Whitestone’s Waiver Watch: NFBC Main Event (5/13)

Pitching a Quarter

MLB Counter: 25.1% of the season complete

How are the pitchers on your fantasy team doing? Well, it’s often a good idea to analyze how they wind up before delivering an offering? Sometimes they just might distract the hitters with a little extra motion…

Last week we looked in on the hitting stats so far in 2024, so let’s see how MLB pitchers are performing in 2024 compared to past seasons. We saw last week that the hitting environment is down early in the season (4.33 runs per game versus 4.62 for the full 2023), so the pitchers should be doing well, right?

Below you can see the pitching statistics since 2017. The MLB WHIP is down to 1.27 through May 12, but interestingly, strikeouts are also significantly off (8.43, down from 8.61 last season). In fact, these levels look very similar to 2022, when we had a 1.27 WHIP and 8.40 strikeouts — and that was before the new shift rules. Unintentional walks are still about the same as 2023, though, as pitchers are still having issues throwing consistent strikes.

MLB Pitching Stats Through May 12:

I will keep tabs on this over the season, but for now don’t be surprised if your team looks a little better in the ERA and WHIP categories early in the season. Of course, the hotter weather could make this revert to 2023 levels — we’ll have to just wait and see.

NFBC Main Event FAAB #8

In FAAB No. 8 Sunday (our weekly look at how these top managers are spending their fictional $1,000 free agent acquisition budget in the Main Event), the bidding was fairly tepid — just like the first six weeks (although Week 7 was a little more aggressive). The 10 widest acquisitions this week are in the chart below, and Robert Gasser (MIL) was added in the most leagues (54 of 57). Gasser impressed last week with six scoreless innings while striking out four and allowing just two hits and zero walks. His numbers in three starts at Nashville (5.25 ERA, 1.50 WHIP and 17:6 K:BB in 12 innings) were not similarly impressive, which probably kept the bids lower (his highest winning bid was $162).

Second in the hearts of Main Event managers was old favorite Eddie Rosario, whose four-homer week propelled him onto fantasy rosters (added in 47 of 57 leagues). The No. 3 most-added player was Kansas City speedster Dairon Blanco, who in his last five games has four steals and a home run. Two other players were added in 41 and 40 leagues, respectively – Kyle Manzardo of the Guardians and Paul DeJong of the White Sox. Manzardo’s playing time is a little uncertain while DeJong should stay in the lineup while he is hitting (who else do the White Sox have?). Five other players were added in 33 or more leagues: Matt Manning of DET (back in the rotation this week), Jalen Beeks of COL (notching three saves), Andy Ibáñez of DET (two homers this week), Abraham Toro of OAK (solid numbers over the past two weeks) and Ezequiel Duran of TEX (hitting well and his playing time seems to be on the rise).

NFBC Main Event — Most Added This Week: Gasser Up

Winning Bids over $100 and $200

I’m also keeping tabs on players attracting the highest individual FAAB bids as well. In the eighth run on May 12 (see below), there were 10 $200-plus successful bids, a big drop from last week when bidding for Christian Scott propelled the number to 48. Five of those 10 bids were for Taj Bradley of Tampa, while two were for TJ Friedl of Cincinnati. In addition, there was one each for Lars Nootbaar, Jacob Young and Kyle Manzardo (who was added in two leagues). In addition, there were 58 bids of $100-199 scattered across the player landscape as managers searched for options for the upcoming week.

The Wow Bid of the Week: The Taj Mahal

The highest overall bid in FAAB Week 7 was for Tampa’s Taj Bradley. His services were won with a bid of $444 (the fourth highest bid so far in 2024), which had no problem overcoming an unsuccessful runner-up bid of $324. Bradley was rostered in 52 of 57 Main Event leagues before Sunday’s FAAB run and now is rostered in all 57. The other four winning bids for Bradley were all between $300 and $399.

• 3/24: Nolan Schanuel $200
• 3/31: Jason Foley $479
• 4/7: James McArthur $225
• 4/14 Brandon Nimmo $578
• 4/21 Wilyer Abreu $350
• 4/28 Pete Crow-Armstrong $355
• 5/5 Christian Scott $677
• 5/12 Taj Bradley $444

FAAB Summary: Main Event Managers Holding Back

In the eighth FAAB week, Main Event managers successfully made 1,875 winning bids (fewer than last week) and have spent about $419 of their $1,000 allocation. This remains lower than the last three years at the eight-week mark, and for the first time since 2021, Week 8 fell below $60 spent per team. With on average $581 of FAAB left per team, Main Event managers are pretty well-stocked in FAAB. Apparently they really haven’t been sufficiently tempted to spend big thus far. As you can see in the second chart below, this Week 2 to Week 8 period traditionally exhibits the highest spending per week, and 2024 just does not seem to be fitting into that pattern.

Total Spent: Main Event Through 8 FAAB Periods

• 2024: $419
• 2023: $542
• 2022: $465
• 2021: $474

The average Main Event Week 8 winning bid of $24.44 was not too far below the previous two years (which were between $30-33) but slightly above 2021 ($23).

Average Weekly Spending Per Team (12-24):

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. We’re focusing on the first three weeks after the pickup where players can earn their new owners some good stats (as they are generally in the active lineup) or underperform badly, leading to a drop as the weeks go by.

Three weeks ago, we had our fifth FAAB run, and as you can see from the above stats, we had two solid pickups (Andy Pages and Albert Suárez). Pages has been excellent, playing regularly and producing solid counting stats in the vaunted Dodger lineup, while Suárez may have lost his rotation spot, but he was still a good addition, as fantasy managers could see his starts coming to an end and got some really nice help (including two wins) while he was in there. Mitchell Parker is still in the rotation, but he’s been a shade worse than Suárez, and with no victories and an unimpressive WHIP we have to give him a push instead of a thumbs up. Finally, Jonatan Clase never really got a chance — he only received 7 at bats before being sent back down and didn’t really help any fantasy teams. He gets a thumbs down.

Main Event managers still have a strong leg up in 2024 with 10 thumbs up (50%), 5 thumbs down and 5 pushes, which is better than the final 2023 total of 39 thumbs up for the season (44%), 36 down (41%) and 13 pushes (15%). The 2023 good pickups were higher than the 2022 good pickups mark of 39% and 24% in 2021, so maybe we’re all improving?

Colosseum Thumbs Up Record:

• 2024 thus far: 50%
• 2023: 44%
• 2022: 39%
• 2021: 24%

Overall Leaderboard: Cramutola on a Roll-a

So Glenn Schroter, the 2015 overall Main Event champ is not leading the 2024 Main Event. Phew! But wait, another overall winner has now taken his place! Robert Cramutola, who won in 2022 is now in the lead (he says he’s “Back where I belong”), and you can see from the actual footage above that he is excited about his position. Bob decided to not invest in any stocks or bonds, but instead just buy Main Event teams, and he has two in the top 100 of the contest (his second one is 82nd overall). However, Bradley Libros does not seem deterred, and moved from third to second overall with one of his four Main Event entries. While it may not be true that Bradley said his plan is to liberate the Main Event from the oppression of the former overall champs, he seems to be carrying that flag nonetheless. After leading the pack for two weeks, Glenn Schroter has dropped down to third overall, but he remains well within striking distance. Bill Gaffney made an extremely impressive move from 16th to fourth, while Nelson Sousa, who led after Weeks 2 and 3, moved back into fifth from last week’s seventh place.

Among the other top-30 contenders, Nicholi Knutson is sixth, Andy Saxton drops back from second to seventh, Jason Santeiu zooms up from 18th to eighth, Chris Boudreaux is ninth (from 15th last week) and Eric Drescher rounds out the top 10 overall (from 12th a week ago). 

A few other notables in the top 31 (the top 31 are paid an overall prize at the end of the season – see below table) include Todd Hoppe (11th), Erik Sviggum (12th), Andrew Sullivan (13th), Chris Uram (14th) and Big Deal Greg Diehl (15th). Three guys I recommend keeping an eye on are Dave Rhydderch (16th), Clark Olson (17th) and Gregg Martin (23rd) – they’re big threats to move up even further.

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. We’ve reached the one-quarter mark of the season (25.1%) but still a lot will certainly shift before October.

Top 31: Main Event 2024

Main Event Leaders in 2024

League of Legends

Here are the 57 Main Event leagues with the current top three in the standings as of the morning of May 13.

Top Three: 2024 Main Event League Leaders

Shout-Outs

The 21 players listed below account for 14 of the 57 first-place positions (25%) and 46 of the 171 total cashing positions (27%) – a little less concentration than there has been in the past…
So far, the most outstanding performance across the Main Events belongs to Jason Santeiu and Richard DiMondo, who have one first place, one second place and one third. Congratulations! Also sporting three league placements are Michael O’Brien (two seconds and one third) and Glenn Schroter (one first and two thirds). But see below as there are several other fantasy managers doing terrific work!

Notables include:

• One first, one second, one third — Jason Santieu, Richard DiMondo
• One first, two thirds — Glenn Schroter
• Two seconds, one third — Michael O’Brien
• Two firsts — Robert Cramutola, Clark Olson
• One first; one second – Gregg Martin, Nelson Sousa
• One first; One third – Dave Rhdderch, Dominic Rello, Bill Gaffney, David Miller, Zachary Waxman
• Two seconds — Stephen Prepas, Stephen Fiore, Matthew Dugan
• One second, one third — Doug Moe, Dalton Del Don, Danny Bronski, Jeff Mitseff, James Anderson & Todd Whitestone

Good luck in Week 9!