auction draft live (ish) blog

6:30 Signed in just after 6 for a 7pm draft. Only person there until 6:15 and only 2 of 10 up until this point. I have the 3rd nomination, which doesn't mean all that much. Since I'm in a league with lots of native northeasters, I'll probably throw out some Yankees and Red Sox to let others overpay for the first 3-4 rounds.

7:30 Things are going very fast. I've stayed out, except for paying a lot for Grady Sizemore and Miguel Cabrera (accident, was trying to bid up, but that's alright). I'm probably done for a half hour until players drop back in the $10-20 range

8:30 Every player is going fast, but the draft is not. Somehow, though I usually put off getting pitching, I have 3 hitters and 6 of 9 pitchers already.

9:30 Halfway through now (pick wise). I have less than $3 a player left. I actually threw out Cleveland's recently named 5th starter hoping to get a $1 pick, but two other people bid because they were confused. That works too.

Later: I just got a bunch of players I may not want for $1. For the last 6 rounds, I had the highest available max bid at $6 and never spent over $2. Still not sure why someone over bid me on Shoppach, Hafner, and Pavano...

Update: By popular demand, the final roster:

C
Kelly Shoppach

1B
Miguel Cabrera

2B
Brandon Phillips

3B
Mark DeRosa

SS
Asdrubal Cabrera

2B/SS
Felipe Lopez

1B/3B
Joey Votto

LF
Carl Crawford

CF
Grady Sizemore

RF
Josh Hamilton

UTIL
Ben Francisco

Bench
Shin-Soo Choo

Bench
Cameron Maybin

Bench
Jeff Keppinger

Bench
Edwin Encarnacion

P
Mariano Rivera

P
Dan Haren

P
Roy Oswalt

P
Cliff Lee

P
Brian Wilson

P
Francisco Rodriguez

P
Fausto Carmona

P
Kevin Gregg

P
Chris Ray

Bench
Wandy Rodriguez

Draft the 3rd

Tonight is my final baseball draft of the season (barring me deciding to join some random mid-season league, which seems unlikely).

Tonight's is an auction draft in the league I've played in the longest. There are ten of us in the league and we've tweaked the 6x6 status a little each season. This season, we decided to start over from scratch rather than making people deal with the good and bad from our inaugural season. I think that, in order to make up for not posting for a week, I will attempt to live blog some of the oddities and rarities that happen during the auction process. If you're around tonight (Friday) after 7 and want to give me advice, I suggest you give the advice then find something useful to do, like knitting.

Stay tuned and see what happens.

If you're not big market you're small market

I told Eric I'd fill in and write something while he was gone this past weekend. But I suck and couldn't come up with anything coherent when I tried. Now I have an hour and a half gap between tutoring sessions because someone is sick, so I will fill some of that time with baseball rambling.

First, your WBC update. Japan won a 10 inning thriller against Korea. I watched none of this game, but it did seem like a good game when I watched the highlights. It featured a close, low scoring game with Korea tying things up in the bottom of the ninth and then Ichiro hitting a two-run go-ahead hit with 2 outs in the top of the tenth. From what I read the crowd and players were into the game. So it seems the WBC is a great idea for every country except ours.

Now, this blog is going to have a distinct bias against teams like the Yankees. This is because everyone hates the Yankees if they don't like the Yankees. And Eric, being a native Ohioianese person, does not like the Yankees. But the truth is all these people are just jealous. They make arguments like the Yankees' massive payroll destroys competitive balance and creates insane prices for free agents. But look at the teams that have played in the World Series for the last ten years and you'll see teams from all markets and all different size payrolls.

What really bothers people is that the Yankees are always in the mix. They don't have rebuilding years. I never sit through a year or two where my team sucks after being good, like the Indians. Or a decade or two like the Reds. But you know what? That's because the owner isn't a cheap bastard like some of these owners. The Yankees are consistently at or near the top in percentage of revenue put back into payroll. For example, in 2007 the Yankees put 58% of revenue back into payroll. This was the most of any team. The Indians were 24th at 34%. Add to this that baseball has revenue sharing. So really the Yankees are putting some of their revenue into your team too. Or maybe just into your owner's pocket because he's a cheap bastard. The point is, stop crying. You should be happy I get to watch a team that is competitive every year. Also, we have Jeter.