Honestly.
Have any of you ever seen such a crazy FAAB frenzy as was the one last weekend for the Nationals budding and hopeful superstar, Juan Soto?
No question the kid looks like a serious talent. Just 19 years old, Soto signed at age 17 and in 2016 was .368-5-32 over 51 games, a year later at 18 went .351-3-18 over 32 games, finishing at Hagerstown, and then this year .362-14-52 over 39 games, largely at Double-A Harrisburg. That makes 122 minor league games with a .362-22-102 line that featured a .434 OBP (58 BB to 66 K) and 1.043 OPS.
There is indeed no question that those are stellar numbers, but enough to dedicate $909 of $1,000 of FAAB in my mate Justin Mason’s NL-only format? In the NL Tout Wars Soto fetched $608 of the $1,000 budget, and in LABR (in which the cap is $100 rather than $1,000) Howard Bender went to $56 (just less than Lenny Melnick’s 60% Tout bid).
In mixed leagues, things were slightly more sane. In the Tout Mixed Auction Soto went to Ray Flowers for $412 (41%). In the Mixed Online Draft Scott White claimed the new Nat for $235. And even H2H, where the rosters are smaller, Soto fetched $79 from Dr. Roto, or just 8% of the total FAAB budget. Note that H2H is so pitching focused that Luiz Gohara was even higher priced this last period with $117 to Jake Ciely.
OK, so the weekend and transactions are done, and our FAAB balances are what they are, and things have sort of stabilized. For now.
However, we all know that more are coming. Victor Robles — who is injured now, and was passed on the depth chart by Soto — still has the Show in front of him. As does Willie Calhoun, Jake Bauers, Kolby Allard, Michael Kopech, Luis Urias, and Kyle Tucker, all champing at the Triple-A bit and ready to join the next level. And though none of this list has quite the offensive resume of Soto this year, all are prospects we have been anxiously tracking for a couple of years on out.
The question is, as the season goes deeper and teams and owners mete their FAAB out judiciously, what kind of bidding are we looking at? What if Cole Hamels is swapped to the NL at the trade deadline, or Hanley Ramirez is claimed in the National League? Not in the same league as Soto, you think?
OK then, how about Manny Machado being swapped to the NL, for Manny should surely be worthy of more FAAB than Soto at this point?
Or, how about Vladimir Guerrero, Jr with .427-9-46 over 39 games? Vlady the Younger certainly has the potential to carry as much impact as Soto, and if the Jays are out of it, the Torontans could swap Josh Donaldson and promote their young third sacker. That could force a pair of FAAB-zany bids with both Guerrero advancing to the Jays if the team swaps the productive Donaldson to the Senior Circuit.
But, the real questions are not just where this stops, if anywhere. To me the question is how much does a guy like Soto need to produce in order to turn a profit for his or her owner? Need he out-produce Cody Bellinger from last year, who came up April 25 of last year and banged out a .267-39-97 line and never cost even half what Soto did? Soto did cost $224 for the Tout H2H last year, but was drafted and placed on the respective reserve lists on draft day.
Or, what about the guy in Justin’s NL-only, who now has just $91 left for the final four months of injuries, suspensions and demotions? For, we have 18 more weeks of FAAB ahead of us along with the trade deadline, and that means if you did score Soto but broke your FAAB bank, you might have solved one problem but created several more in the process.
