LABR FAAB Report: Week of August 6

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

Despite the plight of Tommy Pham, a spirited session of bidding took place in LABR AL. With Pham on the DL, he isn’t eligible for FAAB acquisition per the league constitution.

That still meant for the flurry of bids surrounding Jonathan Villar (seven), Cameron Maybin (eight), and Tyler Glasnow (seven), with Logan Forsythe even generating four bids worth and a relatively pricey $22 tag.

With just $6 to my name, none of these players was going to fall to me, although the interesting under-the-radar selection of the week was the shrewd nabbing of Ramon Laureano for $6 to Greg Ambrosius and Shawn Childs. Laureano, a natural center fielder and well thought of prospect garnered three hits on Sunday and looks to be part of a platoon with Nick Martini, at least for now.

A couple of other names on the lower end of this week’s cost spectrum, both Matt Barnes ($2) and Jalen Beeks ($1) could pay off in a deeper format with some whiffs and maybe even some a few wins scattered about.

Todd’s Take

This is going to be a fun couple of months with only 8.5 points separating first and sixth. These moves will likely have a big affect on the standings, with Tommy Pham the wild card. Steve Gardner not only has the hammer,  he has $31 more FAAB units so he can be aggressive and still save enough for Pham. The problem is, Steve is in 7th, a decent drop from the lead pack. Still, depending on how things flesh out, we could see a seven-team battle for the title.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

SUCCESSFUL BIDS

UNAWARDED BIDS

Brian Walton’s Commentary

With the non-waiver deadline just passed in MLB, this was the second busy week in a row in National League LABR. The top four free agents include two second basemen and two pitchers coming over from the AL. They are Brian Dozier and Jonathan Schoop plus Chris Archer and Kevin Gausman.

The fifth member of the traded group would have been Wilson Ramos, but LABR rules prohibit bidding on disabled list players until activated. Knowing that some number of my peers would forget and bid on Ramos, anyway, (as well as Tommy Pham in the AL league,) I pinged commissioner Steve Gardner Sunday evening. Steve took a wise approach, proactively emailing all owners with a reminder not to bid on the pair. In my selfish view of the world, I was pleased, as that way, I can get this report to you sooner and get to bed earlier on Monday morning!

Someone will benefit later in the month when Ramos is eligible, as plenty of cash remains. Coming into this weekend, the co-leaders in FAAB held $49 each, or almost exactly half of their full-year stipend. I ranked fifth with $32, so needed luck on my side to nab one of the big four free agents. Or maybe I will be the one to add Ramos down the road.

Not surprisingly, the top-dollar player this week was new Dodger Dozier, off to a nice 6-for-15 start, including two home runs, seven RBI, three walks and four runs scored. The owner with the tiebreaker, Doug Dennis of Baseball HQ, won the bidding, with co-leader Jeff Erickson of Rotowire picking up Chris Archer, both for $49. The latter could have got his man for $46, with every dollar mattering in a format with no $0 bids allowed.

Derek Carty picked up the new Brewer Schoop, using $40 to seal off the owner with the next-most money. That is Lenny Melnick, who added now-Atlanta starter Kevin Gausman for $33, which of course as a dollar more than I could spend.

Needing offense more than pitching, I secretly hoped to acquire Dozier or Schoop, but realistically expected to get none of the four. I bid $20 on all of them, the minimum amount needed to best the owner with the fifth-most FAAB on the standings tiebreaker, and was shut out as there were no surprises in the bidding results.

Todd’s Take

NL LABR isn’t as close as AL, but things could change as league leader Howard Bender was shut out of the deadline frenzy. Though considering the Rotobuzzguy dropped $56 on Juan Soto in May, he’s likely not complaining. Still, with most of the league upgrading their roster, there will be a lot of category movement the next several weeks so no lead is safe.

MIXED

SUCCESSFUL BIDS

UNAWARDED BIDS

Todd Zola’s Commentary

Relatively speaking, this was a ho-hum week in the Mixed League. I’m down to single digit units and didn’t have anyone to replace in terms of injury, so I sat this one out. While I’ve had decent success being aggressive with early bidding in mixed leagues, I’m beginning to rethink the strategy as several productive players have been purchased the last few weeks.

Please follow me on Twitter @ToddZola and visit me at Mastersball.