"You know, that strategy is usually the kiss of death."
– a fellow LABR owner, to me about half of the way through the
LABR-AL draft, on my youth-oriented squad.
That ominous greeting made for a slightly despondent trip home after my
first LABR auction, but time and a big comeback heal all wounds. Despite
spending the first half of the season in the cellar, the Baseball
Prospectus’ LABR entry charged back into the race for second place,
ultimately settling into a fourth place tie with Alex Patton and Peter
Kreutzer. Here, I’ll review the strategy, the trades, and the players
whom I’d most like to punch in the nose.
The Strategy
1. Buy two top starting pitchers, one solid one, and put some sleepers
on the reserve list. The linchpin of my bidding strategy had two flaws.
First, everyone else had the same strategy except for the eventual
champion, the Forever Baseball team. The league’s contrarians took
advantage of the low prices on starting pitchers and assembled a staff
that ran away with ERA and Ratio and kept them near the top of wins and saves.
Second, the three-starter staff leaves little margin for error, and Jeff
Fassero ($20) and James Baldwin ($9) both failed to meet
expectations,
although Fassero’s strong finish helped us gain a few points in the last
2 weeks of the season. While I had hoped to build a cushion with the
surplus starters on the reserve list, John Wasdin and Luis Andujar
struggled in the majors, and Tom Fordham didn’t get the call until it
was too late.
2. Go for value by purchasing players on the upswing. It worked with Jim
Thome, who just turned 27, and Tim Salmon, who came off a subpar season
that kept his price under $30. It also worked with for Butch Henry at
$2, who was phenomenal as a starter after Labor Day. Unfortunately, it
failed miserably with two players, Johnny Damon $24 and Todd Walker $15,
who combined to produce next to nothing for $39. Late in the auction,
steals were scarce, and Damon looked like the only legitimate
basestealer left on the table. In desperation for some speed, I bid
aggressively for Damon — and by winning the bidding, I turned out to be
the loser.
The Trades
1. Traded Jeff Montgomery for Brian Hunter in late June. Bob Stall of Player
Projections approached me with this trade once he had built a 30-steal lead
over the third-place team before the All-Star Break. With Monty hurt and
struggling before that point, I knew that even a strong second half wouldn’t
give me more than one or two more points in saves, so I swung the deal. It
worked beautifully for both sides, vaulting our team from 10th to 3rd in
steals, thanks to a little help from Rickey Henderson.
2. Traded Kelvim Escobar, Gerald Williams, and Scott Stahoviak for Paul
Molitor, Cal Ripken, and Arthur Rhodes in early August. With Greg
Ambrosius (Fantasy Baseball magazine) 70 RBI ahead of the #2 club, he
could easily afford to swap some playing time for the hottest closer in
baseball. Of course, Escobar blew 2 of his first 4 saves after I traded
him, and Williams forgot how to steal, so the trade didn’t work out too
well for Greg. However, Ripken only hit .217 over his last 152 AB, and
he and Molitor combined to get me just 6 HR and 34 RBI, proving that all
the playing time in the world doesn’t guarantee you RBIs.
3. Traded Mark Bellhorn and Todd Walker for John Valentin with 6 weeks
to go. At that point, Walker was hitting well in AAA, but the Twins
still hadn’t faced the music and started playing their prospects, so
going for the hot Valentin seemed like a logical move. Although he
started strong, he suffered from a nagging wrist injury in September
that limited his productivity and his playing time, again leaving us
with fewer RBIs than expected.
4. Traded Hunter for Ben Grieve with two weeks left. Late trades are all
the rage in LABR, and with nothing to gain or lose in steals, I went for
a touch of power to try to mitigate the September slumps of Ripken,
Valentin, Thome, andTerry Steinbach. Grieve hit .304 with 2 HR and 12 RBI in
the last two weeks, which was pretty much what I’d hoped for.
The Big Hits
From the auction:
1. Jose Cruz, Jr., $8. Kiss of death, my ass. I’ll pay $8 for 26 homers
any day of the week.
2. Tim Salmon, $28. His age-27 season was subpar, so his price came down
a bit. He turned out to be my leading light on offense with 33 HR, 129
RBI, and a .296 average – and 9 steals to boot.
3. Butch Henry, $2. Back in 1994-95, Henry was one of the top two or
three lefties in the NL before he blew out his elbow. Since the spring
training reports on him were good, I figured $2 was a small price to pay
in the hopes that he would win a starting job in June. Although he
didn’t get the job until September, he scraped together six saves before
his amazing finish, when he allowed 0 or 1 ER in every start except his
last.
4. Gerald Williams, $2. As a Yankee fan, I was well aware of Williams’
limitations. As a roto player, I was well aware that the Brewers saw
Williams as a leadoff hitter. They learned, but not before he stole 18
bags for me.
From the free agent pool:
1. Troy O’Leary, $26. Set free in April on a technicality, O’Leary
looked like a good cure for my then-ailing offense. I only beat the next
team by $5, so the deadweight loss was minimal, and O’Leary hit .308 for
me with a completely unexpected 75 RBI.
2. Kelvim Escobar, $1. An uncontested pickup, despite his 4-inning
outing in relief of Juan Guzman. A week later, he got the closer’s job,
and when I felt like I had maxed out in saves, I moved the then-perfect
Escobar before the law of averages caught up to him.
3. Matt Karchner, $1. In June, I needed a reliever who wouldn’t kill my
ERA/Ratio, and Karchner was the only pitcher available with a sub-4 ERA
(excluding lefty specialists). The best thing about Karchner wasn’t the
15 saves, but that when he started getting smacked around, they sat him
down for the season.
4. Pat Borders, $1. Got him right before Opening Day. Borders was the
textbook definition of the $1 catcher who won’t hurt you.
The Big Whiffs
From the auction:
1. Johnny Damon, $24.
2. Todd Walker, $18.
3. Terry Steinbach, $18. I deviated from my pro-youth strategy, and it
bit me in the ass. I thought the Hefty-bag would prop up the numbers
here; his translated line will probably be a disaster.
4. Wil Cordero, $18. Not only did he miss all that time and leave me
unable to reserve him, but my wife and several female friends spent the
rest of the season telling me to cut him "on principle." If principles
ever get in the way of rotisserie for me, then my career is more over
than Marv Albert’s.
5. James Baldwin, $9. A 4.50 ERA and 14 wins or so would have been just
dandy, and the price seemed quite fair given his strong 1996 campaign.
6. Jaime Bluma, $15, and Jeff Montgomery, $17. Injuries happen, but I
figured I had the Royals’ saves locked up.
The Finish
With one week to go, we had second place by 2 points. Each day for the
next 5 days, we dropped one more place in the standings, and wound up in
7th going into the final day. Fassero pitched well, Jimmy Key got
hammered, our hitters hit .300 on the day, and we scraped together two
more points to jump back into fourth place, tied with Kreutzer/Patton
and a half-point behind Baseball HQ. Given where we sat at the All-Star Break,
I have no complaints, but next year, the sights will be set a little higher.
Thank you for reading
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