BABS in the 2020 experts leagues

As you probably know, I use BABS exclusively in all my leagues. All in all, I am happy with the teams that have been coming out of the drafts, but I’ll be honest. You were right about the challenge of sticking to the risk budget. I’ve addressed it on this page, but in short – minor injury risk (inj-) is counted as half a liability.

Here were my results from the two main experts leagues – the League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR) and Tout Wars.

 

LABR

This is a 12-team standard 5×5 mixed league. All in all, this was not one of my better drafts but I can always use the excuse that I was competing against some of the top experts in the industry (ha!). Relaxing the injury risk budget was originally just a subconscious process, but using the new formal accounting, things look better than they might have otherwise.

BATTERS Pos Tm PT Pw Sp Av Pk Rg Sk Inj Ex Nw Pk Ag Rg Budg Spnt
$6 Vazquez,Christian C BOS M a 45 $39
$1 Murphy,Tom C SEA M PW e 35 33
$39 Bellinger,Cody O1 LAD F P+ s AV * 35 30
$10 Turner,Justin 3 LAD F PW AV 25 29
$5 Cron,C.J. 1 DET F p a inj- Nw 15 10
$9 Escobar,Eduardo 32 ARZ F p a 4 9
$33 Story,Trevor S COL F PW SB a 3 6
$6 Rosario,Amed S NYM F SB a -P 2 6
$30 Martinez,J.D. DO BOS F P+ AV * 2 5
$29 Marte,Starling O ARZ F S+ AV 2 3
$3 Eaton,Adam O WAS F SB AV * 2 2
$2 Peralta,David O ARZ F AV INJ 2 2
$1 Dickerson,Corey O MIA F p AV INJ Nw Pk- 2 1
$2 Murphy,Daniel 1 COL F AV inj- 2 1
10 6 13 1 3 1
Targets   12Mx 14 8 14 0 3 3
PITCHERS Pos Tm PT Er K Sv Pk Rg Sk Inj Ex Nw Pk Ag Rg
$34 Flaherty,Jack SP STL F ER KK 30 $34
$14 Lynn,Lance SP TEX F ER KK 20 14
$10 Ryu,Hyun-Jin SP TOR M ER k inj- Nw 10 10
$6 Martinez,Carlos SP STL M e k INJ 3 6
$4 James,Josh rp HOU P e K+ Rg+ inj- e 2 4
$1 Porcello,Rick SP NYM M Nw 2 1
$1 Cease,Dylan SP CWS M k Rg+ -E inj- EX 2 1
$5 Leclerc,Jose rp TEX ER K+ sv- 5 5
$9 Rogers,Taylor rp MIN E+ KK SV 10 9
8 10 2 1 2.5 2
Targets   12Mx 7 7 3 0 2 2

I opened by grabbing some key foundation players. Cody Bellinger, Jack Flaherty, Trevor Story, J.D. Martinez and Starling Marte cost me $165. In a 12-team mixed league, you have to consider going Stars and Scrubs since those “scrubs” still tend to hold a good amount of value. I had budgeted five foundation players for $170, so I did well there.

What’s more, those five players are devoid of liabilities, so that foundation should be stable. In fact, only one player costing $6 or more has any significant injury liability. There are warts with the end-gamers, but they are more replaceable.

However, I think, in my efforts to navigate around the liabilities, I fell short on assets. Power is the biggest deficiency, especially since I couldn’t resist hometown fave Amed Rosario at $6. Heck, I’m human. BABS shows speed as only slightly off, but that may be a tougher commodity to make up ground in.

On the pitching side, my relievers helped me reach the asset targets, but that’s a dangerous path. Rick Porcello was less a hometown play than an end-game speculation, and drafting Dylan Cease just makes BABS mad. They’re replaceable, but I can be defiant when I think BABS could be wrong. Again, I’m human and BABS is just a tool. (But don’t tell her I said that.)

As always, this is just a starting point. If nothing else, BABS lets me see exactly what areas I need to shore up. One day, hopefully soon, I’ll get to start managing this roster.

Tout Wars

My entry in Tout Wars is in the 15-team standard 5×5 mixed league, with OBP replacing batting average. With the cancellation of last weekend’s live event, we took the auction online. This was the first time I had done an online auction since the platforms became more stable. It’s expedient, but it removes one of the biggest advantages of the live event – being able to see and read your opponents. So this became mostly just a mechanical process.

And that was a problem. It’s so much easier to click the “BID $1 MORE” button than to raise your hand and yell out a number, so early bidding was uncontrolled and wildly inflated. Fourteen players went for $40 or more, and five went for $50 or more. Gerrit Cole came out second and went for $40; Jacob deGrom came out nine picks later and went for $50.

I wanted to make sure I rostered at least one foundation player in this frenzy, so I decided to stay in the bidding for someone I considered the least risky at an inflated price. That turned out to be a $41 Freddie Freeman. All things considered, I’m not too unhappy given the other $40-plus investments:

Pick Pos Player Team Bid
1 OF Trout, Mike LAA $55
2 P Cole, Gerrit NYY $40
3 OF Yelich, Christian MIL $53
5 SS Turner, Trea WSH $41
6 OF Acuna Jr., Ronald ATL $55
8 1B Bellinger, Cody LAD $47
9 OF Betts, Mookie LAD $50
11 P deGrom, Jacob NYM $50
14 1B Freeman, Freddie ATL $41
21 3B Arenado, Nolan COL $41
23 OF Soto, Juan WSH $45
24 SS Lindor, Francisco CLE $45
25 3B Bregman, Alex HOU $41
26 SS Story, Trevor COL $42

When there are inflated buys at the beginning, then you can expect a good number of $1 players in the end game, and that is exactly what happened. There were 72 of them, which is more than I can ever remember. I could have spent more early on and scooped up a few more $1 guys than the handful I rostered. There were some nice buys, like Francisco Mejia, Tommy La Stella, C.J. Cron, Starlin Castro and Ryan Braun. But I opted to save for the end game and grab more of the players BABS likes.

Here is what the final roster looked like:

BATTERS Pos Tm PT Pw Sp Av Pk Rg Sk Inj Ex Nw Pk Ag Rg Budg Spnt
$8 Kelly,Carson C ARZ M PW * e 35 41
$3 D Arnaud,Travis C1 ATL M Nw 30 30
$41 Freeman,Freddie 1 ATL F PW A+ * inj- 25 29
$12 Turner,Justin 3 LAD F PW AV 20 17
$29 Olson,Matt 1 OAK F P+ a inj- 15 13
$9 Edman,Tommy 32 STL F p SB a EX 8 13
$4 Gregorius,Didi S PHI F a Rg+ INJ Nw 5 12
$2 Berti,Jon SO3 MIA M S+ a -P INJ EX 5 9
$30 Marte,Starling O ARZ F S+ AV 5 8
$13 Dahl,David O COL F PW AV inj- e Rg- 5 4
$17 Castellanos,Nick O CIN F PW AV Pk+ Nw 5 2
$13 Laureano,Ramon O OAK F p s a inj- e 2 2
$3 Carlson,Dylan O STL P p s a EX 2 1
$1 White,Evan 1 SEA F SB AV EX 2 1
10 8 13 1 4 7
Targets   15Mx 14 7 14 0 4 4
PITCHERS Pos Tm PT Er K Sv Pk Rg Sk Inj Ex Nw Pk Ag Rg Budg Spnt
$29 Castillo,Luis SP CIN F ER KK 25 29
$11 Ryu,Hyun-Jin SP TOR M ER k inj- Nw 20 11
$5 Martinez,Carlos SP STL M e k INJ 15 5
$3 Stroman,Marcus SP NYM M e 10 3
$3 Weaver,Luke SP ARZ M e k INJ 2 3
$3 Richards,Garrett SP SDP P k Rg+ INJ 2 3
$1 Andriese,Matt rp LAA P k Rg+ inj- Nw 2 1
$2 Pressly,Ryan rp HOU E+ K+ inj- 5 5
$18 Yates,Kirby rp SDP E+ K+ SV Rg- 15 18
9 10 1 0 4.5 0
Targets   15Mx 6 6 2 0 2 2

As a result, I only spent $19 of the $45 budgeted for three second-tier starters. I did manage to meet the asset goals on the pitching side, but they come with a cost. Even with the new math on injuries, I blew my risk budget. Six of my nine arms have some health risk – three of those with major risk – and that leaves me royally exposed.That early Freeman purchase took money away from my offense budget, but in my effort to recoup, I overspent on later bats, took on too much experience risk and ended up shorting my pitchers. If there were any buy I’d take back, it would be pushing Ramon Laureano to $13, and I knew it immediately when I clicked “+$1”. I should have also passed on Travis D’Arnaud; yes, it was only $3 but there were a ton of equally reasonable 2nd catchers who went for $1. Had I realized there would have been decent enough $1 end-gamers, those were $14 dollars that could have gone to pitching.

In addition, I got closed out of drafting a second closer, so I had to backfill my reserve list with potential options – Dellin Betances, Aaron Bummer and Trevor May. Not the worst assemblage in the world, and I do like Ryan Pressly to help stabilize my ratios. My team, my rationalizations.

I’m not entirely unhappy with the overall results, but like in LABR, BABS thinks I’m short on power. If the baseball is anything like it was last year, I suspect that power will be easy to find during the season. Again, my team, my rationalizations.

As with LABR, it is far from perfect, but still a decent enough starting point. There’s a long way to go… once we finally get started.