March 23, 2003

Draft Day

8:30
Got my smoothie on. Set up the laptop next to the PC for maximum screen estate. IM draft and the roster spreadsheet windows on the PC monitor. Stats and reference spreadsheets on the PowerBook.

9:00
Check into the draft chatroom. The league is mostly UMich Law School guys and their friends, or friends of friends, in my case. Sam calls in. He does the bidding, I feed him with the useful (yet so useless) trivia. Good thing he has unlimited night-and-weekend calling. I really should talk to Sprint about my sucky calling plan.

9:29
Jason Varitek is the first player taken, bought for $8 by the Red Sox fan. There's always one in the bunch.

9:31
Okay, here comes the big guns. Vlad goes for $46 (after we bid $45), Giles for $38.

9:34:12
Couldn't hold ourselves back and pick up Todd Helton for $39. Love the Coors Field production, hate the back pain. Yeah, we overpaid. Happens to everybody early.

9:45
More high bidding for the stars. A-Rod, Jason G, Sosa. Boring. Then the big one:

jimiih3: #25, BARRY BONDS!!! - $29
Okay, The Man ain't gonna come cheap, but the stuff he's been doing is so off-the-scale that people are hesitant to make the outlandish bids that he might actually be worth. The bids rise quickly. We drop the big round number at $45. Amit hesitantly raises to $46, no doubt thinking that the magical One Plus Round Number bid will take it. We drop the $47 hammer down with no hesitation and take it home. Yeah, we just spent $86 out of our $271 budget for 2 out of 24 players, but it ain't gonna do us any good to leave any of it on the table.

10:19
Grab our first pitcher with Jason Schmidt for $19. 1K per inning is pretty nice for a starting pitcher, but his other stats probably weren't worth the price. The budget depleting at a sickening pace.

11:40
Grab Ray Durham ($21), Eric Chavez ($26), Keith Foulke ($18). We must look like the biggest roto scrubs in the world, as overpaying for hometown guys is the hallmark of rotisserie suckitude. Hey, at least our local teams are pretty darn good.

1:38
Pick up Hideki Matsui for $16. Hope those Japanese stats translate well to American. He's been good in Spring Training, anyway. There's a surprising amount of talent still on the board, too bad we don't have enough money left to do much about it.

1:59
Spent a frighteningly large chunk of our remaining money ($20) on Scott Rolen. Good value, though. We now have the best third basemen in the National and American League. Can you say "trade bait"?

2:16
Got Rich Aurilia for $9, which is a steal, IMHO. Should bounce back with a nice year after healing up from last year's nagging injuries. Coming back from a scoped elbow in two weeks is admirable, but he definitely wasn't 100%. Besides, he's hitting in front of Barry. Now we just need Jose Cruz Jr. and we'll have the top four spots in the Giants' batting order.

2:39
Picked up Russ Ortiz at $7. Now we're even going after former Giants. Can't go wrong with Atlanta pitchers and Rockies hitters, though.

3:53
Tried to get some help with Saves by grabbing Matt Mantei for $7. Yeah, he's got the closing job on a good team, but the injury history is spooky, and it kills me to have to root for the Diamondbacks.

4:07
The dream dies as Jose Cruz Jr. goes to someone else. We just couldn't afford $9 at this point.

5:30
As the draft winds down, it's all about the $1 Specials. Get Kip Wells, Brandon Phillips, Jeff Nelson, Steve Kline, Joe Kennedy, and Damian Miller that way. Lose out on Dotel and Rhodes because Pat smoked us with his $2 bids. His Hank Blalock For A Buck deal might be a steal, too.

5:38:48
For the very final pick of the draft, we got Mark Kotsay for a buck. Damn good all-around player for the last pick. He's great in the clubhouse, too. Too bad that doesn't count for jack in rotisserie.

All in all, it was a pretty mediocre draft for us, which ain't bad considering we had just about no preparation. Overpaid for home-team guys, which limited us later on, especially for pitching. Should've bit the bullet on a couple more mid-priced pitchers. Time to scour the free agent lists for some more pitching, an extra outfield bat or two, and a versatile infielder.

Posted by mikewang on 08:37 PM