Whitestone’s Waiver Watch: NFBC Main Event

Stealing bases is back! It’s fun, it’s hip, and everybody is doing it! Or are they??? Well, I decided to take a look at that this week. Who exactly is stealing bases in the young season? If you look at the chart below, you can see that the top-10 teams (one third of MLB) account for 53% of stolen bases even though they represent one third of caught stealing (34%). 

These top-10 teams have an 88% success rate compared to 82% for all of MLB. In addition, the 14 players listed in the column to the right – who have four or more stolen bases for one of these top-10 teams – account for 24.4% of the steals in all of MLB. I think it’s therefore safe to say that these teams (and players) have adjusted to the new base stealing rules the quickest.

I’ve also updated the runs scored, home runs and batting average for this year (through Sunday, April 16), and they are shown below compared to the 2017-2022 period. Although 2019 was the high-water mark for offense (4.83 runs per game, 1.39 home runs per game,.252 batting average), so far offense has jumped up significantly above 2022. Even so, in just the last week of 2023 runs per game have dropped back just a bit – now 4.66 instead of 4.69 (still up 8.8% over 2022), and HR/game are not quite as high (now up a more reasonable 5.6%), while the .249 batting average is still ahead (+2.5%) but at the same level as last week. Perhaps some adjustment by pitchers is going on? Of course, stolen bases are up even higher than last week and are now .74 per game (was .70 last week), and the success rate has crept up to .83 (was .81 last week), so the running game is becoming even more of a focus.

Interestingly, the pitching stats also show that strikeouts are up 3.1% in the young season (now at 8.66 per game – last week it was 8.61), and walks are up even more (+15.4%) – which is holding steady from last week. The latter just might be an adjustment to the new pitch clock, as it is more difficult for pitchers to throw strikes at this new faster pace, but this goes against the idea that MLB wants more baseballs in play. In 2022, 11.06 of at bats per game ended in either a strikeout or a walk, and this year we’ve seen this climb to 12.19 (up 10.2%). 

Most Common Main Event Pickups: Julien Salads are Neto

Main Event FAAB #4 (held on Sunday, April 16) shows that even though we must assume that all Main Event owners know that we are at the beginning of a long season, they are not afraid to spend. The top-10 widest acquisitions on April 16 are in the chart below, and both Edouard Julien of Minnesota and Zach Neto of Los Angeles were added in all 53 Main Event leagues as owners searched for help up the middle. Brent Rooker of Oakland – who seemingly has homered every other at bat for the past week – was added in 52 leagues, and Taj Bradley – the rookie phenom pitcher for Tampa – was added in 51 (he was drafted and held in two of the 53 Main Event leagues and is now fully owned). These four players commanded top prices, and Bradley’s most expensive winning bid reached $557 (his cheapest winning bid was a still tidy sum of $99). 

THE CENTURY CLUB: THE TAJ MAHAL

I’m also keeping tabs on the players attracting the highest individual FAAB bids. In the fourth run on April 16 (see below), there were 66 $200-plus successful bids (up from 27!), and 56 of these bids were directed at either Bradley or Neto. The highest bid of all was on The Taj himself, as one Main Event league owner pulled out all the stops to get him at 557. However, there were several other large bids and owners were still feeling flush with the large amount of FAAB available to them early in the season.

The Wow Bid of the Week

So, who attracted the highest single bid of the week? Well, we already gave that away with Bradley. The very strong $557 bid is now the highest successful bid of the 2023 Main Event season, and the winning owner needed to go big (but maybe not that big?), as the runner-up bid was a solid $358 (which would have won Bradley in all but eight Main Event leagues).

• 3/26: Darick Hall $221
• 4/2: Dany Jiménez $363
• 4/9 Oscar Colás $372
• 4/16 Taj Bradley $557

FAAB Summary

In the first four FAAB weeks, Main Event owners have had 5,366 winning bids and spent about $229 of their $1,000 allocation. Comparing that to the last two years at the four-week mark, owners spent $190 in 2021, while in 2022 it was higher at $251. However, this year’s spending pace of $86 per team is higher than either of the last two years (in the $60-70 range). The average Main Event Week 4 winning bid was $37.75, which is more than the approximately $31 in each of the last two years. The number I’ll follow most carefully, though, is the average amount spent per team per week. This pace of spending can’t keep up for too long. Remember, there are 27 FAAB periods and $1,000 to spend. Going at $60-70 is not sustainable – it will definitely slow down soon.

The Colosseum

Each week during the season, I’ll take a look at the four widest Main Event pickups from three weeks ago and evaluate whether it was a good addition based on the early stats (thumbs up), a bad idea (thumbs down) or simply a push. In the chart below, you can see that the 2022 record was significantly better than 2021, with 39% good additions as opposed to 24% in the previous season. Unfortunately for our intrepid Main Event owners, the very first FAAB period did not bring good results, as Joe Jiménez and Dylan Dodd failed to produce helpful pitching stats, and Dominic Smith and Christian Arroyo did not do much better. The good news is, um, that there’s plenty of room for improvement, right?

Overall Leaderboard: Mager Mike

Michael Mager is an excellent fantasy manager (he told me so himself). And yes, his last name is not pronounced “major (it’s MAY-GRR),” but after two weeks of leading the Overall Main Event race, Mike deserves any high rank I can provide to him. Not only that, but Major Mike has 7,252.5 points, which leads second place by 543! And this total means that he is accumulating 725 overall points per category (remember there are 795 teams, so his AVERAGE category is 91.2% of the maximum you can get). Sheesh!

In second overall, we find NFBC stalwart Joe Meyer, who let me know that he is a big threat for the 2023 overall championship (he capitalized the word BIG in his message to me), and he is now ahead of Former Main Event overall champ John Pausma in third (thank goodness John is not in the top 2 overall, but he is STILL hogging cashing positions in his individual leagues; see league standings below). Dave Smith is a solid fourth and James Gabal is in fifth, but incredibly even these fine results still put them 700-800 points behind our leader.

Among the other top-30 contenders, Jeff Mitseff is 6th AND 29th, former overall leader Robert Henke is 7th, Jason Santeiu is 8th, Vic Tafur is 9th and Eric Christenson is 10th. Not to be completely outdone are NFBC veterans Kyle Brinkmann in 15th AND 25th, Bob Catsiroumpas in 17th, outstanding player Matt Modica in 18th and never-to-be-counted-out Ned Donohue in 19th.  

It’s a great leaderboard and promises to be a fine race for the overall title, if only our highly decorated Major will let it happen. He seems to be totally disinterested in creating any drama for those poor reporters covering the contest (come on, Mike, give us a break).

Champions Update

I like to keep tabs on our recent Overall Champions, because they have proven their mettle over long, difficult campaigns and therefore MUST be threats to do so again.

Philippe Dussault: Our 2021 Overall Main Event Champ finds himself in 185th place out of 795 early this season. Phil is not currently concerned with the standings this early in the season, and in a hand-written note says that he is referring all questions from “the Main Event media” to someone else who is not yet identified.

Robert Cramutola: Bob is our defending champ and graciously has agreed to provide comments to reporters as the 2023 season unfolds. Bob finds himself in 83rd place right now, and I have to mention that this is MUCH more impressive than being in 185th (it’s over 100 places better if you did not realize this). Bob still has some FAAB left (unlike last season) but did spend $24 on Darick Hall this week. Even though he is injured, he is a “great presence around the clubhouse and an inspiration to other members of my fantasy team.”

League of Legends

Shout-outs

John Pausma STILL does not seem to understand that this is a highly competitive contest! It’s really unfair that he has FIVE TEAMS in the top three league positions! Also, Kyle Brinkmann is almost matching that effort with FOUR. Jeff Mitseff is not doing too poorly either, and Clark Olson is showing that he will compete wherever he is entered.

Notables include

Two First/One Second/Two Third – John Pausma
Two First/One Second/One Third – Kyle Brinkmann
One First/One Second/One Third – Jeff Mitseff
One Second/Two Third – Clark Olson
One First/One Second – Scott Waggener; Daniel DaSilva; Bob Mazur; Ned Donohue
One First/One Third –  Dominic Rello; Matt Modica; Stephen Fiore; David Hubbard
Two Seconds – Glenn Schroter; Bill Macey
One Second/One Third – Eric Heberlig
Two Thirds – Tony Saccucci; Matthew Davis
Good luck in Week 4!