Keeper Shmeeper

I really don’t have time to do this, but I know you all are counting on me to explain what happened yesterday. We here at Sour Grapes aim to please.

Before I begin, I need to make a statement. When I write these recaps of keeper lists and the auction itself, it is obviously from the perspective of our vision of value. As a result, our team always looks better to us because we follow OUR values, and you guys don’t. It is a standard rule of fantasy sports that our own teams look better to us the next day than we expect, because we are using our own valuation methods to evaluate our teams.

That doesn’t mean our values are right. We bid $26 on Tom Gordon last year. The bastard who bid $25 shut up. We bid $39 on Andruw Jones. Why in hell didn’t the guy who bid $38 realize what a bargain he would be at $40?

After last season’s Auction Recap, I asked Mr. Leaguer what he thought. He said we seemed to spend a lot of time bragging about how good our team was. That was certainly not my intent. I tried to write a piece about the auction that recounted what happened, but obviously it was from our perspective, and used our opinions and valuations. And I wanted to discuss our strategy and how it worked out.

By the nature of the beast, our team looked pretty good to us based on our opinions and valuations. Duh. Plus, your teams looked a little worse to us because for some stupid reason we can’t understand, none of you seem to agree with us about everything. BTW, several teams including Mr. Leaguer said they rated our team near the top.

Up until we got Rotolab, which uses Shandler’s values, we actually created our own values for each and every player. Starting last season, we’re using the Shandler values, with about 10% of the players modified by us. So there is some level of independence in the values we use, though we have put some of our opinions back in. Still, things are going to look better to us than they are…unless we’re actually right.

So here are my keeper observations.

I ran all the keepers through Rotolab. I assumed that Larry will keep Kouzmanoff (he won’t) and throw back Andy LaRoche (he won’t). This actually helps his current valuation by a few bucks because Rotolab shows a profit for Kouz and a small loss for LaRoche because of his injury. Of course, in a keeper league, it’s not all about 2008.

We also assumed that the Cartel will activate Votto as their 10th player. It’s hard to imagine he’s going to be sent down.

Here is what we get.

There are 3 teams with profits between $80 and $90 – Cartel, the defending champion Bums and … us. Kerry Wood is now valued with a profit of $11, and this pushed us into the top group. Of these three teams, the Bums have spent the most money, which means they will be less affected by inflation than us.

There are 3 more teams with profits between $60 and $70, and I would consider them all to be serious contenders. These are the Falkuhns, the Cappers and the Old Rips. We thought the Falkuhns and the Cappers would actually be up in the top group, but the Falkuhns’ extension of Hermida to $15 and the Cappers decision to keep Snell and throw back Duncan depressed their ending profits a little more than we expected.

All of the teams except the Old Rips have some saves, have a couple of starters, and have at least a good start on steals. The Old Rips have no saves yet, and they have only Jake Peavy as a starting pitcher. As for power hitting, all of the teams except the Cartel are projected to already have over 100 homers and 400 RBI’s. The Cartel only has 4 hitters kept, so they have a lot of spending yet to do.

Speaking of spending, these 6 teams have the following money left to spend: Cartel $211, Old Rips 197, Pecklers $191, Cappers $186, Falkuhns $156 and Bums $142. The Falkuhns will have $13 more if they keep LaRoche instead of Kouz. These stats favor the teams with the least to spend, because there is some fierce inflation out there. And on this score, I warn you all that there is a plan circulating among what may well be a majority of the teams to close FAAB until mid-May beginning in 2009. It is almost a certainty that we will have a rules meeting before next season.

The next group of teams range from plus $30-40: the Busch Leaguers, the Pounders and Hobo Artillery. All of these teams have a couple of pieces, but they all only kept 6 or 7 players. They all have a fair amount left to spend: $165, $184 and $200 respectively. This is NOT a good thing, given the monster inflation out there. Mr. Leaguer and Joe Cool will be hard pressed to repeat their high finishes from last season, but they are both seasoned veterans, and should be watched carefully at the auction. As for the Hoboboys, well good luck, guys.

The Lickers made some deals with their draft picks to swing from negative to positive in profits. And they are the only team to have two catchers. That ought to do it for them.

Kenny9 has $210 to spend, which makes him very dangerous, particularly to us because he has pledged to screw us out of Marmol, no matter what the cost. I believe that he will be soliciting you all for a new place to live when this happens.

Finally, new Mr. Melonhead. He’s got the most money, $218, to spend. We don’t know him, we don’t know what to expect, and he’s filling some big shoes. Well, they were old shoes. Good luck, man – you’re gonna need it this year.

A few surprises, at least to us. I’m not sure we would have extended Hermida. Those farm extensions from $5 to $15 are tricky, and we face decisions next season on Pence and Loney. The same could be said about the Bums extending Milledge, who we wish to remind you all, they got from US in a deal that Mr. Leaguer called “preposterous.” We were pretty sure Cartel would bump Hamels, which is the most dangerous decision of the three.

We would have kept Duncan instead of Snell. Snell gets another year, but Duncan has the most profit in him.

I had to go look up Ryan Ludwick, kept at $6 by Hobo. I can’t imagine he would have gone for much more.

We thought the Pounders would keep Rowand. In fact, they threw back Rowand and kept Feliz, which is probably more of a statement about the Giants as it is about the Pounders.

I’m looking forward to seeing who the Bums buy as starting pitchers. We guessed they’d keep Hampton at a buck instead of Chipper at $29. Chipper had a great season last year, but that could be the move we look back to at the end of the season for good or for bad.

We struggled with whether to keep Nick Johnson. We surely hated to throw him back after donating a $5 Kaz Matsui to the Bums last year. In the end, Johnson simply won the job over a guy who is Mo Vaughnish, a diabetic, and a serious injury waiting to happen. I’d be curious as to what the others in the league would have done. I know that Mr. Leaguer traded for him in the big LA league and then threw him back, though he had a lot of good keepers there. I just wish the Giants would trade for him (I put the full court press on Larry B. on this score). It would be bad for the Pecklers, but good for the Giants. One of the great questions of the Auction on Friday will be what Oatmeal goes for.

Finally, what do Brian Wilson, Kyle Kendrick and Manny Parra have in common? They are the only 09X players kept. The Pecklers spent a lot of money last season grazing among the potential 09X players, and kept no one, though we came close on Keppinger. We were surprised no one would bite on him for a 2nd round pick, which convinced us to toss him back.