I participated in my first auction draft of the season on Wednesday night and oh boy, was it a doozy. An 18-team mixed league auction with 29-player rosters (5×5 but with OBP in place of AVG), and while it doesn’t quite qualify as an “industry league,” it may as well have for the amount of talent in there.

This league also happened to be the worst finish on my ledge in 2013, so I had some additional motivation. While writing assignments and preparing for Sloan distracted me some and a brief loss of connection gave me Aramis Ramirez at $18 when I didn’t really need another expensive corner infielder, it went pretty well, I think.

Since it was such an early draft and such a deep one (522 players selected), I thought I’d post some reflections today.
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Full disclosure: I am hoping against hope that my fellow fantasy writers here at RotoGraphs are correct. I need them to be, really, because I’m looking down the barrel of what could be another disappointing season for the Toronto Blue Jays, and a Brett Lawrie breakout could certainly make things more interesting and tolerable.

But I’m not so sure the consensus should be that Lawrie is a top-10 option at third base. The RotoGraphs consensus third base ranks had Lawrie eighth, with only Pod ranking him outside of the eight-nine range at 15th. He’s currently being selected 12th at the position in Yahoo drafts (where he also has second base eligibility).

As a reminder, Lawrie finished 2013 ranked 29th in value at the hot corner.
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The answer was probably not “stand pat.”

The Toronto Blue Jays had an incredibly disappointing 2013 season, coming in well below expectations. While part of it was statistical anomaly – not often will so many players have sub-par seasons simultaneously – it turns out that parts of the team had been overrated entering the season. Hindsight, and all that.

So when the Jays rotation ended up 26th in total value based on Wins Above Replacement, 29th in ERA, 28th in FIP and 28th in innings pitched, many expected the Jays to fortify the sizeable investment they made the prior offseason.

But one of the longest MLB Trade Rumors tags has borne little fruit. Josh Johnson is out and replacing him is…still to be determined. Any improvement from the staff will have to come from in-house, a scary proposition considering that the team’s would-be-appreciable depth is really just a large competition at the back end masquerading as a plethora of options. After the top two names, it’s a whole lot of question marks, leaving the excellent Andrew Stoeten of Drunk Jays Fans to throw his hands up at the entire mess:
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The incredibly disappointing 2013 Toronto Blue Jays rotation made room for one minor silver lining – the bullpen. Because starters rarely went deep, the Jays bullpen had baseball’s third-largest workload (552.2 innings pitched). They checked in with the ninth best ERA, leading to the Jays getting the eighth most value (in terms of Wins Above Replacement) out of their relievers.

I know, I know, grasping at straws from 2013 for the Jays. This is played out. And the FIP was bottom-10, with the strikeout and walk rates both checking in at 13th. A mediocre defense and homer-friendly park didn’t make things easier.

But don’t let the team’s down 2013 or the lack of action on the market fool you; this is a very solid bullpen, one with several potential closers and some appreciable depth. The team will need it, too, because it looks like they’ll enter the season with more dice rolls than Farkle in the rotation. Should they have leveraged some of this bullpen depth during the offseason to improve other areas? Absolutely. But the fact that they haven’t leaves them with a strong closer and several speculative plays in the event they go that route later.
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The Miami Marlins have just $36.1 million in salary committed for 2014 at present, and a large chunk is being spent on relievers. Of course, that’s misleading since $4 million is money owed to the departed Heath Bell, but they’ll also pay Steve Cishek $3.8 million in his first arbitration year, pay Mike Dunn $1.4 million in the same situation and signed Carlos Marmol for $1.25 million. Chump change for any other squad, a surprising 29 percent of the budget for this “small-market” squad.

So does this mean you should expect a strong Marlins bullpen? Well, yeah, it kind of does, but not because of the money. A deep pen is necessary given that the bullpen ranked 10th in innings pitched in 2013 (11th in ERA, fourth in FIP) and there’s not really a sure bet for 200 innings in the rotation. There is a surprising amount of talent here, especially when it comes to piling up strikeouts. There’s hardly a safe, lock-down name, as good as Cishek’s been, but there’s nary a soft-tosser in the bunch.
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The Kansas City Royals rotation had a clear edict in 2013: don’t blow anybody away, but don’t hand the opposition anything. As such, they ranked 27th in strikeout rate, 17th in walk rate and relied on a rangy defensive outfit to make up the difference with all of those balls in play. It worked out well enough, though perhaps below expectations, as the Royals rotation was roughly league average (18th in ERA and fourth in innings pitched).

Well, Ervin Santana is out, replaced by Jason Vargas, and everything else remains largely the same. Does it make sense to commit $36.6 million, 45 percent of your entire payroll, to a rotation that looks to be league average at best? Probably not, but here we are, with perhaps the most unspectacular two-through-four in baseball.
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The Cincinnati Reds bullpen offers little in the way of drama, unless you consider shut-down, lights-out closers to be dramatic.

Yes, it’s Aroldis Chapman atop the food chain in the Queen City, and there’s little reason to doubt he’ll once again be one of fantasy baseball’s premiere closers. Of course, there’s always the hope the Reds decide to use him more, further leveraging their $5 million investment for 2014.

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We probably can’t be worse.

That’s the likely slogan for the Houston Astros rotation entering 2014, because the 2013 rotation was a flaming tire-fire. Then finished 27th as a group in innings pitched, averaging fewer than 17 outs a turn, 26th in strikeouts per nine innings, 28th in ERA and tops for free passes issued.

The Twins, Orioles and Blue Jays were the only teams worse in terms of fielding-independent pitching metrics (4.42 FIP). It would be difficult for the rotation to get worse, is what we’re saying. But it’ll be a largely new crew, and they’ll try their best!
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What do you do when your 26-year-old closer in waiting gets the gig due to an injury to the incumbent and runs with the job, posting a 1.74 ERA while striking out 27.1 percent of betters and blowing just two saves in 21 opportunities?

Naturally, you go out and sign a 41-year-old to bump him back down the bullpen depth chart.

At least, that’s what you do if you’re the Colorado Rockies and you hate fantasy owners.
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Before the 2013 season, one of my 10 Bold Fantasy Predictions was that Sergio Santos would finish the season with more saves than Casey Janssen in the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen.

The final tally was razor-close, a 34-1 advantage for Janssen, with the Californian posting his third straight season with an ERA of 2.56 or lower. It was a very unsuccessful prediction.

But heading into 2014, I find myself wanting to double down on it and predict the former Blue Jays shortstop prospect to out-save the UCLA alum, even though the latter ranked 14th in relief pitcher value this season while the former didn’t crack the top-150. Am I just being really stubborn?
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