My home AL-only keeper league auction is today (12 teams, 5x5, pretty standard roto ultra rules with the addition of an in-season salary cap), and I figured I might as well live-tweet the thing. Why? For reasons!
If you want to follow along, my Twitter handle is @AntonSirius. I'm starting it out with $173 (only three teams have more, with the big stack carrying $208), and the following roster:
C: Salvador Perez $3B, Tyler Flowers $3C
1B: Eric Hosmer $17Y
SS: Eduardo Nunez $6C
CI: Chris Carter $8B
OF: David Murphy $4B, Jonny Gomes $1B
P: Yu Darvish $31B, Matt Moore $10B, Brett Anderson $2B, Felix Doubront $2B
Minors: Bubba Starling, Michael Choice, Jonathan Schoop
(Note: for long-term contracts we bump the letter designation to the end of the alphabet so that they expire at the end of their 'Z' season.)
As you can see, I'm set at catcher and don't have to worry about scarcity there, but I've got no closers so I'll have to pay full retail for a couple. Third base is also an issue, as there are only three good ones (Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Beltre and Evan Longoria) available. All the young middle-tier guys are protected, so the drop-off in talent after the big three is STEEP. If I don't land one of them, I could be looking at a Matt Dominguez as the fallback. That's scary.
Nunez was the only really difficult choice, but with Jeter out for a bit, the other injury issues the Yankees have and me lacking steals, $6 didn't seem like much of an overpay and I could easily see him going for more at auction. The alternative would have been something like Eric Sogard at $1, and that seemed like a much bigger risk.