Baseball auction recap

Fantasy baseball geekery of the highest order ahead; proceed at your own risk.

On Monday night I had an auction draft for a first year fantasy baseball league. Actually, it isn't my first time playing with these guys. Most of them are friends with my wife from college and I've been playing in their leagues for a few years now. But this was the first time we switched from heads-up scoring to straight Roto, and more importantly, the first time we did an auction instead of a draft. All good things. We also use not just four, or even five, but six categories each for hitting and pitching, adding OPS and holds to the standard 5X5 format.

I didn't come in with one firm plan in mind, because that can often be a road to ruin if your fellow owners don't cooperate. Instead, I thought there were two likely scenarios on how this would go with a bunch of guys that have never participated in a baseball auction before: either people would be gun shy, and there would be great buys early, or they would throw money around like drunken sailors on shore leave during the draft's early moments.

It was mostly the latter.

I had designs on grabbing one of the top three players on my board: Hanley Ramirez, Albert Pujols, or David Wright, and I was prepared to spend $40 of my $260 budget on one. That didn't happen, as each name was thrown out very early and they sold for $42, $45, and $43 respectively. Jose Reyes, Ryan Braun, and Miguel Cabrera quickly joined the $40 club as well, and I bought none of them. Time to adjust the strategy on the fly. I had a master list of top hitters broken up into two tiers. I was immediately shut out of my tier one guys, but many of my stud tier twos remained. I entered the draft planning on getting at least three of them. I proceeded to happily double that.

Who would have guessed that my first purchase would wear the dreaded pinstripes? For $34, come on down, Mark Teixeira. Sure, I hate him, but he is going to rake balls into that short porch in right and he will post elite numbers in five categories. Next up: Astros 1B Lance Berkman for $33, an outright steal at that price compared to what his slugging brethren were fetching. I don't expect steals in the high teens again, but as long as he is mostly healthy he will fill up all six offensive categories nicely. My third acquisition was Dodgers OF Matt Kemp for $26, and that's the last time for a long time that he will be going for sub-$30 in any league. He hits, his power is ticking up, he swipes bags (35 steals last year) and now he will be in a lineup with Manny Ramirez for an entire season. Kemp is also all of 24 years old. Boom.

I grabbed Evan Longoria shortly thereafter, loving his upside at the hot corner for $30. I gritted my teeth and watched my beloved Dustin Pedroia go for the same price. I love Dusty--I mean, he's a Sun Devil and a Red Sock, come on!--but I just couldn't pay the frieght on that. I really hope he proves me wrong. Diamondbacks starter Dan Haren became my first pitcher, and the key to my staff. I planned to load up on cheap pitchers later and did exactly that, but I needed one reliable guy. Haren fit the bill.

Steals are often a tough category to manage, and if you don't come away with them on draft day they can be particularly difficult to acquire, so I had every intention of coming away with a number I thought would put me in the top 3-4 in the league. I did that and then some, grabbing Dreamy Jacoby Ellsbury and soon-to-bounce-back superstar Carl Crawford. Those two alone should tally over 100 combined thefts this year. I grabbed some great cheap speed as well: Rangers rookie Elvis Andrus and Astros' 2B Kaz Matusi should combine for over 50 and they cost me just a buck each.

Everything sounds great so far, right? Not so fast. In the early and mid-early rounds, I kept grabbing offensive studs at reasonable rates. Kevin Youkilis, come on down. Jason Bay with a full season in Fenway? Yes, please! This was all great, but before I knew it, I was down to less than $20 with about 16 spots to fill. In a way, I had hoped that this would become my strategy all along, for a few reasons. First, I was prepared for the "$1 endgame" of the draft, and that worked out as well as I could have hoped, as the only thing close to a $1 reach was my backup catcher--I got both of my backstops for a buck each, in fact. But at the end, there were plenty of players left that I would have been happy to add to my squad, exactly as I thought there would be. I cornered the market on the Red Sox 5th starter slot by grabbing the entire trio of Brad Penny, Clay Buchholz, and John Smoltz for a buck a pop. I'll shelve Smoltz on the DL and maybe stash Clay on my bench for a bit to see how things play out. He has been lights out this spring, and his upside if he grabs a full time rotation spot could be a gigantic difference-maker. Some of my end game $1 pickups that I think will be worth much more than what I paid: Chris Ray, Juan Rivera, Hideki Okajima, and Damaso Marte, to name a few.

I predicted that middle relievers would be undervalued, even with holds as a category, and they were. Does it really take much to figure out that closers have less value than ever when saves are only 1/12th of a team's score? I guess it does, because mediocre closers went for double and triple the prices paid to great middle men. I only have one legit 40 save closer right now, but I plan to play the waiver wire like a harp, stream pitchers on and off my roster all season, and trade some steals for what I need in mid summer.

It will be a fun league and an enjoyable season. My team is not an impregnable juggernaut like I thought it might be, but I certainly have strengths to work from. I'll be in the money, and if things break right, I make timely additions, and I swing a key trade or two I think I could be in position to win the whole thing.

Give it up for NBC!

This almost squares us on bagging Studio 60 after one season. Renew Chuck and you're fully back in my good graces, peacock.

Friday Night Lights gets two season renewal

A baseball headline that makes me giddy

Joba's Fastball Still Losing Heat

Obviously I hate Joba Chamberlain. That pretty much goes without saying. But I think he may have set the record for shortest amount of time it took me to outright despise an athlete. Granted, the pinstripes alone got him halfway there, but he was instantly in my "top five hated Yankees" group almost as soon as I knew his name, thanks to his bush league continuous head hunting tactics. It's unreal. This is not like Pedro dusting people off the plate. Joba enjoys throwing the ball as hard as he can at the heads of Red Sox players. If Vegas offered a prop bet on "2009 is the year Kevin Youkilis finally charges the mound and beats Joba Chamberlain within an inch of his life," I would be all over that action. And Josh Beckett would probably be the first one off the bench to help. Aside from seeing A-Rod get destroyed--which I waited for a long time--this is probably the only remaining potential Sox-Yanks brawl that I am actually actively looking forward to. And it's going to happen...assuming Joba can still throw hard enough to make someone angry.

Good day

ASU beats Washington to advance to the Pac-10 Tournament Championship game.

The Red Sox thump the Yanks in a prime time Grapefruit League tilt...which is obviously meaningless, but Big Papi and Mike Lowell went yard, which is definitely not.

And there is word that Friday Night Lights may get renewed for not one, but two more seasons!

That's just a good day all around. And tomorrow is AJ's birthday party and in five days I'm off to Arizona for the annual boys trip. Good times.

Never bored on the net anymore

A while back there was a commercial with a guy surfing on-line and he eventually got the message "you have reached the end of the internet." There were times that I used to feel like that as well--that I had seen and read everything that could possibly interest me. Not anymore. In the last year or two I have discovered tons of new ways to waste time on-line. Most of them involve social networking to one degree or another, which is pretty cool. Here are five of them.

Facebook. Somehow I've become completely addicted to Facebook, and I'm not sure why. I leave it open on my computer constantly and it's the second thing I check (after e-mail) every time I sit down. I love the status updates, the photos of friends, the odd feeling of getting closer to celebrities by being their Facebook friend, and even the people that I haven't talked to in twenty years that somehow tracking me down.

Twitter. This one seeemed a little strange to me at first, but currently I find it pretty interesting: mini updates with a limited number of characters. No rambling notes here, just one or two lines to get your point across. Again, I find Twitter updates from famous people strangely enjoyable to read. I also could absolutely see this site getting old after a few months. We'll see.

Blip.fm. Okay, I just stumbled onto this one (through someone else's Twitter update, naturally): it lets you be your own internet DJ, finding songs and letting you post them along with a brief line or two. It also will automatically send updates to other sites (like Twitter) whenever you post a song. You can also find other cyber-DJs with similar taste. Seems very easy and fun so far.

Plinky. They supply the topics, you supply your answers. I'm hot and cold with this one, but if you're looking for a way to kill a few minutes there have been some pretty cool prompts.

Tumblr. I just discovered this one and haven't tried it out yet, but it looks like a cool way to post all sorts of media. I'll let you know.

I don't know which of these will still hold my interest six months from now, but I bet at least a couple of them will. Okay, I'm off to complete another Facebook note.

eBay update

My eBay decluttering process is off to a rousing start. I first two items each sold on Sunday, with a flurry of bids coming in the final minutes. One has already paid via Paypal. I listed two more items yesterday, and one of those has already sold via the "buy it now" feature, and that lovely buyer elected to pay immediately too. I'm fortunate that A.J. enjoys our little trips to the post office because I am turning into a busy eBay mogul.

Are you looking for a great Bob Dylan double CD? Then check my new listings using the link to the right!