AL-Only Auction Results (Opening Day eve)

• By: Jonah Keri
• On: 4/6/2009 12:25:00 PM

Related: Jonah Keri 


• View Comments : 33

After winning two of the past three AL-LABR titles (and finishing a close second in between), I was forced to bow out of the league this year due to schedule constraints. With my fantasy baseball playing shifting more and more toward Strat-O-Matic, leaving LABR meant that I was suddenly in exactly zero traditional roto format leagues. So when Jeff Ma of ProTrade Sports put out a random call for a final owner in his 12-team, AL-only, (mostly) work league, I decided I had to jump at the chance.

As always, my strategy coming in was to have no strategy. Or at least nothing so codified as Ron Shandler's LIMA Plan, the SMART Plan of Rick Wolf and Glenn Colton, or any other highly structured approach. I suppose the closest my roto approach comes to a plan is the Agnostic philosophy that Chris Liss recently documented here. I care about nothing other than value, and draft accordingly. By draft's end, you can rest assured that I'll have no players over $30 (since value never seems to follow the top guys) and viable starters at just about every position. This draft was no different: No superstars on the entire roster, a bunch of ugly guys who are probably on many people's Avoid lists...and no glaring weaknesses anywhere on the roster. I may not win, but I'm hoping I can be competitive. What say you? (To this draft, and to my shoulder-shrugging philosophy)

MONTREAL MCGAFFIGANS
C Jarrod Saltalamacchia $10
C A.J. Pierzynski $7
1B Jason Giambi $13
2B Akinori Iwamura $7
3B Melvin Mora $9
SS Orlando Cabrera $13
CI Russell Branyan $10
MI Julio Lugo $1
OF Magglio Ordonez $22
OF Nelson Cruz $17
OF Denard Span $15
OF Delmon Young $15
OF Hideki Matsui $12
UT Ben Francisco $9

SP James Shields $22
SP Scott Kazmir $20
SP Gil Meche $17
SP Mark Buehrle $8
SP Kelvim Escobar $3
RP Brian Fuentes $18
RP Grant Balfour $10
RP Manny Delcarmen $1
RP Ryan Perry $1

We're conducting our reserve draft as we speak via email. I pick 11th. Any suggestions? Keep in mind this is a deep league, 12 teams, AL-only. I'm pondering a young pitcher like Phil Hughes or Chuck Cecil (note that this is also a keeper league, and reserves count as $5 salaries for keeper purposes), a passable MI to replace Lugo for a few weeks (Adam Everett? Ronny Cedeno?), or some kind of cheap SBs source.