Whitestone’s Waiver Watch: NFBC Main Event (4/15)

Pitch Not Perfect

MLB Counter: 9.7% of the season complete

We’ve all been lamenting the starting pitcher landscape — and nowhere is this truer than in the NFBC Main Event. It’s a set of 15-team leagues organized into an overall contest, and historically, pitching goes earlier than in the traditional 12-team format. 

Spencer Strider — the No. 1 starting pitcher drafted — is out for the season, and this seemed to set off the initial warning bells among the fantasy community. Then as other top starting pitchers developed injuries, it seemed that no one was immune. As we watch the Strider fantasy managers in each league dropping their No. 1 pick, we can see the sadness in their eyes…

So I decided to see for myself how difficult the starting pitcher situation is in 2024. Are the injuries taking a huge bite out of fantasy rosters, or is it not quite that bad?

I researched the top 32 starting pitchers as drafted in the Main Event (drafts take place in the two weeks leading up to the start of the season, so Gerrit Cole does not appear) — in the hopes of capturing almost all of the SP1 and SP2 selections of Main Event fantasy managers. If there were real injury problems, it seemed to me it would be most important if they occurred in this cohort. I developed an extremely sophisticated key to highlight each of the current results as you can see below…

Key:

• 0: Injured and out for the season
• 1: Injured but expected back
• 2: Pitching yes — but poorly
• 3: Mediocre results to date — not bad
• 4: Pitching well — looking solid
• 5: Pitching extremely well

Through April 13:

In conclusion, we have rather poor results from our top 32 starting pitchers in 2024 in combination with a few key injuries — thereby causing damage to fantasy rotations. The sad totals are below — but if you have two pitchers from categories 3, 4 and 5 (representing 56% of the top starting pitchers), you should be in good shape right now — which two did you end up with?:

• 0: Two pitchers (6%) — Spencer Strider, Shane Bieber
• 1: Three pitchers (9%) — Framber Valdez, Bobby Miller, Justin Steele
• 2: Nine pitchers (28%) — Luis Castillo, George Kirby, Kevin Gausman, Max Fried, Jesús Luzardo, Joe Musgrove, Bailey Ober, Tanner Bibee, Hunter Brown
• 3: Three pitchers (9%) — Aaron Nola, Zach Eflin, Blake Snell
• 4: Eight pitchers (25%) — Pablo López, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Logan Webb, Logan Gilbert, Grayson Rodriguez, Cole Ragans, Dylan Cease, Chris Sale
• 5: Seven pitchers (22%) — Corbin Burnes, Zack Wheeler, Tyler Glasnow, Tarik Skubal, Freddy Peralta, Zac Gallen, Joe Ryan

Most Common FAAB Pickups in the Main Event: Yariel — Wasn’t He in the Little Mermaid?

In FAAB 4 (our weekly look at how these top owners are spending their fictional $1000 free agent acquisition budget in the Main Event), I consider the warm-up to the major part of the FAAB season. This one (held Sunday) is still at the beginning of a long season, but the bidding started to get a little more aggressive. The top-10 widest acquisitions this week are in the chart below, and Toronto’s Yariel Rodríguez was added in the most leagues (54 of 57) because he is now in the rotation and struck out 6 batters in just 3.2 IP in his first start — encouraging stuff. The No. 2 most-added player was Boston’s speedy David Hamilton, as he’s already homered and stolen a base and seems to be a preferred middle infield option for the Red Sox. Six other players were added in 40 or more leagues: Milwaukee’s Blake Perkins (batting .318 with a HR and two steals), St. Louis’ José Soriano (throws 100 MPH!), Texas’ Kirby Yates (might be the new closer?), Pittsburgh’s Edward Olivares (3 HR in the early going) and the Mets’ José Buttó (dominated Kansas City Sunday).

Winning Bids Over $100 and $200

I’m also keeping tabs on the players attracting the highest individual FAAB bids as well. In the fourth run Sunday (see below), there were 13 $200-plus successful bids, for the following players (Brandon Nimmo — 1; Luis Robert — 2; Colton Cowser — 4; Brett Baty — 1; Kenta Maeda — 1; Junior Caminero — 1; José Buttó — 2; Kirby Yates — 1). In addition, there were 80 bids of $100-199 across 20 players as managers were searching for options for the upcoming week.

The Wow Bid of the Week: One Manager Found Him!

So, this is the section when I reveal which player was the target of the high bid this past Sunday, but I’ve already given it away. Brandon Nimmo’s services were won with a very strong $578 bid (the highest bid so far in 2024), which overcame a well-meaning but unsuccessful runner-up bid of $331. Nimmo hit a lusty .364 with 2 HR this week and this was the only Main Event league in which he was available. Once this manager found him on the wire, he just wasn’t going to be denied — just like the movie (kind of).

• 3/24: Nolan Schanuel $200
• 3/31: Jason Foley $479
• 4/7: James McArthur $225
• 4/14: Brandon Nimmo $578

FAAB Summary: The Spending Begins

In the first four FAAB weeks, Main Event managers have had 1,825 winning bids and spent about $162 of their $1,000 allocation. This is still lower than the last three years at the four-week mark, but for the first time this season we’ve breached the $60 per week (per team) threshold. I expect spending to ratchet up over the next four weeks if we get some attractive free agents in the pool:

• 2024: $162.16
• 2023: $228.53
• 2022: $190.39
• 2021: $250.54

The average Main Event Week 4 winning bid was $28.99 this week, below previous years (all in the $30-39 range).

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. Three weeks ago we had our first FAAB run — and although it was somewhat muted in terms of the total amount bid, we still can evaluate these pickups to see if they are providing value. 

Well — as you can see from the above stats — the top four pickups were all excellent value. Spencer Turnbull is in the Philadelphia rotation and put up fine numbers; Mr. No Hitter — Ronel Blanco — has been outstanding (2 wins and a 0.86 ERA!); Yimi García didn’t take over as closer but nevertheless garnered a win and a save; and Daniel Hudson got credit for a great first week after some teams were drafted with a win and a save of his own. Four thumbs up for this crew! Maybe this fantasy stuff is easy after all?

This gives the Main Event managers a strong leg up on surpassing the final 2023 total — which was 39 thumbs up for the season (44%), 36 down (41%) and 13 pushes (15%). The good pickups were the highest since I’ve been tracking it last year — compared to the 2022 good pickups mark of 39% and 24% in 2021.

Overall Leaderboard: Sousaphone — Tough to Beat

Nelson Sousa says he invented the sousaphone — and he likes the name of the instrument a great deal. And he wants you to know that it is a tough instrument to play, just like he is a tough man to beat. This week, not only is he leading the Main Event, but Nelson is seventh overall. And in his spare time (see above), Nelson actually plays the sousaphone! What doesn’t Nelson do? However, famed NFBC veteran Jon Stadtmueller is lurking in second place just 26 points back though and doesn’t look worried in the least about Nelson’s early domination. Erik Sviggum checks into third (he was 25th last week), and Big Deal Greg DIehl moves from off the board to fourth place overall with an excellent week. Chris Uram is in fifth — last week he was second — but he remains well within striking distance.

Among the other top-30 contenders, Robert DiPietro, the Pull Hitter himself, is both sixth and 30th overall; Leonard Ringle is eighth; Former Overall Champ Robert Cramutola is solidly in ninth; and Dohn Terrell rounds out the top 10 overall. 

A few other notables in the top 31 (the top 31 gets paid an overall prize at the end of the season — see below) include Glenn Schroter (11th); David Miller (14th); Dave Rhydderch (16th and 29th); Lawrence Schechter (22nd); Clark Olson — perennially at the top (24th); Abdulaziz Madani (26th); Jenny Butler (28th) and John Fish (31st). 

But all 31 of these fantasy managers have gotten off to a terrific start, and that’s what you need in a big 855-team contest like the Main Event. But as the people down in 800th place or worse will tell you — it’s a long season (they hope).

League of Legends

Here are the 31 Main Event leagues with the current top three in the standings as of Monday morning.

Shout-Outs

The 26 players listed below account for 25 of the 57 first place positions (44%) and 66 of the 171 total cashing positions (39%) — great job thus far!
So far, the most outstanding performance across the Main Events is Robert Cramutola, who has two first places, a second place and a third place. Congratulations Robert! But see below as Michael O’Brien, Abdulaziz Madani and Scott Waggener are also doing terrific work.

Notables include:

• Two firsts, one second, one third — Robert Cramutola
• One first, one second, two thirds — Michael O’Brien
• Three seconds, one third — Abdulaziz Madani
• Two seconds, two thirds — Scott Waggener
• Two firsts, one second — Nelson Sousa, Bill Gaffney
• One first, two seconds — Jason Santeiu
• One first, two thirds — Glenn Schroter
• One second, two thirds — Zach Bettencourt, Mike Ballschmiede
• Two firsts — Gregg Martin, Steven Weimer; David Miller, Dave Rhydderch
• One first, one second – Robert DiPietro, Mike Massotto, Rich Thomas
• One first, One third – Paul Jager, Chris Slack, Michael Lins, Jon Stadtmueller, Bradley Libros
• Two seconds — Greg Miller, Jeffrey Biddle
• One second, one third — Samuel Horton
• Two thirds – Jeff Mitseff

Good luck in Week 5!