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How I Botched the RotoWire Staff Keeper League Auction

Don't get me wrong, our keepers were so good, we'll probably contend anyway. But I didn't make good use of our budget at the auction.

It's an 18-team, 5 x 5 league with the standard 23-man roster slots. There are seven bench spots and 10 minor leaguers (players with fewer than 20 games at the major-league level.) You can keep up to 15 players, with their salaries escalating $5 more for each year you extend them beyond their third ("C") seasons.

Here's who we kept:

PosPlayer$Year
C
C
1BPaul Goldschmidt13D16
2BDee Gordon7D16
3BNolan Arenado13D18
SSCarlos Correa3A
CIMatt Duffy3B
MI
OFYoenis Cespedes35B
OFLeonys Martin8D16
OF
OF
OF
UTKendrys Morales6B
PMax Scherzer35D16
P
P
P
P
P
PAroldis Chapman15D16
PFrancisco Rodriguez5B
PShawn Tolleson1B
Total144
Budget116

As you can see, we were in good shape in an 18-team league with essentially five players that could be first-round picks if it were a draft and three  closers. We needed to acquire starting pitching and fill in the offense, but we had what seemed like enough of a budget to cover that.

Of course, in keeper leagues with large numbers of keepers, there's significant inflation, and your budget doesn't go as far as one would think. In retrospect, I regret throwing back a keepable $67 Clayton Kershaw (he went for $74 at auction), given how expensive lesser players turned out to be.

In my defense, the keepers aren't posted until a couple days before the auction date, and so there wasn't a great way to generate a cross-off list except by doing it manually. (I could have downloaded the RotoWire software and imported the keepers in, but I prefer to track auctions by hand and pay more attention to the bidding.) I was remiss, however, in not doing this until the auction started, so I spend the first two nomination orbits deleting kept players and watching who was going for what without knowing exactly what was left in the player pool.

Accordingly, I let Madison Bumgarner go at $48, as I was still deleting kept pitchers, team by team, and didn't realize how thin the position would get once he was gone. As I got further into my deleting kept (and auctioned) players from the cheat sheet, I worried I'd have $116 to spend and no one left to buy. So I went to $49 on Jose Bautista and secured one last big bat likely to put our offense over the top. The plan, then, was to wait on the next tier of pitchers - Masahiro Tanaka, Kenta Maeda and Francisco Liriano - with the intention of landing two or more of them. But Maeda went for 31, Tanaka went for 30, and I was lucky to snag Liriano for $24. While I felt good bailing on what I deemed to be bad deals, the remaining options were awfully thin.

John Lackey went for $20, Kevin Gausman $19, Jason Hammel $17, Anibal Sanchez $14 and Gio Gonzalez (on whom I probably should have bid) $13. The inflation was so pronounced, I opted to spend money on hitting and cobble together the rest of the staff (four more pitchers) on the cheap even though pitching was our greatest need.

To that end, I bought a $1 Chris Heston, Rubby de la Rosa, Nick Tropeano and Jesse Hahn. While one or two might pan out, it's hardly the nucleus of a staff for a win-now team. With all that savings you'd think I put together a monster offense, but I passed on some good values like Austin Jackson ($3) and Jayson Werth ($9) and was outbid later on Rusney Castillo ($17) and Cameron Maybin ($10). I was happy to land Aaron Hicks, though I thought he'd be cheaper than $11, and I probably overpaid for a useful Didi Gregorius ($10). By the end of the auction, I had some money left, but so did a lot of people, and I got into a bidding war over Rockies backup catcher Tom Murphy. I "won" him for $9, but it was probably about $4 too much even in a league of this depth.

Rather than filling my last outfield slot with a mediocre/part-time major leaguer, I bought Brewers prospect Brett Phillips for $1 and left $2 on the table. It's out of keeping with our aim to win now (we have a cheap Gordon, Scherzer, Chapman and Goldschmidt expiring), but maybe we can flip him for a major leaguer at that price.

I supplemented the weak pitching staff with a lot of reserve arms, but in our quest to win the title last year, we traded away our second, third, fifth and sixth round reserve picks. In an 18-team league, that's a lot of waiting around and watching your reserve targets get swiped.

In summary, we're still in good shape because our keepers were so strong, but even under tough circumstances, I don't think this was my best work. Here's the full roster:

PosPlayer$Year
CTom Murphy9A
CDioner Navarro6A
1BPaul Goldschmidt13D16
2BDee Gordon7D16
3BNolan Arenado13D18
SSCarlos Correa3A
CIMatt Duffy3B
MIDidi Gregorius10A
OFYoenis Cespedes35B
OFLeonys Martin8D16
OFJose Bautista49A
OFAaron Hicks11A
OFBrett Phillips1A
UTKendrys Morales6B
PMax Scherzer35D16
PFrancisco Liriano24A
PChris Heston1A
PNick Tropeano1A
PJesse Hahn1A
PRubby de la Rosa1A
PAroldis Chapman15D16
PFrancisco Rodriguez5B
PShawn Tolleson1B
Total258
Budget2
PlayerPos
RChase AndersonSP 
RTrevor MayRP 
RBrandon MaurerRP 
RBrandon GuyerOF 
RTyler White1B 
RJohn LambSP
RWill VenebleOF
MMax PentecostC
MRenato Nunez3B
MSean NewcombSP
MLucas SimsSP
MTrent ClarkOF
MYusniel DIazP
MMallex SmithOF
MHarold RamirezOF
MAriel JuradoP
MJairo BerasOF

Players in orange were bought/drafted this year.