Whitestone’s Waiver Watch: NFBC Main Event (4/8)

April Showers

MLB Counter: 5.9% of the season complete

There’s no sense dwelling here over the poor April weather or the rash of high-profile injuries. You’ve gotten your updates elsewhere so we’ll all have to soldier on as best we can. Just remember that as of this morning less than 6% of the season has been played, so there’s plenty of time to make adjustments, pickups and savvy moves.

So let’s focus first on the MLB picture as a whole. We all know MLB made a host of changes for the 2023 season, most of which were designed to promote action and offense. So how do the early returns in 2024 compare to the arc of the past few seasons?

I’ve tracked the runs scored, home runs and batting average since 2017, and of course 2019 was the high-water mark for offense, with 4.83 runs per game, 1.39 home runs per game and a .252 overall batting average. Since then, hitting stats declined each year, until 2022, when batters posted 4.28 runs/game, 1.07 HR/game and a .243 average. However, the 2023 rule changes jump-started the offense — maybe not to 2019 levels, but to a much higher 4.62 runs per game. In 2024, the early returns show 4.55 runs/game, 1.03 HR/game and a .241 batting average. This is down from 2023, but since this is early April, I think it’s safe to assume the offensive statistics will rise as the weather improves.

Another takeaway is the frequency of stolen bases. In 2023, the new rules allowed steals to rise to 0.72 per game from the previous 0.51. In the early going this season, stolen bases are down somewhat to 0.64 per contest, but it’s probably too early to presume that steals will decline off last year’s peak.

In terms of pitching stats, strikeouts have started out even higher in the early going than last year’s 8.61 per game. But more notably walks are up even more — there was a spike in free passes early in 2023 as well, but that settled down after pitchers got used to the pitch clock. This is even a bigger spike, and I’m not quite sure what to attribute this to as of yet.

Most Common FAAB Pickups in the Main Event: Hot in Arizona

As we gaze wistfully at FAAB No. 3 (our weekly look at how these top managners are spending their fictional $1,000 free agent acquisition budget in the Main Event), we all understand that this FAAB (held Sunday, April 7) is still at the beginning of a long season. The top-10 widest acquisitions this week are in the chart below, and Blaze Alexander of Arizona was added in the most leagues (53 of 57), because he is expected to see regular starts at shortstop due to Geraldo Perdomo‘s injured knee. The No. 2 most-added player was Oliver Dunn in Milwaukee, as he’s already homered and stolen a base and seems to be a preferred middle infield option for the Brewers. Four other players were added in 40 or more leagues: Cleveland’s Will Brennan (batting .296 with two steals), St. Louis’ Iván Herrera (.375 with a homer and filling in for the day-to-day Willson Contreras), Texas’ Cody Bradford (one run allowed vs. the Astros and gets Oakland this week) and Boston’s Reese McGuire (.300 with 2 homers and 1 steal in the early going).

Winning Bids over $100 and $200

I’m also keeping tabs on the players attracting the highest individual FAAB bids as well. In the third run (see below), there was just one $200-plus successful bid, for James McArthur of Kansas City. McArthur was available in just one Main Event league and could be the closer for the Royals. In addition to McArthur, there were 23 bids of $100-199 across 19 players as managers were searching for options — primarily on the pitching mound (11 of the 19 were starters or relievers).

The Wow Bid of the Week: I shall return!

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. James McArthur’s services were won with a very strong $225 bid, which overcame a competitive runner-up bid of $177. (There’s no truth to the rumor that he is a direct descendant of General Douglas MacArthur, but it is said that he did tell the Kansas City manager when he went out to the bullpen “I shall return!”) 

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

FAAB Summary: Frugal Main Event Owners

In the first three FAAB weeks, Main Event managers have had 3,498 winning bids and spent about $100 of their $1,000 allocation. This is lower than the last three years at the three-week mark:

• 2023: $142.02
• 2022: $127.82
• 2021: $182.56

The average Main Event Week 3 winning bid was $19.95 this week, well below previous years (all in the $30-39 range). What caused this rash of prudence for our 855 Main Event teams? I attribute it to a lack of big, well-publicized options and assure you that the FAAB booms are coming 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. The final 2023 total was 39 thumbs up for the season (44%), 36 down (41%) and 13 pushes (15%). So the good pickups were the highest since I’ve been tracking it — compared to the 2022 good pickups mark of 39% and 24% in 2021. This will start next week, as we’ll hit the three-week mark for the first group of added players.

Overall Leaderboard: Nelson the Inventor

FTN’s own Nelson Sousa is an excellent fantasy manager. And yes, he knows football extremely well, but he’s been making big strides in fantasy baseball the last two seasons. This week, however, Nelson has overdone it. Not only is he leading the Main Event, but Nelson is third overall as well. And for those of you who like to know more about our fantasy leaders, Nelson invented the sousaphone (see above for exact illustration). Well, just stay on your toes, Nelson, because Chris Uram is second and tells me that he doesn’t care much for sousaphones (who doesn’t like a good sousaphone?). Then we have Gregg Martin comfortably in fourth overall and last week’s leader Jenny Butler in fifth — there’s a long, long way to go so these players are in very good shape.

Among the other top 30 contenders, Clark Olson — perennially at the top — is sixth, Eric Karlovic is seventh, Bill Gaffney is eighth (and 24th) and NFBC stars Jason Santeiu and Jon Stadtmueller are ninth and 10th, respectively. 

But all 31 of these guys have gotten off to a terrific start, and that’s what you need in a big 855-team contest like the Main Event.

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 27 players listed below account for 29 of the 57 first-place positions (51%) and 66 of the 171 total cashing positions (39%) — a great job thus far.
So far, the most outstanding performance across the Main Events is Jeff Mitseff, who has three first places and three second places. Congratulations Jeff — now keep it up for a few more months.

Notables include:

• Three firsts, three seconds — Jeff Mitseff
• Four seconds — Jason Santeiu
• Three firsts — Robert DiPietro
• Two firsts, one third — Nelson Sousa, Abdulaziz Madani
• One first, one second, one third — Michael O’Brien
• One second, two thirds — Zachary Waxman, Robert Cramutola
• Two firsts — Gregg Martin, Bill Gaffney, Matthew Davis, Jon Stadtmueller
• One first, one second – Steven Weimer, Stephen Prepas, Richard DiMondo, Paul Jager, Todd Hoppe
• One first, One third – David Miller, Chris Uram, Robert Giese, Leonard Ringle, Jody Ryan
• Two seconds — Dave Rhydderch, Jenny Butler, Glenn Schroter
• Two thirds – Griffin Benger, Tom O’Bryan

Good luck in Week 4.