Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Rob Neyer, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT.  Derek Ambrosino
John Burnson Derek Carty Marco Fujimoto Eriq Gardner Matt Hagen Jonathan Halket Rob McQuown Troy Patterson Mike Silver Paul Singman Michael Street And here's the full roster. Got a question for our fantasy baseball experts? Email us:
Heater MagazineAdd 10 MPH to your fantasy team — see for yourself
HEATER MAGAZINE Winner, 2008 CBS Sportsline Fantasy League of Experts  Plus our Statistical Definitions Most Recent Comments
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Toronto Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals (8)
Top 10 prospects for 2010: Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers (4) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (2) Acey-deucey (1) Waiver Wire Offseason: NL (12) Monthly Archives
November, 2009
October, 2009 September, 2009 August, 2009 July, 2009 June, 2009 May, 2009 April, 2009 March, 2009 February, 2009 January, 2009 December, 2008 November, 2008 October, 2008 September, 2008 August, 2008 July, 2008 June, 2008 May, 2008 April, 2008 March, 2008 February, 2008 January, 2008 December, 2007 November, 2007 October, 2007 September, 2007 August, 2007 July, 2007 June, 2007 May, 2007 Gear up for baseball season with Chicago White Sox tickets and New York Yankees tickets. LA Angels tickets, Houston Astros tickets, and Atlanta Braves tickets are hot sellers! You can get Boston Red Sox tickets, San Diego Padres tickets or Chicago Cubs tickets for your favorite baseball fan. Coast to Coast Tickets has the best MLB tickets like Minnesota Twins tickets, LA Dodgers tickets, Milwaukee Brewers tickets, New York Met tickets and St. Louis Cardinals tickets. Find premium Chicago Cubs tickets and other Chicago tickets at JustGreatTickets.com. Chicago Cubs Tickets Chicago Tickets  All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Most Recent Posts
Wednesday, April 15, 2009When to use your FAAB budget and waiver priorityPosted by Derek Carty at 1:06amLast week, I discussed my philosophy regarding the use of the waiver wire in "first-come-first-served" type leagues. For leagues that use waiver priorities or FAAB, however, things can get a little bit trickier. Today, I'd like to give a few of my thoughts on these kinds of leagues. Waiver prioritiesThe exact setup of these kinds of leagues can vary greatly, but many leagues that use waiver priorities combine it with a "first-come-first-served" approach (such as Yahoo! leagues). After the first few days of the season, all players are fair game and waiver priorities are used for players who get released or are newly added to the database. In leagues like this, I still generally recommend the approach I outlined last week. I really wouldn't worry about using up a high waiver priority quickly, with a few exceptions. If you are playing in the kind of league where Jimmy Rollins or Prince Fielder gets dropped after a poor first week and a half, then saving the waiver priority can be important. As long as owners aren't dropping players who should be owned, though, who are you really saving it for? The answer, in Yahoo! leagues, used to be "prospects" for many owners, but the Yahoo! database is much more complete this year. And even if you're in a league where recalled prospects automatically hit waivers, there are very few worth saving your priority for. Matt Wieters is honestly the only one this year I would save it for. David Price? Tommy Hanson? Gaby Sanchez? Mat Gamel? Nope. None of them. Use your waiver priority aggressively as per my suggestions last week. Other leagues put every free agent on waivers each week and resets the waiver priorities based on standings. In these kinds of leagues, again, be aggressive. You'll be getting a new priority every week, so if you wind up with a good one, use it up. FAABFAAB bidding adds an extra element of strategy to leagues that I, personally, love, but they also add an extra layer of complexity. The arguments There are three common arguments for the use of FAAB: 1) FAAB should be hoarded 2) FAAB should be used aggressively 3) FAAB should be spent cautiously and frugally Proponents of the first strategy are generally in AL- or NL-only leagues where they plan on saving FAAB cash in case of a midseason trade of, say, Manny Ramirez or CC Sabathia. These owners are swinging for the fences. Proponents of the second strategy can be in any type of league but generally hold the philosophy that FAAB gives you no value if you leave it on the table and that you should acquire good players as they become available without worrying too much about budgeting. Proponents of the third strategy are somewhere in between, not overbidding on players but not necessarily hoarding cash either. My stance Personally, I fall more into the second camp. In AL- or NL-only leagues, I don't bother to wait on superstars switching leagues. First, there is no guarantee that a star will actually be traded, much less to the right league. Second, you'll have a tough decision to make on what to eventually bid for him. Your whole budget? If not, you're risking losing him to someone else. Even if a star is traded to the right league and you win him, we don't know what caliber that star will be. Is he a $25 player? $30? $35? Let's say $30 on average, but we must consider that we'll only be getting about two months worth of time. That $30 player, as good as he is, will only be worth $10 to your team—and that's if we are absolutely certain he will become available and that you'll actually win the bidding for him. In an NL-only league, that's about as valuable as Luis Castillo or Pedro Feliz. If we discount for the uncertainty, maybe this player will only be as valuable as Jack Wilson or David Eckstein (on average), though we would need to factor in the value of whomever he'll be replacing. For me, I'm comfortable enough where I think I can attain "Pedro Feliz" value in bits and pieces throughout the year using my FAAB budget. In LABR, I spent $5 FAAB on Ross Gload, and I imagine he would have gone for at least $4 or $5 at auction. One week and five percent of my budget used, and I'm already halfway there. Sample budget There was a great article posted last offseason at Fantasy Baseball Cafe by Scott Swanay about the use of FAAB. To quote the important part: The following is a sample FAAB spending plan for a $1,000 budget that allocates weekly dollars in proportion to the amount of time left in the season. If your league uses a $100 budget instead, divide the amounts shown here by 10 and round to the nearest dollar: I haven't checked the math on it, but it looks pretty sound and, if nothing else, the logic is spot on. The longer you wait to acquire a player, the less impact he is going to have on your team. As obvious as that sounds, many fantasy owners don't put it together. The players you get in April are going to count more than players who you acquire in June, making it wise to spend more on them (holding all else constant). Swanay's budget doesn't necessarily need to be followed to the letter, though, because various league conditions will undoubtedly come into play. If Rollins does get dropped this week, you can be sure I'll bid a good chunk of my budget on him. Or if there really isn't anyone appealing out there in week three, I'll sit on my money for a week or two. The underlying premise is what's important, and that is to use your FAAB budget aggressively but intelligently. Concluding thoughtsAs I've said a couple times throughout this article, rules can be vary for these kinds of leagues, so if your league doesn't fit anything I mentioned, feel free to comment or e-mail and I'd be happy to give you my take. Derek Carty is a 22-year old fantasy baseball analyst residing in New Jersey. In addition to writing for THTF, his work has appeared at Rotoworld (NBC), Sports Illustrated, FOX Sports, and Heater Magazine. In his two years competing in expert leagues, he has won 2 titles with 4 four top three finishes, including a LABR NL title in 2009, making him the youngest person to ever win a major expert league title. Derek is a proud graduate of the MLB Scouting Bureau's Scout Development Program and is a firm believer in the importance of combining stats and scouting. He welcomes questions via e-mail. Comments |
One of the things that gets missed in this discussion (not just here but elsewhere) is that it depends on what your team’s individual circumstances are. Clearly, the most optimal scenario is one where you have a strong auction, no injuries, and only need to use FAAB to make some minor tweaks to your team. In that case, if you’re replacing one generic middle reliever with another, it doesn’t make all that much sense to be aggressive with your bid since many of these guys are interchangeable. Similarly, when you’re debating two marginal back-up catchers, bidding $15 to ensure you get the one you want doesn’t make much sense. I agree with bidding aggressively when you really want a certain player, but in deep leagues most of the players sitting out there in the free agent pool don’t justify a big bid.