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Finally Saturday happened. The Dynasty Grinders Auction is a 16-team, H2H dynasty league with a $500 budget. We geared up for a 480 pick auction draft. We set out to do it in one day, broken into 2-hour sessions with 20-minute breaks squeezed in to make sure nobody died. The picks went fast and furious. And all said and done we were done in 8 hours and 12 minutes.
— Keith Lott (@WeTlkFntsySprts) March 12, 2016
It took 34 player nominations and 47 minutes before we won a bid and we were pumped to land the new Houston Astros closer, Ken Giles, at just $12. This was after Wade Davis, the second player nominated, sold for $14. Aroldis Chapman would be sold for $17 later, and was the most expensive relief pitcher drafted, Kenley Jansen was next at $15. Even Dellin Betances cost $14. All of those RP were nominated ahead of Giles so we really thought we did well at $12.
It is a three RP league, and we ended up with four RP. After Giles, we added Craig Kimbrel ($12) Trevor Rosenthal ($11) and Jeurys Familia ($9). This was never our strategy, but we felt we were getting away with armed robbery. The league scoring system provides relief pitchers with just enough value that we feel we start each weekly matchup with a slight advantage as well as some great trade bait!
Elvis Andrus ($15) was our first position player drafted. Again, probably not the strategy we had in mind, building our team around a closer and shortstop, but that's the way the draft went. We did well to find the eighth most expensive SS when the draft was over, and considering that Marcus Semien ($23) and Ian Desmond ($19) went for more, we ended up loving the Andrus pick by the end of the draft.
One team spent $100 of the $500 auction budget on two SS - Corey Seager ($54) and Troy Tulowitzki ($46). To make matters worse, they were drafted within 10 minutes of each other. I can understand the Dynasty value of Seager, but Tulo was the 51st most expensive player - same as Buster Posey and Chris Davis.
One owner drafted two of the top five most expensive players - Chris Sale ($93) and Paul Goldschmist ($86) yet managed to fill the rest of his roster out frugally, and finished with one of the four "most efficient" rosters.
Another team drafted three of the top 10 most expensive players in the draft - Jake Arrieta ($84), Jose Fernandez ($83) and Madison Bumgarner ($81). Needless to say, he had the "least valuable" draft.
Right before our first 20 minute break, we landed two outfielders - Andrew McCutchen ($69) and Justin Upton ($49). Upton finished as the most expensive LF drafted - $10 more than Starling Marte and $17 more than Yoenis Cespedes.
Randal Grichuk went for $3 more than Cespedes - that's a bold move Cotton.
We added Crush ($46) and Adrian Beltre ($30) to solidify our corner infield positions. Spending$76 for two power positions feels like a solid investment. Considering that Jose Abreu cost $16 more, we felt Davis came at a discount price and while we were hoping to get Maikel Franco at 3B, who went for just $22, we pulled the trigger on Beltre at pick 100. Franco wasn't even nominated until pick 193, more than two hours later!
We filled out our OF with Jason Hewyard ($48). We spent a lot of money on our OF, $166 (33% of budget), but we felt that is one of the best places to build the core of our franchise. If you haven't figure it out yet, our SP may not be as strong as we had hoped.
Raisel Iglesias was the first SP we won, pick #152, and at $29 he better become the Ace of the Reds staff in the near future. We also have Robert Stephenson on our Minor League roster. Add to that the fact that we won bids on Devin Mesoraco ($11), Brandon Phillips ($7) and Jay Bruce ($11) - we will be rooting for the Reds to become a good team again, and fast!
Bruce and Kendrys Morales ($6) will fill out our roster in the two UTIL slots. We added Miguel Montero ($3) just in case Mesoraco can't stay healthy.
Phillips is not a big deal for us long term as we drafted Jamie Westbrook of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the MILB draft who we plan on starting at 2B in the near future.
We did land Jordan Zimmermann ($25), Michael Pineda ($19), Taijuan Walker ($27) and Kyle Hendricks ($18) to round out our five man rotation. In a 16 team league, this should be just good enough.
We are hoping Tyler Glasnow, our first pick in the MILB draft, gets to join the Pirates rotation soon.
Starting pitchers were quickly priced out of our comfort zone, with 22 of them going for over $50! Clayton Kershaw was the most expensive player in the draft at $117. Noah Syndergaard went for $80 and that can be debated as this is Dynasty league so there value is there, but Francisco Liriano at $54 bucks seems desperate. As the 21st most expensive pitcher, he is projected by FanTrax to barely finish in the top 30. Eight starters are projected for more points and cost less. Tyson Ross and Sonny Gray both went for under $50.
There is a seven start limit per week in this league, so it is important to maximize each start. We added Anthony DeSclafani ($9), Robbie Ray ($4) and Ubaldo Jimenez ($1) to our bench to make spot starts the weeks our starting five don't pitch twice.
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