Okay, 3.5 hours later, I have emerged as a bruised and battered man.
We had some technical troubles to start out, but otherwise the site was solid. Great fun and a great rush as you try to build a competitive team with your $260. The dollars were flying like we were passing a stimulus bill at first and I chose to stay on the sidelines and see what I could buy later on. It's stressful to do that, but a lot of fun when you have most of the money.
I didn't make my first purchase until 43 other players were off the board and I didn't make my second purchase until another 20 players were gone. So having one player in the first 60 or so was tough. BaseballHQ.com also sat on the sideline after getting Alexis Rios with the first pick at $30 and thus we had the most money for the $20 players. That created some battles and forced both of us up higher than we wanted to go on some guys.
We'll see if I scored any winners or not, but overall I thought it went well. I'm low on power and chasing saves, but I didn't punt any category and I think my pitching will be okay. I thought I had enough BA to gamble on Giambi for the added power and I took a chance on Jeff Clement, and I promise to cut bait early on Jeremy Bonderman if he starts out badly. I just felt for $5 after reading about his off-season workouts was worth the chance for my fifth starter. It's tough to get 900+ saves with just four starters and two K setup guys, so I took the gamble.
Anyway, here's my team for $260:
CBS Sportsline.com AL Auction League
Team NFBC
C - A.J. Pierzynski $9
C - Jeff Clement $7
1B - Jason Giambi $16
2B - Howie Kendrick $14
SS - Orlando Cabrera $9
3B - Chone Figgins $24
CI - Marco Scutaro $1
MI - Julio Lugo $1
UT - Rocco Baldelli $2
OF - Nick Markakis $35
OF - Curtis Granderson $28
OF - Magglio Ordonez $27
OF - Michael Cuddyer $11
OF - Felix Pie $1
P - Francisco Liriano $22
P - John Danks $15
P - Andy Pettitte $7
P - Joe Saunders $7
P - Jeremy Bonderman $5
P - J.P. Howell $3
P - Troy Percival $7
P - Chris Ray $8
P - Rafael Perez $1
That's $75 on pitching and $185 on hitting. The closers went too high for my blood, but I didn't want to get shut out completely. We'll see. I'll post the highest bids in a followup post and then tomorrow I'll link the story on Eric Mack's column on CBS Sportsline.com and give you access to the entire draft with bids.
