Week 9 FAAB Results - Losing Acuña

Sunday was one of the roughest NFBC days I've had. Ronald Acuña Jr. suffered a season-ending knee injury, just as he was starting to round into form. I believe that this year was the first time I've ever had the first overall pick in the Main Event, in a year where the first pick was supposed to provide more of an advantage than most if not all years. Jordan Romano (badly) blew another save, raising into question his long-term job security. In our long string of failed attempts to get a win, the Red Sox didn't give Tanner Houck any run support despite another brilliant outing. 

It's a long season, but it seems inexorably long when things aren't going well.

AL Tout Wars:

There were two big bids this week, with Andy Andres adding Orioles SP prospect Cade Povich for $111, and Jason Collette adding Guardians OF Johnathan Rodriguez for $144. In both cases they won significant bidding wars. Povich makes a lot of sense to me - John Means and Dean Kremer both went on the IL for the Orioles, and while Cole Irvin and Albert Suarez both have their merits, they also don't strike me as long-term solutions for them. Povich has been dealing for Triple-A Norfolk and has been one of James Anderson's risers for his updated Top 400 Prospects list. Povich pitched on Saturday, which means he could easily slide into Albert Suarez's slot on Friday if the O's decide to go that route. Tout Wars allows speculative bids on players not called up, as long as the player is active the first week after he's been picked up.

I'll admit that Rodriguez wasn't high on my radar, but I can see the interest. He's a prospect on the rise, and has been starting against left-handed pitchers. The Guardians were originally projected to face four left-handers this week, including two at Coors Field, before Austin Gomber had his first start pushed back to Thursday. He'll still get one Coors Field game and probably two home games against Patrick Corbin and Mitchell Parker. The one caveat is that Steven Kwan has already started his rehab assignment, thus there's a risk that Rodriguez doesn't get the games on the homestand and might even get sent down.

I added Nick Loftin, speculating on him ahead of Garrett Hampson and Adam Frazier with Michael Massey out for the Royals.

NFBC Main Event:

After losing Ronald Acuna Jr. to his torn ACL (though at 7:00p PT we didn't realize it was a torn ACL yet, only that he would miss time), we prioritized adding Adam Duvall at the top of our bids and got him, though we overpaid by a bit.

I need to be better, though, because we missed out on picking up Yimi Garcia, when we are the team rostering Jordan Romano. Instead Dave McDonald snapped him up at a very affordable price, and may very well have a closer the last four months for the season. It's been hard to find closers period, and to not protect our flank here was a misstep.

Beat Jeff Erickson1:

In the last couple of weeks I've lost both Trea Turner and Xander Bogaerts at shortstop, and went from two viable players at the position to none. Making matters worse was Bogaerts got hurt on a Monday and I had no replacement, meaning I basically went a whole week with a dead spot on my roster. Hence the Kevin Newman pickup this week. I won't be using JP Sears this week at Atlanta, but I like him for future outings.

Beat Jeff Erickson2:

While I'm intrigued by both of my pickups this week, I plan not to use Tylor Megill (home start vs. the Dodgers) nor Nick Gonzales (two games Mon-Thur) for the first half of the week, and Megill not at all. Braxton Garrett was my first pitcher choice, but I was a distant second in the bidding. I'm enthusiastic about Gonzales as a potential post-hype sleeper.

Yogurt:

Here's Gonzales among my pickups again this week, and Albert Suarez was among my pitching priorities in 15-team leagues, though he wasn't available everywhere. It looks like I overbid by at least $22 in this league.

SCARF:

I lost out on Nick Gonzales in this league, settling instead for J.P. Crawford, though at least Crawford has a full schedule this week and should score a decent number of runs. I was surprised that Matt Waldron received little interest from the rest of the league. He's had 23 strikeouts over 16 innings in his last three starts, draws the Marlins this week and then gets a two-start week against the Diamondbacks and Angels next week.

LABR:

It was a quiet week here, as the waiver wire was pretty thin in terms of available talent, owing to the 15 teams and unlimited IL spots in the league. I added Jose Siri, who should get significantly more playing time with Josh Lowe out again.

RotoWire Staff Keeper League:

Because of my big "go for it" trade last week where I dealt away Spencer Strider, I'm relatively close to the in-season salary cap of $360, which means I need to keep my FAAB bids pretty low or alternately find a way to shed salary on my roster. Thus it was a good week to play small-ball with my bids, and that explains why I wasn't in on Adam Duvall here. The other reason is that I need to focus my resources on improving my slow-starting pitchers. I added Albert Suarez again here, who is tentatively slated to get a home start against the Rays.

Another ramification of my trade is that other contenders followed with their own trades later in the week, good for this week. It's healthy for keeper leagues to begin the trading early and often, with more teams throwing their respective hats in the ring as contenders. At least I got a bit of a head start, with good outings from Max Fried and Justin Verlander, along with three homers from Matt Olson.