Fantasy Royalty

This is the first of a series of analyses of expensive fantasy players.

The Pecklers finished 5th last season, coming back from dead last in June thanks to our usual brilliant management. Could we have finished higher?

Unfortunately we made three major mistakes in the auction that doomed us from competing for second place. I say second, of course, because probably no matter what we did, we would not have beaten the Bums. Our mistakes: Derrek Lee at $40, Andruw Jones at $39 and Tom Gordon at $26.

Those 3 players cost 105 of our 280 budget. How did they do?

Lee – 22 HR, 82 RBI, 6 SB, .317 BA

Jones - 26 HR, 94 RBI, 5 SB, .222 BA

Gordon – 3 W, 6 S, 4.72 ERA, 1.32 WHIP

That is certainly not $105 of production. What did we expect?

Lee was coming off a serious injury which ruined his 2006 season. We assumed he was healthy, but he came nowhere close to his career year in 2005: 46 HR, 107 RBI, 15 SB, .335 BA. We were not counting on those numbers coming off the injury, but we assumed something along the lines of 36/100/13/.310, plus upside. He didn't exactly suck, but other than batting average, he didn’t come close to any of those numbers.

Jones led the major leagues in 2005 in homers with 51, and followed it up with 41 HR, 129 RBI, 4 SB, .262 BA in 2006. We expected similar numbers for $39 in 2007. Both Lee and Jones are right smack in their prime years: Lee was 31 and Jones 30. Why shouldn’t they be worth what we paid, and maybe even be keepable in 2008?

As for Flash Gordon, he’s not exactly in his prime years. But in 2006 he put up a solid season worthy of closer money: 3 W, 34 S, 3.34 ERA, 1.26 WHIP. He hadn’t been injured since 2002, and his ERA from 2001-2006 was 3.11, his WHIP 1.195. Plus, he was on a good team. He certainly seemed safe enough.

Jones and Gordon became untradeable, and we were able to trade Lee, but only for an activated rookie with a broken wrist who might not make the team this year. And we had to throw in Cliff Floyd (for Tony Clark, which turned out good for us) and Carlos Villanueva for a bum. All three guys will be going for less money this year.

We were ruined. And given that our starting pitching was rotten (we kept John Patterson and Clay Hensley, and bought Mike Pelfrey, plus Wainright got off to a weak start and Webb didn’t hit his stride until the summer) and none of our closer hopefuls worked out (Rauch, Wood, Gonzalez, Meredith and Madson, who was supposed to be the insurance for Gordon), it’s a miracle we finished where we did. Those teams that we passed should be embarrassed, but I guess they must think it was our brilliant management.

They would be right.

Next: an analysis of the 2007 over-$40 crowd.