Clearly, the free agent process of your fantasy league can make or break your season. While you can certainly lose your league at the draft, it is difficult to win a league solely based upon the draft. Hence, you have to be lucky or good, or a combination of each with free agents.
The National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) uses the FAAB system, wherein a team gets $1,000 FAAB to use over the course of the season. As there are about 25 weeks in an MLB season, simple math would tell you that you have about $40 FAAB to spend each week. Right?
Wrong!
This week, I went big on Frenchy Cordero. I know that when Wil Myers and Manuel Margot come off the disabled list, there’s a strong chance that Cordero will be relegated to the bench, or worse yet, back to AAA. Then again, there’s a chance that Cordero will play well enough to maintain his position. The Padres aren’t going anywhere. There’s no advantage, financially or otherwise, to sit Cordero or to send him down. Thus, he has a shot at staying up this season. I’m willing to take that shot.
I overpaid for Cordero in my three NFBC leagues, and did so happily. The 23-year-old hit .326 with 17 home runs and 15 steals last season in AAA. Yes, it was the PCL but still, those numbers are impressive. Even more impressive is the fact that he also had 18 triples last year in just 390 at bats. This young man has power and can fly. What’s not to like?
This column, however, isn’t about my man-crush on Frenchy, but instead, it’s a look at spending your FAAB. There’s a large faction among fantasy players who will tell you that you need to save your FAAB. You might have a catastrophic injury, a good player may be cut by a team in your league fighting injuries and/or your closer might lose his job. If you save your FAAB, you can get a suitable replacement or that good player who got cut. Of course, they don’t tell you that everyone in your league will be after that new closer, or that if there’s a quality player out there, you aren’t guaranteed to get him. FAAB is competition.
I’m more of the “He who dies with the most toys, wins,” mentality. I firmly believe that there are FAAB bargains early in the year, before teams start to panic after injuries. Additionally, we fantasy players often fall in love with our own picks. We picked the guy, so there must be a reason. As a result, we are less likely to make a move to replace a guy who everyone else knows isn’t that good, but we figure is just struggling to start the season. By the time we realize that our 28th round pick really isn’t any good, and the fact that everyone passed on him for the first 27 rounds, including us, was because he isn’t any good, we’ve missed out on something potentially special.
By the way, do the math. If you pick up a quality player in week 12, you get about 13 weeks of production. That’s pretty good. However, if Cordero plays well this season, those who bought him this week will get about 22 weeks of at-bats. Last I checked, 22 weeks of production is far better than 13 weeks of numbers.
Ending the season with FAAB is like ending an auction with money, meaning you can’t take it with you. Aditionally, having the most FAAB late in the year doesn’t mean that you get every good player. More likely than not, a number of teams have taken the “save your FAAB for a rainy day” approach, and you still have competition. You aren’t going to get every quality player, and unless you go nearly all in, you might still be the richest in FAAB and not get the player you want/need.
That means keeping some FAAB for later in the year. Don’t put yourself in a position where you can’t replace injured players. Though remember, conversely that fantasy championships are not won by the conservative: You’ve got to take chances to succeed.
Frenchy Cordero might be an epic failure. I might have wasted about 20% of my FAAB budget. If so, I still have 80% left. Alternatively, Cordero might keep his job and hit 20 home runs and steal 20 bases. While I have a 20-20 guy, my competition will be going with Jason Heyward, Albert Almora, Adam Engel and Curtis Granderson. I’ll take the risk anytime.
Best of luck,
Buster
