Whitestone’s Waiver Watch: NFBC Main Event (8/21)

Don’t Worry! Your Fantasy Team Can Find a Way.

Welcome to my weekly NFBC Main Event recap article. Each week, I’ll dig into the top free agents added in this premier fantasy baseball contest, letting you know who was added in the most leagues, how much money was spent and more. In addition, we’ll revisit the top pickups from three weeks ago and even scan the Main Event overall standings to see who’s at the top. 

MLB Counter = 76.8% of the season complete

As Jurassic Park taught us, if you’re nervous about your fantasy team’s outlook, or don’t think you have enough FAAB left, you can still find a way out of the kitchen – er – the situation. All you have to do is remain calm and focus on the categories where you need improvement (and get the hell out of there).

At this stage of the season, you need to make a solid assessment of which categories can provide more points in your specific league. Look at the point totals directly above and below you in each category. Just because you are doing well in a category does not mean you should de-emphasize it. If your team is just three homers behind two teams and four homers ahead of two others, it may be wise to look for power sources even if you have 11 points out of a possible 15. Chasing steals may be a poor idea even if you only have three points but can realistically catch just one team. You want to give yourself the best chance to win or cash in your league, and a realistic assessment of where you are with six weeks to play is step one toward that goal.

Updated MLB Stats

Here is a look at the overall MLB pitching and hitting stats. If you glance at the first table below, you see that runs per game is up sharply from 2022 – to 4.59 from 4.28 – and this statistic has been steady since our last check on July 24 at 4.59 per game. However, home runs over the same period are up to 1.20 from 1.18 even though this has not produced more runs. Batting average edged up just a little to .249 from .248 over this period (of course higher than last year’s .243), while stolen bases, which have jumped a great deal with the new rule changes, have held at .72 per game (with a success rate stable at 80%).

On the pitching side, MLB WHIP has remained unchanged but sits higher than 2022, and strikeouts per game is down to 8.59 from 8.61 over that same period. Unintentional walks are up over 2022 but fell a little to 3.23 from 3.25 over the most recent four weeks. So in general compared to 2022, batters are striking out more, walking more, but hitting for more power and putting the ball in play significantly less than last season. That’s not exactly what MLB had in mind (you can see the reaction at MLB headquarters below).

Most Common FAAB Pickups in the Main Event: Shopping at the Save Mart(e)

The No. 1 pickup this week was our shopping expert, Noelvi (Save) Marte – yet another rookie Cincinnati hitter. It’s not entirely clear where Marte will play, but the popular theory is that they wouldn’t have brought him up to sit on the bench, right? He’s expected to serve as the primary third baseman until second baseman Jonathan India can return. At that point, the Reds will need to accommodate Marte, Elly De La Cruz and Matt McLain at shortstop and third base. DH is a possibility, but there’s a need to find spots for Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Joey Votto, not to mention Jake Fraley. In any case, Main Event owners bought in as much as they could with limited funds and added him in 50 leagues this past weekend.

The 10 widest acquisitions are in the chart below, and in addition to Noelvi Marte, they also feature Stone Garrett of the Washington Nationals. The outfielder is suddenly one of the hottest hitters in the majors, producing five multi-hit performances over the last seven games while batting .520 (13-for-25), and this surge has pushed him into a starting role. Next on the list is another hot rookie, shortstop Masyn Winn of the Cardinals. The top prospect has looked major-league ready for much of the year after slashing .288/.359/.474 with 18 home runs, 17 stolen bases and 61 RBI over 105 games with Triple-A Memphis. The rest of the top-10 free-agent pickups are highlighted by a Dodger who may be in the starting rotation (Ryan Pepiot), a rookie call-up by the Angels of their, get this, 2023 draft pick Nolan Schanuel and a returning catcher (Logan O’Hoppe). In any case, you can see that the bidding is a lot more spread out, as fantasy managers try to fit acquisitions into their needs to help their most important categories.

The Century Club

In the 22nd FAAB run (see below), there were zero $200+ successful bids for the third week in a row and just one winning bid over $100. As you can see below, we’ve had 539 total winning bids over $200 and 1,367 total $100+ winning bids in the first 21 weeks of FAAB. Therefore, of the 795 Main Event owners, two-thirds (67.8%) on average have had one $200-plus winning bid, and each owner on average has had 1-2 (1.72 to be exact) winning bids over $100. So on average, each Main Event owner only takes two or three high-end players during the season.

The Wow Bid of the Week

So, who attracted the highest single bid of the week? The highest winning bid was for Hyun Jin Ryu, with a winning bid of $119 easily beating the $13 runner-up amount. Unsurprisingly, this was the lowest WOW bid of the season (the previous low was $150), with Main Event owners down to the last pennies.

• 3/26: Darick Hall $221
• 4/2: Dany Jiménez $363
• 4/9 Oscar Colás $372
• 4/16 Taj Bradley $557
• 4/23 José Alvarado $399
• 4/30 Tanner Bibee $504
• 5/7 Bryce Miller $468
• 5/14 Eury Pérez $415
• 5/21 Bobby Miller $329
• 5/28 Bobby Miller $412
• 6/4 Royce Lewis $429
• 6/11 Elly De La Cruz $650
• 6/18 Emmet Sheehan $178
• 6/25 Gavin Williams $228 (2)
• 7/2 Jordan Westburg $177
• 7/9 Colton Cowser $225
• 7/16 Aroldis Chapman $316
• 7/23 Christian Encarnacion-Strand $283
• 7/30 Giovanny Gallegos $155
• 8/6 Adrian Houser and Endy Rodríguez $150 each
• 8/13 Trevor Story $164
• 8/20 Hyun Jin Ryu $119

FAAB Summary

In the first 22 FAAB weeks, Main Event owners have had 32,463 winning bids (so each Main Event team has won 40.8 bids on average YTD – 1.86 per week). The activity level has held steady at 1,300 or so winning bids per week despite the small amounts of FAAB remaining. This week there were 1,324 winning bids (1.67 per team). I find that this level of activity is impressive, as there are just six weeks to go in the season, and the teams in the bottom third of the standings probably have little chance to win their league. In terms of spending, owners have now parted with, on average, $927 of their $1,000 allocation. Comparing that to the last two years at the 22-week mark, that’s more than the $907 spent in 2022 and the $903 spent two years ago. However, the gap has narrowed as the spending in 2023 is constricted from all the big early bids. In the prior two years, owners had a little more running room at this point of the season. 

Spending This Week: Roughly $10 per Team

You can see in the chart below (the average amount spent per team column) that there was a huge drop in weekly spending in Week 13 – from $65 spent per team to $28. Since then, it has been at a lower ebb, as from Weeks 15-21 it has ranged from $11.75 to $21.97. But this week (Week 22) we finally dropped below double-digits per team ($9.92). With 27 FAAB periods and $927 spent in 22 weeks, owners who have an average amount left ($73) have just $14.60 per week for all their winning bids over the final five weeks of the campaign. And one more note – the last two years, an average of $58 went unspent because of teams that fell out of their league races. If that holds for 2023, there really is only $15 per team remaining for the active Main Event owners. That would leave just $3.00 per week for the average team. Yikes.

The Colosseum

Each week during the season, I 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 the results from the 19th FAAB period. New York Mets Brooks Raley leads us off and did not help his fantasy owners (no saves after pickup). This is a thumbs down from the emperor. Minnesota’s Matt Wallner, though, did supply some value ( a low .212 average but four homers and good counting stats) and received a thumbs up. Similarly, Gregory Santos of the White Sox has been helpful. His ratios aren’t great, but the two saves and the likelihood that he could provide more give him the thumbs up as well. Finally, Michael Toglia didn’t do much at all. He’s an easy thumbs down.

This now gives us 34 thumbs up for the season (45%), 30 down (39%) and 12 pushes (16%). That’s better than 2022, which registered a 39% thumbs up on these weekly pickups, and well ahead of 2021 (24%). It sure looks like this will be the best thumbs up year out of the last three…

Overall Leaderboard: PAUSMA vs. the rest of the Main Event!

I thought I would give you all a visual of John Pausma as he deals with the rest of the Main Event entrants (see picture below). It just isn’t friendly, and as you can see there isn’t much you can do about it. He’s leading the overall Main Event for the fourth week, and his appetite seems only to get bigger. His lead did shrink a bit from last week (from 282.5 to 119.0) but says he isn’t worried. He says he is the biggest baddest creature in this jungle and your guns really won’t slow him down!

Please note though, that in second place is one of the guys John really SHOULD be worried about, Clark Olson (who also has the 16th-place AND 27th-place teams). In addition, the great Slack-Sack tag team is now in 3rd place and are determined to challenge any T-Rexes that get in their way (this is a direct quote from Brian Slack). Bob Catsiroumpas is serious this year and has gone on record that there will be no joking around like last year when he made a run and fell short. He certainly has the smarts to do the job. The fellow who appropriately led in May, Steve MAYER (really Maier), is in 5th and not out of it by any stretch. My Favorite Martin (Gregg Martin) is in 6th and Say Hey Rey Diaz has set up shop in 7th. Nice work!

A little further down we find David Miller in 8th – less than 500 points from the top spot, Brandon (the one true) King in 9th, and the lurker, Jason Anthony, doing an excellent job of lurking in 10th place (and 28th as well!). Bill (I don’t make any gaffes) Gaffney is 11th; Eric (the Red) Christenson has crusaded backward to 12th (from 3rd) and big-game Hunter Dorbandt sits 13th. The quiet assassin Steven Weimer is now 14th (he’s giving me problems in my auction league, so I’ve decided I’m not a fan of his at the moment) and the still unassuming Scott Gilbert is in 15th (Scott tells me he refuses to make any assumptions during baseball season in order to keep his unassuming status).

A couple of other noteworthy contenders to me are Richard Briskin in 23rd (nice job Richard), the Pull Hitter Robert DiPietro in 24th (outstanding work) and, oh no, who did I skip over? The hard-charging, never-say-die Philippe Dussault in 19th! If you recall (and who doesn’t?) Phil already won everyone’s money two years ago and is clearly not showing any remorse in 2023. My goodness.

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: As mentioned above, Philippe is 19th overall and is really in good shape after having been as far back as 275th place (out of 795 total). He’s making me nervous I must say, even if John Pausma is still roaming the jungle free and clear.

Robert Cramutola: Bob made a nice move up to 135th from 160th and says he will not give up. He wants back-to-back championships, and the only way to do that is with an epic charge. I don’t think it can happen, but who am I to say?

League of Legends

Shout-Outs

John Pausma is still cashing in the most Main Event leagues of any player, and he is now in a top-three position in four of his five leagues. Zowie. Danny Bronski continues to lead one Main Event league, is second in two others and third in yet another, while Clark Olson has two firsts and one second place. Slack/Sack has one first and two thirds, Scott Waggener is second in one and third in two and Douglas Gruber is second in three Main Event leagues. Those six fantasy players have six first-place positions, eight second-place and six third-place positions. Excellent job gentlemen!

Twenty other players are in two cashing spots, with Jason Anthony and Gregg Martin each winning two leagues. In fact, these 26 Main Event fantasy owners below have a combined 21 first-place positions (40%) and 60 cashing spots (38% of the 159 total available). There’s a long way to go, of course, but right now the story of the season in the Main Event is Pausma, Bronski, Olson, Waggener, Slack/Sackett and Gruber. But watch out for random T-Rexes, guys!  

Good luck to all the participants in the Main Event during Week 23!