Part 2: My targets

Catcher:

As I said earlier I thought that there was no reason to spend money on a catcher this year as there were many available that, with varying levels of palatability, could play for my team. So I mapped out my team a few different ways. First was with my number 1 choice at catcher Carlos Santana there for an assumed price of $20 and then a few more times with the catcher I was willing to risk it on Ryan Doumit at $5. Now Doumit has had a lot of trouble staying healthy and plays for a terrible Twins team in a pitchers park but last year he had a career high 484 at bats with the Twins rotating him and Mauer behind the plate to keep his knees fresh. Santana seems like a very good bet to have an excellent year and could very well be the most valuable AL catcher this year. Doumit has alternated 400 AB seasons with 220 AB seasons and this year he’s on the wrong side of that. The difference $15 in price comes with a much more confident bet on Santana.

Every time I mapped out my team I liked the team better with Doumit than Santana. So what happened? I bought Santana for $19. I was in on the bidding with $20 as my ceiling and frankly was surprised to get him at $19. Doumit ended up going for $6 so I wasn’t far off with my price estimates. Unfortunately for me spending $19 on Santana screwed me on my number 1 target which was....

Second Base:

Dustin Pedroia.

I have never been a huge fan of Pedroia but I respect what he brings to a fantasy team. Looking at who was available at 2B after Cano was kept left this list:

Kinsler, Pedroia, Kendrick, Zobrist, Altuve, Beckham, Johnson, Keppinger and Bonifacio.

Kinsler I think is overpriced, Altuve to me is a wild card, Beckham could be crap, Johnson is crap, Keppinger I have no faith in, Bonifacio could be great for fantasy but might not have a job so that left Kendrick and Pedroia for who I wanted. Well, I wanted Zobrist but with his multiple position eligibility I knew he’d go for a pretty penny and the Rays offense is decidedly underwhelming me this year. 

Now Kendrick has finally passed through the prospect to post-hype prospect to steady producer stage. He’s not the .325 hitter than many predicted but he’s a solid producer in a stacked lineup. For $15 or so I thought he’d be a good fit but I really wanted Pedroia. Of all the 2Bs out there he was the one I had the most faith in. Year to year he is steady and I like steady.

So...I bought Kelly Johnson for $6.

This could be disastrous. I won the last two years by having a very strong spine of my team. In 2011 I had VMart, Andrus and Cano up the middle and last year it was Mauer, Andrus and Cano. This year it’s Santana, Drew and Johnson. 

Quite the astounding downgrade there.

Pedroia went for $34 which was more than I expected and I spent more than planned on catcher. Had I tossed $35 at Pedroia (and there’s no guarantee the bidding stops there) then the rest of my team is a wasteland. I made the decision to gamble on Johnson returning to his 2011 form and build more balance into my team. Time will tell if this is as catastrophic as it is looking to be.

Outfield:

As I mentioned in Part 1 I viewed outfield as being sneaky shallow. When you look at the number of outfielders we take (40) and then add in utility players of which 5 are normally OF then the pool is 45 deep. How many AL outfielders are steady producers and how many are wild cards to what they will give you? I broke it down as follows:

Steady Producers that I have confidence in:

Kept and unavailable: Trout, Bautista, Cespedes, Jones, Gordon, Jennings, Jackson, Rios, Trumbo, C. Davis, De Aza and Matt Joyce 

Available: Markakis, Gardner, Swisher, and Saunders. That’s it. 4 guys that if healthy I feel reasonably confident will produce where I expect them to. That doesn’t mean they’ll be great but that they are less volatile than most of the others out there. Everyone else could be very good or very bad or somewhere in the middle.

Ichiro? Who knows? Is he the guy who played for the Yankees last year or the guy who kept getting worse for Seattle?

Melky Cabrera: How inflated are his numbers from steroids? Looking back two years ago his numbers were:

AB	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
458	50	4	42	7	.255

Those are horrible numbers. Awful. The next year his numbers jumped to:

AB	Runs	HR	RBI	SB	AVG
658	102	18	87	20	.305

Which basically means in 200 more at bats he was more than twice as good as he was the year before. In terms of $ earned in fantasy he went from $7 to $33 and honestly I think that $7 was high for what he did 2 years ago. What will he do after testing positive and presumably being clean? Who knows but I don’t want to gamble to find out.

Ellsbury: great player with one highly inflated year and history of injury trouble. Will he be good? Most likely. Will he be worth the $25+ he’ll cost? No clue. His dollars earned for the last 4 years look like this: $41, $2, $49, $9. If the pattern sticks then he’ll be amazing but again...who knows? Do you want to gamble on him?

Granderson, Cruz, Morse, Brantley, etc. all of them have big question marks on them this year.

So I ended up with $18 Rios (who I traded for), $18 Coco Crisp, $26 Michael Bourn and $17 Nick Markakis. I had Markakis going for closer to $25 so this was value to me. I don’t really like taking guys switching leagues but I think that speed translates well between the AL and NL in a more predictable way than other metrics so Bourn at $26 is reasonable and I have a soft spot for Coco. When he plays he’s good. He’ll be hurt and he’ll have to fight for at bats in that crowded team but he’s their sparkplug and I’m betting he has another year of relevance.

Rios I view as steady but I already touched on him.

Review for now:

I wanted a cheap catcher and strong 2B with a balanced outfield. I got an expensive catcher and a terrible 2B with a balanced OF. We’ll see how this plays out.

I’ll finish my auction plan tomorrow.