LABR FAAB Report: Week of April 30

Welcome to this week’s LABR FAAB report.

The American League only and National League only formats are 12-team contests using standard 5×5 scoring rules. There’s an old-school flavor as players purchased in the auction cannot be freely bounced from the active to reserve roster. A player purchased in the auction can be placed on the disabled list if he’s on the MLB DL. However, he can’t be reserved then replaced by a player won with FAAB; he must be released. A auction-purchased player may also moved to reserves if subsequently sent down to the minors.

The 15-team Mixed LABR league allows free movement between active and six-man reserve.

In all three leagues, a player acquired via FAAB must be immediately inserted into the team’s active lineup. Each LABR squad starts with 100 FAAB units, with a minimum bid of $1. Owners can ask for a FAAB rebate upon releasing a player on the DL.

Each week’s report will display the winning bids along with listing all contingency and failed bids so you get a feel for the level of interest in each player. After the tables showing the successful and unsuccessful bids, Lawr Michaels, Brian Walton and yours truly will offer commentary for our respective leagues. I’ll share additional thoughts for each league. The heading for each league doubles as a publicly accessible link so you can check the standings, roster and complete list of transactions.

AMERICAN LEAGUE

SUCCESSFUL BIDS

UNAWARDED BIDS

Lawr Michaels’ Commentary

With a month of play under the belts of the American League LABR participants, though a host of moves were made to close out April, but those moves were again largely stop gap selections in search of either injury coverage, or as a long shot, hopes for some kind of long-term contributions.

Ever active Andrea Lamont led the circuit with bucks spent, gambling $13 on the Royals Eric Skoglund, and that price was largely lofted as a result of the good start the KC hurler tossed against the White Sox Saturday. The Roto Lady also was down for $3 on Jace Peterson, besting three failed bids for Peterson and a pair ($1, $3) for Skoglund?

Perhaps the most interesting–and best gambles–were put forth by Larry Schechter and Ray Flowers. Schechter landed the Rangers Isiah Kiner-Falega for five bucks, besting six bids, one of $6 that was a contingency, and my shot at $11, though mine failed because I could not make space on my roster to accommodate the infielder. But, the price tag for some playing time, hits, runs, and swipes is a good acquisition.

SiriusXM’s Flowers nabbed the White Sox Daniel Palka for $4, knocking off four would-be owners ranging from $1-$4, winning on a tie-breaker.

Mike Gianella was all in for $3 on Blake Swihart, and the rest of the field–Johnny Field, Ryan Pressly, Chris Young, Brian Johnson, Rob Refsnyder, and Chris Martin, were all $1 crap shoots.

Tune into the Tout Wars Hour on the FNTSY network, hosted by me, with Justin Mason and featuring Lord Z every Thursday night at 9 PM ET.

Todd’s Take

The human psyche is a delicate entity. A couple weeks ago, we couldn’t wait for the Royals to start Skogland so we could stack against him in DFS. Now, he’s one of the hottest commodities across all the industry leagues. Why? Last time out, he stifled the White Sox for seven innings, allowing just one run on two hits, with nine whiffs and only one walk. But here’s the thing. After this stellar outing, Skoglund dropped his ERA to a robust 6.23 ERA, though a 1.20 WHIP suggests he’s pitched better than that, even before this outing. A 58 percent left-on-base rate supports some bad luck, as does a 4.75 xFIP. Skoglund’s 7.9 K/9 isn’t dominant, but it works in tandem with a 2.5 BB/9. I’m not sure I’d want him on a mixed roster, but there’s definitely a place for Skoglund in AL only.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

SUCCESSFUL BIDS

UNAWARDED BIDS

Brian Walton’s Commentary

This week in National League LABR, pitching reigned supreme, with all four top dollar players calling the mound home.

Matt Koch has stepped into the Arizona rotation for injured Taijuan Walker and performed very well, with three runs allowed in 12 innings over two starts. The soft-tosser gets the Dodgers this coming week after joining the roster of Lenny Melnick for $17. There were no other bidders. Interestingly, Melnick also purchased Koch in NL Tout, but bid about one-third the amount as he did in LABR ($61 on a $1000 base, or $6.1 on the LABR scale).

What a difference pitching a perfect game over six innings and a one hitter over seven makes! With bidder knowledge of his MLB debut gem on Sunday afternoon, Nick Kingham went for $7 in LABR, going to Greg Ambrosius and Shawn Childs of NFBC. I had picked Kingham up in Tout just before his outing for $33 (or $3.3 in LABR terms).

My consolation prize at $6 is Wei-Yin Chen, who came off his minor league rehab to throw 5.1 innings of one-run ball against a good-hitting Rockies lineup on Saturday night. The veteran’s checkered history since joining Miami and low strikeouts tempered bidding excitement, though there were two other bidders, including another $6 offer that lost on the standings tiebreaker.

The other $6 pitcher this week is Eric Lauer of San Diego, now on the roster of Melnick. Lenny also won a tiebreaker to acquire the lefty. Melnick remained consistent, having also bought Lauer in NL Tout a week ago for $9 (or 90 cents in LABR terms). Despite the 2016 first rounder getting pounded in his MLB debut at Colorado this past week (six earned runs in three innings), Melnick must see calmer seas ahead. To be noted, pitchers cannot be streamed in LABR.

Todd Zola’s Commentary

This is as good a time as any to point out something I usually discuss at some point when comparing the companion Tout Wars bidding to LABR. The normalized bidding Brian describes is a tidy way to look at the numbers, but it comes with a warning. Using extreme bids of 90 in LABR and 900 in Tout Wars as an example, the LABR manager only has 10 more $1 bids left while the Tout Warrior not only has 100 more $1 tries, they also have $0 bids at their disposal. There isn’t a perfect formula, but instead of looking at the leagues as a linear relationship, I think you can be more aggressive with the larger budget, even without $0 bids. That is, if your gauging bids in a $1000 FAAB league on LABR bids, I feel comfortable going a little more than prorating the LABR amount. A $5 LABR bid could equate to more than $50. How much more is up to you.

MIXED

SUCCESSFUL BIDS

UNAWARDED BIDS

Todd Zola’s Commentary

While Kingham’s outstanding effort was a surprise, it didn’t come out of nowhere as he was a highly regarded prospect before undergoing Tommy John surgery. This was reportedly a one and done visit to the bigs for Kingham, but he’s reportedly accompanying the Pirates to Washington D.C., suggesting Steven Brault and/or Chad Kuhl are on notice.

Several infielders followed Kingham in the bidding with Jesus Aguilar leading the way. Eric Thames is sidelined for an extended period, leaving first to Aguilar. Alen Hansen could get some run filling in for Joe Panik while Daniel Robertson has hit his way into regular at bats for the Rays.

Todd’s Take

I ended this week’s Tout Wars report by noting no one appeared to take advantage of Cleveland’s unique schedule this week as they have eight contests, five against southpaw starters. This elevates players like Brandon Guyer, Rajai Davis and perhaps Yan Gomes. Haing utility filled with Carlos Gomez, I opted to put my practice what I preach and acquired Guyer for the week.

I also wanted to upgrade the disappointing Kolten Wong, so I took a shot on Kiner-Falefa as he’ll likely continue to see regular at bats with Adrian Beltre on the disabled list.