What's going on? What? What happened? I was just bidding. I didn't know we were bidding on. Everybody else wanted him,

so I just kept bidding. And then Baez went for? So Javier Baez, Gray Albright from Ras Ball was sitting right next to me. And maybe like, I don't know, 10 or 15 players later, it wasn't long after Tatis sold, he threw Baez at 30 and got crickets.

So I just kind of stopped for a second. I was like, wow, thanks. Thanks, Gray. That was the way to make me feel a lot better about Tatis. Because as I've said on this show, it's not that I don't like Fernando Tatis. It's that I don't like spending a first round pick on him because of the way the draft works. And we had a feeling that the difference between Tatis and Baez would be reflected by a much smaller difference in auction dollars than it is in draft position. There's about a two round

difference in terms of where they go in drafts, but a $1 difference in an NL only auction, it's almost nothing. So I think I'm actually pretty happy with that buy, even though I know he comes with a lot of risk. He's the kind of guy that could either crush it and actually make that value or the back could be a problem. The average could dip. There's any number of ways this can go wrong just as it can go right. But the way the whole thing came together and kind of break it down part by part, I think I've managed to balance out some of his risk with some kind of steady Eddie types who are a bit boring, who should play a lot and should stabilize a lot of my categories. Josh Hader was a key buy in this one.

He went for $21. So I went Scherzer at $34, Hader at $21, Jansen at $17. I had all three of those guys at the first break. So a lot of spending early, and I had to go through that process of just sitting around and waiting a long time before people were ready to start buying players that cost $10 or less because that was it. I'd pretty much spent as much as I could.

Couldn't get Conforto for $25. Couldn't get Schwarber for $23. Couldn't be in on Adam Eaton for $18. Couldn't be in on Azuna for $24 or Eviso Garcia for $19. Well, that's a little bit expensive I feel like, actually.

I like them, but yeah, I think I was in at like $14 or $15. Oh, you were in on them a little bit expensive i feel like actually i like them but yeah i think i was in at like 14 or 15 oh you were in on a little bit yeah because that was the only other double digit player i bought was aj pollock for 13 you were looking for a little bit of steals and a little bit of power from somebody at that at that 13 to 15 level yep that was the that was the last expensive player i was going to get um and you're in on Adam Eaton until you got to 18? Yep, I was in on Eaton. I was in on Garcia. You chose not to do Shogo Akayama for 12,

or did that happen after that? Try to remember the timing on that. I think I bid on him probably high single digits. That was probably eight or nine bucks. I think the Reds outfield playing time is just nasty to figure out right now. I love Trent Grisham for seven, but I guess that might have happened after you got Pollock for 13. Yeah, I think that was after I got Pollock.

It may have been around the time I got Ender Enciarte for seven. And the weird thing is, as I started to round it out, I was kind of surprised looking at where my categories were projected to be. I'm speed heavy. I'm speed heavy and I'm a little power light, which is kind of a strange place to be in. That happened after Enciarte. That's why I think maybe Grisham instead of Enciarte might have been a better fit. Yeah, I think that was exactly where I looked at it and said, you know what? I love the price. I think the players really could, but if I had a guy that was going to hit me a cheap 20 home runs there instead, that would probably fit this roster better. We could trade. We can move out of excess,

and there's probably some ways to do that. Maybe Jansen's a guy that I trade, but we'll do the pitching first. Scherzer, Hayter, Jansen, Carlos Martinez for eight, Pablo Lopez for seven. That's 100% auction dynamics. That was after the last break. I had the hammer. I sat down and I scribbled out all the players I was interested in. I had about $40 left to fill, I want to say, seven spots.

It's a little more than $5 per roster spot. I just told myself, I'm going to get these guys. I went out and I got them because I had control of the board. And I think it worked out okay. That's how I felt about Means and Turnbull. I was like, that's who I want.

Okay, got them. Yeah, I haven't been targeting Lopez for as long, but at least there was a moment where I said, okay, this is the best I can do with these resources. So Lopez at seven, Descalfani for five, Josh Lindblom for five, Ross Stripling for four, and Mackenzie Gore for three. So I got my prospect

who I can send down and I can stream a few pitchers off my bench. Ryan Helsley, Robert Stevenson being the primary two. Richard Rodriguez isn't on my roster.

He's listed on the grid, but I didn't actually draft him. So just a friendly head, the Pirates reliever. Not a bad reserve pick. Who is that supposed to be? Yeah, who is that supposed to be? That is...

I think that's Jairo Munoz. Ah, because you need another infielder. No, wait. No, no, no, no. It's Ronnie Rodriguez. That's who it is. It's Ronnie Rodriguez. Oh, another infielder. Yeah, need another infielder. No, no, no. It's Ronnie Rodriguez. That's who it is. It's Ronnie Rodriguez. Oh, another infielder. Yeah, a different infielder. Where is he though?

I think it's just an error that they typed him in. Oh, that's a good one for Milwaukee because the only thing I was going to say I'm jumping ahead to hitters again. No, that's alright. The only thing I was going to say is that you have three slots to fill coming out of the draft in terms of injured or um minor league players you have luis urias

alec bomb who i really like but you know i don't know how much uh i don't think he's going to make the team out of spring necessarily and then you also have dylan carlson who may actually make it out of the spring i mean he's he's he doing really well, and they kind of have a need there. Yeah, they definitely opened up a spot by... Well, I can shuffle things around, too. I can move Garrett Hampson into the outfield off of second base. If Carlson happens, but you'll probably need Hampson at second because Urias won't be there. Right. Urias shouldn't miss too much time.

I might be a little light on playing time at the very top of the season. But it's interesting to have Ronnie Rodriguez and Jed Lowry on your bench there and Cole Tucker because you have three shots at someone who could be playing early. Ronnie Rodriguez could be kind of playing for Urias a little bit, not directly at the same position, but soaking up some of that time. Yeah, I think his chances of sticking on the opening day roster go up with Urias potentially out for opening day.

So we'll get more details on that probably the next few weeks. I thought Cole Tucker was a worthwhile dart throw. I mean, I look back at what he did at AAA last year, and he doesn't jump off the page. 261, 346, 413 in the year of the rabbit ball. Project that out over a full season, probably 15 homers, maybe 20 steals.

It's cheap speed, and I like this version of the Pirates front office much better than the old version. No disrespect intended to the members of that front office, but I just get the sense now that the Pirates are going to run things in a way that makes a lot more sense. Adam Frazier, to me, is the kind of guy that just moves around and plays all over, and it would make a lot more sense to figure out what they have in Cole Tucker

and let him play every day and put him up the middle with Kevin Newman and just say, Adam Frazier's our super utility guy. We're going to let Cole Tucker play. People were excited about him when he got called up last year, in part because of that speed. So I don't think he's necessarily a great player,

but I think he fits this format really well. And you made some shots like that last year that really paid off for you. Right. So part of the big hits last year, yeah, it was newman last year i got in reserves and howie kendrick both of those guys you know kendrick had good skills and was just hurt in 2018 so i remember because of jed lowry a little bit like that yeah jed lowry i guess if you're just saying i'm really trying to replicate last year jed lowry is my attempt to unearth this year's Howie Kendrick. Because

this time last year, we would have said, oh, Howie Kendrick, where is he going to play on this team? They're loaded. He's old. He's been hurt for most of a year. Howie Kendrick only played 40 games in 2018. So I think there were major doubts about how much he was going to contribute a year

ago. And Jed Lowry played, I think, nine games in his first season with the Mets. We're talking about a guy who in 2018 hit 23 homers, drove in 99 runs, hit 267, was a big part of the Oakland order. There's still useful skills there that even if he's a part-time player like

Kendrick was for most of the last season, that plays really well in La Liga this deep. I think that the reliever shots you took are really great and reserve ryan helsley and robert stevenson like i've been hearing out of st louis camp that there's a chance that helsey's the closer to begin the season that'd be huge if it played out that way for me because it would definitely give you some trade opportunities it would open up the door.

Yeah, I probably... If I had to guess what I would want to do, I might want to hold Helsley and trade away Kenley Jansen just because of my power deficiencies. I don't think trading Ryan Helsley as a newly minted closer is going to give me the impact power bat

I'm looking for. But Rysel Iglesias has seemed like a spot, like one more blown save away from losing his job in the past. I mean, we have, I think he blew more saves than anybody last year, and you can easily see it

in his losses total. He had like 13 losses or something. So Iglesias doesn't seem that cemented in there either. And as exciting as Lorenzen is as a possible replacement, we haven't really seen closer like results out of Lorenzen yet. And there's still the possibility that use him as the 26 man,

as a guy who is listed as an outfielder and who can pitch for them or vice versa. I mean, there's, there's different ways they can game and use him and those don't necessarily lead themselves to maybe being the closer. I don't know. It's a bit of a guess as to who's behind Iglesias, but I think that it could be Stevenson. I think Lorenzen's versatility is something that makes him less likely to land in the ninth inning role

because you want to use him when you need him just overall like because there's so many different ways you can justify putting him into a game you don't want to if you're going to use a traditional closer you don't want him to be that guy stevenson can be that guy so that that's where my interest was in him i just think it of the two he makes a little bit more sense to me not Not that Lorenzen couldn't do it. Just trying to get inside the mind of the Reds and say, okay, maybe this is the best way

to handle this situation. Monty Harrison was my other reserve dart. I just think with Monty Harrison... It's tools. All tools. I forget if I've said it on this show or if it was on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast. I know Nando DeFino is a big Monty Harrison guy. He kind of just loves all Marlins, actually.

But with Harrison, I just think we might be discounting the fact that he was good enough to go play college football at Nebraska as a four-star recruit to go play wide receiver. He was going to be that good. He might be an NFL player if he weren't in the Marlins system right now. I think when you have two sports you play that well for as long as he did it, I think that can stretch out that learning curve a little bit as you move through the minors. He's had a couple of injuries as well. I think that's what kept him at the 16th.

Lorenzo Cain had a similar story. Yeah, if you don't specialize, it's just going to take you a little bit longer to make adjustments. If you have really good athletic tools, which he does, the payoff can be big.

I just think the Marlins... The league is becoming more about athleticism. The Marlins have a ton of outfielders. They've got a lot of different ways. How many good outfielders? That's the real question. I think with the way they're built right now, I mean, Louis Brinson probably gets

one more shot. Monty Harrison gets a look this year. And Jesus Sanchez probably gets a look this year. And Corey Dickerson's not going to be there all season. Harold Ramirez is a righty. You don't have to play him every day. VR can move back into the infield if they need him to.

They can move him all over. Got Matt Joyce. Garrett Cooper's hurt all the time. Everyone loves Garrett Cooper. I think he's okay. He's just a guy. I don't see enough there to prevent Monte Harrison from playing every day when they want him to play every day this season.

And also Cooper's got to be over 30 by now, or 28 or 29. He's not a future piece. No. He's the guy that's running out there right now. He's the kind of guy that gets flipped somewhere in a minor trade, gets DFA'd and traded potentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to say something about catcher strategy in both of ours.

You have either my favorite or second favorite catcher tandem. You and Mike Gianella, I think, are my favorite because you spent $8 on Posey and $10 on Narvaez. And it's not just the particulars where I like that Narvaez is going to this nice park in Milwaukee. I like that Buster Posey is now a year removed from hip surgery. And, you know, the look he's giving out of camp is a lot more fresh and youthful than he's looked at in a while. So I could see him hitting, you know, 12 to 14 homers and hitting 280 again, which would be an incredible value, I think, at $8.

And then Mike Gianella has Wilson Ramos for 10 and Will Smith for 12. He spent more, so he got more. So it's hard, but I like the way that you built them, which is I like the mid-round, I like the mid-level catchers because, A, I've seen a study into Mono League $1 catchers and they're like the worst players in the universe. I mean, like in the player universe. Yeah, yeah, not in the actual universe.

The physical universe. They're better than me. But dollar catchers are like the worst uh idea you can have in fantasy baseball i think um and just look at the dollar tatcher 10 as they're out there lenny milnick has francisco cervelli for i don't is he on a team marlins i think so he's like the third catcher for the marlins yeah faro's hurt right now so right, so that's maybe not the worst idea. But Kirk Casale and Francisco Cervelli, good luck. Gray Albright has Matt Wieters and Austin Hedges. Matt Wieters is not signed.

He didn't go back to St. Louis? He went back to St. Louis. Came behind. Very recently, though. Yeah. Austin Hedges, I guess he's the starter there. But Mejia went for seven hedges is so limited offensively uh that if me he can make any advances um you know with the glove he'll

he'll uh he'll take his job so uh who was another another cheap tandem oh in my league there's always somebody who punts it and does like you know spends two dollars on the two um who is that in our league uh chance cisco for two and garrett stubbs for one to do ambrosius and child and garrett stubbs is the third catcher for the astros but he's also eligible somewhere else so this guy's really banking he's the 26th man uh there which i don't think it is because it's i think that's mouse straw um so i just think that there, which I don't think it is because I think that's Myles Straw. So I just think those are terrible. I don't want either of those players on my team. A closer, Steve Gardner went a little bit higher with Alex Avila and Pedro Severino at $5 combined, but those are both second catchers.

I mean, second catchers do not play that much. I don't mind Dave Adler's buy of $1 for Reese McGuire because Reese McGuire is left-handed and played a little bit better than Danny Jansen last year. So that could be more of a 50-50 platoon. And then he augmented that with Robinson Chirinos for $10. So I just think a two $1 catcher, you're just blowing a hole in your entire roster.

And it's not that expensive like i got murphy sawn murphy and jason castro for 19 bucks combined and you know there are some duos that maybe i'd rather have than that um that might be a little cheaper um but i don't really see them right now i guess jason colette being the closest like danny jansen for seven austin Allen for two, but that's still a backup catcher he's got there. So I'm a guy who wants the starter catcher, and Jason Castro's the starter, and Sean Murphy has some potential.

Sorry, I almost said it. It's okay. He does, though. Sean Murphy's a good catcher to think about if you punt catcher even in a one-catcher league because if it doesn't work out in a single-catcher league, dump him. Just move on. Oh, Murphy, Kelly, and Jansen are my 12-team monolig catchers.

Yeah, that's perfectly fine because if it doesn't work out, there's going to be someone who emerges to be useful on the waiver wire in those leagues. There usually is a pop-up guy. Think about Chirinos. He was nobody, now he's somebody. Catchers peak later, develop later, their offense comes later. They're the pitchers

of the hitting. Elias Diaz, if he starts playing four times a week in Colorado and actually can hit a little bit, he could become a mixed league option later this year. I wouldn't go near him right now in a 12-team league with one catcher, but they're a pass. This time last year, no one cared about Jason Castro,

and he had a great year, great stat cast numbers, and I like him this year too. He's hitting rockets in spring. I wanted to find what Tom Murphy went for. Nobody cared about Tom Murphy. $9. $9, yeah. I do like not having a gaping hole in both catcher spots.

I think you can get away with one, but two in a monoleague. If you punt it completely, you might come up really light in playing time. It's hard to find good ones, but I felt like the prices were pretty good for both Narvaez and Posey. I mean, Narvaez is going to probably if you said forecast the number of starts Narvaez gets compared to Manny Pena in that situation,

I would say it's going to be about 100 to 62 if they both stayed healthy all year. So Narvaez is going to come out of some games for defensive purposes. He may occasionally play a little first base. But when he plays, when he starts, he's going to hit near the heart of the order, and he's going to a more hitter-friendly environment. So I think he's got a shot to repeat what he did last year.

And the Posey health is a huge part of why i liked him i think 280 with a dozen homers is absolutely within his range but last year he fell out of mixed league viability last year i think he gets back to that uh at some point this season trying to think if there's anything else about this auction that really jumped off the page to me as it happened paul goldschmidt at 24 to Mike Gianella felt like a really good buy, just kind of looking through the teams. Christian Walker went for 23. Dynamics were in play there. Walker came out a little late.

It wasn't quite a hammer situation, but this is the last guy who starts who hits the ball hard. So instead of going for 17 or 18 it's like well i gotta spend it somewhere i think that was sort of the logic with lenny on that ariel cohen was actually uh was talking to me about trying to do that sort of thing on purpose um create christian walker situations and what you can do And it's a little bit tough to do, but you can maybe just, I created a list of tier busters. And so what I looked for were players where I could,

that I thought were at the bottom of the tier. And what I could do was skip one, that player that I didn't like. So let's, I don't know, you know, Walker's there. I mean, I love your belt for nine. So he's kind of screwing us up a little bit, but let's say,

uh, let's say you have Hosmer and Walker similarly, which are a little bit worried about Walker. So you, you, you throw Hosmer while Walker's still on the table, you get Hosmer for 16 and you create a unnatural, or you create,

you create scarcity for Christian Walker by pushing up By pushing up the second to last one. Yeah, you take the last one you like, and that way you also have some certainty about what you're going to do, right? If you don't like Walker and Hosmer at the bottom of the tier and you don't get Hosmer for the number you want, now you know, okay, I'm getting a cheap one here. So I think that's where your Tony Kemp buy for two is actually a sign

of good discipline because you didn't chase something. You didn't chase Shed Love. I could have gone to 12 on Long because I screwed up the Lao thing. I could have. I was thinking about it, but it was like in my value sheet, the highest value for Long was seven, I think. That would have cost you probably two to three

of the players you got later who you really like. I think the dollars become a lot more precious late. I don't think they matter as much early. I really don't. And I think that's reflected in how aggressive I tend to be at the top of the pool. If I bought Acuna for $44 instead of $42, would it really have mattered that much? Probably not early because I can make a small adjustment here and there along the way to maybe recoup that $2 somewhere else. But if I overpay in the back third of the auction,

if I went 15 on AJ Pollock instead of 13, $2 at that time would have had a greater impact on the rest of my plan than $2 did at the very beginning. Yeah, you have your own dollar scarcity as it's running out that sort of changes things. But I did try to identify some of those and I tried to do it. It's just hard to add that strategy to everything else you're trying to do. But I did just have a list of names that I thought were at the bottom of tiers. And when I thought maybe I could jump ahead to the bottom of a tier I thought, I think I might have done that once or twice

and driven the price up on some other guys, but that's how Christian Walker happens for sure. I think I mentioned Hoskins a bit earlier. If you see his name on this grid and you see the big price, 28, he was late. He came out when there just wasn't a lot of power left.

So if you had a lot of money, and I think Sean and Greg did have a good bit of money. I think for a little while we were both sitting one and two in terms of budget remaining. And that got in my head a little bit just because knowing Greg is a Brewers fan like I am, I thought they were waiting on Urias. So I was very carefully kind of watching what they were doing with their extra money. Austin Riley came up a few picks before, or a few nominations before Urias did.

He sold at five, and I was worried if I went to six or eight that I was going to chip away at my endgame too much. I was going to miss out on Urias, and I was going to miss out on some of those pitchers I was going to go after. So you went to Baum for two instead? Yeah. Bought the future, Baum and Jerko for a combined $4. Yeah, I thought Jerko at two was actually pretty good.

Is he in Milwaukee too? Yeah, he's in Milwaukee too. I mean, he's a righty, so he could lose playing time to Sogard and could lose playing time to Brock Holt, who are both lefties. But Jed Jerko is not quite as bad against righties as people think, and I think he's going to, as long as he's healthy, he's going to give me an easy $5 to $7 worth of value from that spot. One thing that I like, too, in a monoleague is

you can kind of circle around a position or two on the offensive side, handcuffing them almost like you might with a closer in a mixed league. So if you look at your luis urias for five jed jerker for two and um uh ronnie rodriguez in the reserve round um as a whole you you spent um what seven bucks seven bucks and you're very likely to get a starter all year cobbled together. In different times, different guys are playing, but you're very likely to get for your $7 like a $10 to $12 okay starting type player. And there's a shot.

It's a low probability outcome, but there is a shot that two of those guys could play together because of the way that particular team handles positions. Right. So that was kind of on my mind as well. But yeah, the Alec Boehm thing, that was part of the plan. If someone else had pushed him up too high, I might have thrown Brian Hayes in there for the same purposes.

I think the problem with Hayes is that he hasn't shown as much in-game power yet. That can still happen, though. He's a great defender. He's a tweak away from being really exciting, I think. He's a great defender, so that's going to carry his playing time. He's got a good hit tool. He's got a pretty patient eye at the plate.

He made sense. He was the other guy I had in my pocket. You mentioned Dylan Carlson at three. I actually thought Dylan Carlson should have gone for closer to six or seven. I just, I'm not, I'm not worried about him getting called up. I'm sure he's part of Fabapalooza 2020 in May at the latest.

And we might see him before that. Like they, they didn't really replace Marcelo Zuna. We've talked about our skepticism when it comes to Tommy Edmund as an everyday player, albeit one who probably moves around and plays multiple spots because he was never as productive as a hitter as he was in his big league debut last year.

That's not a good sign. That generally doesn't yield a player who comes back the next year and continues to play at that level. Who's that you're talking about? Edmund. Yeah, especially at his age. That, to me, was found money for them last year, and it's not going to be.

Sorry, I was just kind of looking at your roster and kind of being jealous of the shots at extreme potential, like with Baum and Carlson. It just doesn't work out for me. I think my mindset mindset it's funny lauren michaels you know may have influenced me more than i thought like he he was always like really good at finding veterans boring veterans and and playing time um were places in places that people weren't spending so like to me like i might as well

have dedicated the tony kemp for two kyle lewis for one and kristen stewart for one to him because instead of dylan carlson and alec bomb i got three guys who were going to play but their upside maybe lewis maybe stewart maybe kemp can steal 25 but their upside, maybe Lewis, maybe Stewart, maybe Kemp can steal 25, but their upside's not really in the same ballpark. Kyle Lewis sneakily, I think, has that, though. I think he's maybe the outlier of that group. Kyle Lewis, if it weren't for the injuries,

I think we would be looking at him a lot differently. I just think injuries drag down prospect values so much that we forget how tooled up some guys are when they first break into pro ball. I mean, look at what he was doing last year, just in that little bit of time he was up with Seattle. Exit velocity, 90.3. The stack cast numbers look good. Yeah, he struck out 38% of the time, but that's just a late season call-up. Aaron Judge did that. When Aaron Judge got that

little taste of the big leagues a few years ago, he struck out just as much. I think when you consider the amount of development time that Kyle Lewis has lost, I like him quite a bit. There's a lot of ways it can play out. Maybe they could send a AAA for a little while.

But for a dollar in an AL-only league? Absolutely. Yeah, and I got Jake Bowers in reserve. So, you know, I wouldn't be that mad if they sent him a AAA. I think they will play him. And I talked to a couple of beat writers to sort out the Mariners depth chart in particular. There's always a couple teams where I, like, basically almost sit down with a beat writer and, like, just talk to them about the depth chart in particular. There's always a couple teams where I basically

almost sit down with a beat writer and just talk to them about the depth chart. And this year was the Mariners and Rays for sure. But another thing pops out to me when I look at this.

I got Ramon Laureano for $25,000 which may... Some people were like, nice buy Ramon Laureano for 25, which may, some people were like, nice buy, and other people were like, you went, paid too much. I get it.

But Oscar Mercado went for 24. And I much prefer Ramon Laureano. I don't know if I've made that clear. I don't think I have. Ramon Laureano

runs faster, hits the ball harder. I mean, that's a, I don't know if i need to say much more right that's all you really need i don't think their plate disciplines approaches are that different mercato maybe have a slightly better hit tool or at least contact tool uh than loriano but loriano is pretty patient uh and has found his way to kind of wait wait out the low win away slider that was kind of a problem for him so uh you know i much prefer loriana in that situation and i think it it's it's another

thing that i want to take away i said think about your second base strategy think about your stolen base strategy think about your stolen base strategy think about where they're coming from think about it identify late stolen bases identify mid guys you'd pay for, top guys. Because what I did was, and I've never done this before, I had five auction values coming into this for every player. I ran ATC, no, I ran the bat in the fan graphs at Calculator. I ran the axe. This is pretty funny that they all have these names, right? I ran the bat, the axe, which is the baseball prospectus one um i ran i got custom values from atc from errol cohen um i i got custom adp from

him um and uh what i did one more i forget what it was uh i had like four or five i think i had a mock in there um and so i had these five values. And I just thought it was amazing to look at these values as much as I think these things are tight, and there aren't that much of a range in values. When I was looking at this, I realized there are there are there are players that have large variance, I actually did one column was a standard deviation between those values, because I want to know who are high variance players and who were low variance players right um so i had this whole thing that had these five values in it and loriano was on the higher end um but and and the axe in particular baseball perspectives is giving people i think more stolen bases than i would i would um

assume is going to happen um but what i'd noticed was the stolen base sources were getting the extra dollar a lot. And I don't know if that affected me to take Tim Anderson and Ramon Laureano on the higher end of my ranges, because every player had a range, and maybe that's what affected me to make the Jose Ramirez, Rafael Devers mistake, if you want to call it that. But at the same time, I had the range, and so I don't think that I went, I didn't really go multiple dollars over or anything.

It's just that that's something I would think about going in. I don't think that I thought about it enough. And I came out of here with, I think enough power and speed. Uh, it's just, um, you know, did it cost me in places and, you know, did it, is it going to work out? I don't know, but just think about your stone base strategy for sure. And I think regardless of whether you're going to go stars and scrubs or more balanced, however, you're going to actually build the roster, the earlier you can find those foundational pieces and just know, do I have in the NL, do I have Trey Turner or do I not? Or in the AL, do I have Edelberto Mondesi or not? The sooner you know if you do or don't have those players,

the sooner you can start to look at your pivot options. Okay, I don't have Edelberto Mondesi, so I'm going to try and get two guys who I really like for 20 bags since I don't have the one guy

who I really like for 40. We'll try and get Chew and Meadows like Clay Link did. Right, and if you get Meadows out and the price goes too high, okay, I can't go to Meadows.

Who's my fallback from Meadows? I'll do Benintendi and Robert like Ambrose's and Child did yeah I think you have to be really good at thinking on the fly but to make yourself a better thinker on the

fly do the prep work go through the decision-making trees I think that's a very good way to approach auctions and drafts but you're gonna find with auctions you have a lot more flexibility so many so many solutions to your problem that you can implement as things play out. I do want to pause just for a brief moment to ask you to click into the show notes for today's episode and then follow the link that's there to a short survey.

Well, you know a lot about Eno, including the story of Eno's middle name, but we definitely don't know anything about you. So there's a survey in there. It's 11 very simple questions. It'll take you less than a minute and it'll just help us learn more about you as loyal listeners to rates and barrels. We really appreciate that. Just go to the show notes for today's episode. You can just click on the link in there and you also see the results links for both the AL and NL labor auctions in there as well. So lots of good stuff in today's show notes. As always, you can reach us via email rates and barrels at the athletic.com. And you can find, you know,

on Twitter at, you know, Sarah's I'm at Derek van Riper, get a couple other fantasy baseball pods. We've been running this season fantasy baseball on 15 every morning and the athletic fantasy baseball podcast, new episodes of that drop on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, going back to our positional breakdown series on our next episode, that's going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.