Whitestone’s Waiver Watch: NFBC Main Event (8/28)

Top Men Are Working on the Main Event Overall Championship.

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 = 80.7% of the season complete

So who are these top men? You can see the top five in the Main Event overall standings in the chart below, along with their draft slot and the top five draft picks that formed the core of their fantasy teams. I placed their top selections into six groupings – starting pitchers, closers, speed/power hitters, mostly power hitters, mostly speed sources and finally, Shohei Ohtani.

Key takeaways for me include:

• Each of the top five took one closer – except for one owner who waited even later (Alexis Díaz)
• There was a distinct lean toward power hitters over speed in the early rounds (everyone took two except Matt Olson)
• Three teams took Shohei Ohtani in the first round (Pausma, Slack/White & Olson)
• There were four selections in the top six that didn’t completely work out – Tim Anderson (Pausma), Daulton Varsho (Slack/White), Teoscar Hernández (Catsiroumpas) and Luis Robert Jr. (Olson), although Varsho and Robert have been more solid lately
• If you count Ohtani as a SP, in the top six selections, Pausma took only one, Slack/White two, Diaz three, Catsiroumpas two and Olson two

Be Careful of What is Behind You

If your fantasy team is doing well at this stage of the season, you need to be careful of the categories that can provide your opponents with an opportunity to pass you. This is because losing a point to your closest competitor means a net loss of two points instead of just one (the one you lost and the one they get). If you are in first place, then I recommend checking out where the second (and third, if that’s relevant) teams are compared to you. If you are just barely ahead of your main rival in home runs, well, that should be an area of focus over the final five weeks for you.

Most Common FAAB Pickups in the Main Event: In the Wick of Time

The No. 1 pickup this week was the man who knows how to get the job done just in time, Jordan Wicks – yet another rookie pitcher – this time for the Cubs. Wicks impressed with 5.0 innings of one-run ball with nine – count ‘em – nine strikeouts. This caused him to be added in 52 of 53 Main Event leagues on Sunday as pitching is always in short supply (he remains renowned in the 53rd Main Event league)…

The 10 widest acquisitions are in the chart below, and in addition to Jordan Wicks, they also feature star prospect Kyle Harrison of the San Francisco Giants. The starting pitcher struck out five in his debut and could get two starts in the upcoming week. Another rookie was the third-most picked up player – Parker Meadows (brother of Austin). He seems to be in line to play regularly for the Tigers, and Main Event owners were willing to take a chance on this (in 46 leagues). Next on the list is Yennier Cano, who might be the closer for Baltimore in Félix Bautista’s absence. He would have been picked up in more than 39 leagues but was already owned in the other 14 Main Events. The rest of the top-10 free-agent pickups are highlighted by a couple of hot-hitting Mariners (Josh Rojas and Dominic Canzone), and another closer candidate, Tanner Scott of the Miami Marlins.

The Century Club

In the 23rd FAAB run (see below), there was one successful $200+ bid, which was also the only winning bid over $100. As you can see below, we’ve had 540 total winning bids over $200 and 1,368 total $100+ winning bids in the first 23 weeks of FAAB. Therefore, of the 795 Main Event owners, two-thirds (67.9%) 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 Jordan Wicks, with a winning bid of $356. Wow, that crushed the $2 runner-up amount. In fact, you have to go all the way back to June 11 when Elly De La Cruz went for $650 to find a recent higher WOW bid. This owner certainly wanted Wicks!

• 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
• 8/27 Jordan Wicks $356

FAAB Summary

In the first 23 FAAB weeks, Main Event owners have had 33,748 winning bids (so each Main Event team has won 42.5 bids on average YTD – 1.85 per week). The activity level has held steady at 1,300 or so winning bids per week in the last three weeks despite the small amounts of FAAB remaining. This week there were 1,285 winning bids (1.62 per team). This level of activity is impressive, as there are just five 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, $936 of their $1,000 allocation. Comparing that to the last two years at the 23-week mark, that’s more than the $922 spent in 2022 and the $916 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 $9 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 last week (Week 22) we finally dropped below double-digits per team ($9.92), and Main Event owners fell to $9.24 this week. With 27 FAAB periods and $936 spent in 23 weeks, owners who have an average amount left ($64) have just $16.00 per week for all their winning bids over the final four 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 $6 per team remaining for the active Main Event owners. That would leave just $1.50 per week for the average team. Yikes. (Note: I believe there will be fewer leftover FAAB dollars this year because of the heavy spending, so inactive teams most likely have less remaining FAAB. I estimate there is about $30 per active team remaining or $7.50 per week, but we will see).

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 20th FAAB period. Toronto’s Hyun Jin Ryu leads us off and has done a fine job with three wins and a miniscule ERA and WHIP. The only question is whether to bench him in Coors Field this week. But for the emperor, he’s a clear thumbs up. Brendan Rodgers, however, did not help his fantasy owners enough. He supplied a low batting average along with no homers or steals, so even the reasonable counting stats don’t help him. Thumbs down. 

Our second Blue Jay, Davis Schneider, is an interesting case. His stats are pretty good with a .292 average and three homers. However, he has been a DNP in 10 games since his pickup and has only amassed 24 ABs. Because of that, many owners dropped him and then he was a top pickup again this weekend. The emperor is giving him a PUSH, but many owners from the pickup three weeks ago have not received the benefit of his production. Finally, there is the Cole Ragans story. This story is likely to be passed down to later generations in song, as he has been extremely solid in innings (23.2), wins (2), strikeouts (36) and ratios (2.66/1/14). He’s been one of the best pickups of the year, an easy thumbs up.

This now gives us 36 thumbs up for the season (45%), 31 down (39%) and 13 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 Is Focused!

I thought I would give you all a visual of John Pausma as he prepares for the final five weeks of the Main Event (see picture below). It seems that this type of exercise is helpful for getting FAAB just right. He’s leading the overall Main Event for the fifth straight week, and his reflexes only seem to be improving. His lead has shrunk a little over the last two weeks (from 282.5 to 119.0 to 79.0), but John isn’t worried. He says he can concentrate and make the stats do what he wants!

However, I must point out that now in second place is a real threat, Brian Slack and his tag team partner Dylan White. They are breathing down Pausma’s neck, and Brian has assured me that he will not sleep over the last five weeks to ensure a Main Event overall championship (does that really help, Brian?). Say Hey Rey Diaz has moved from seventh all the way up into third and is just 158 points out of first. Clearly he has a chance. Bob Catsiroumpas remains in fourth and says he 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 (OK, I got that Bob, any other strategy plans other than not joking?). Clark Olson falls a bit to fifth from second (but also has the 24th- and 28th-place teams). Clark is looking for an overall championship as well and says, “I plan to sleep very well over the last five weeks, Brian!” My Favorite Martin (Gregg Martin) remains in sixth, and David Miller has moved up to seventh from eighth. Nice work!

Still less than 500 points from the top spot, we find Bill (I don’t make any gaffes) Gaffney in eighth; the lurker, Jason Anthony, doing an excellent job of lurking in ninth place; Steve Maier in 10th (although he wishes it was still May-ier when he was leading overall) and Brandon (the one true) King in 11th (so named because he was the first to pass John Pausma in a league this season). A pair of Michaels are holed up in 12th and 13th (O’Brien and Mager); and, oh no, Philippe Dussault is now 14th! He’s coming folks! Can he make it all the way to the top? Even if not, it’s been a truly impressive charge from the 2021 Overall Champ. Wow. Eric (the Red) Christenson has crusaded backward to 15th (from 12th last week) and the still unassuming Scott Gilbert is in 16th (Scott tells me the key to remaining unassuming is, well, not to assume). The quiet assassin Steven Weimer is now 17th, and big-game Hunter Dorbandt is 18th.

A couple of other noteworthy contenders to me are the opera enthusiasts Robert Mirshak and Ian Kahn in 23rd; Kyle (on the Brink) Brinkmann in 26th; Richard Briskin in 27th (handling himself very well I must say) and an interloper in 30th who is being investigated by Greg Ambrosius for ranking too high without the proper approvals or license…

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 14th overall and is really in good shape after having been as far back as 275th place (out of 795 total). I love to give Phil a hard time, but this is truly amazing.

Robert Cramutola: Bob has made a nice move. He was 160th two weeks ago and  135th last week. This week? 110th place. These former champs seem to know what they are doing!

League of Legends

Shout-Outs

John Pausma is still cashing in four Main Event leagues, but he now has company. Danny Bronski isn’t first in any league, but has three second places and one third –  outstanding! Douglas Gruber is also second in three Main Event leagues, and Clark Olson is first in two and second in yet another. Placing second in two Main Event leagues and also boasting a third place are Glenn Schroter and Dalton Del Don. Those six fantasy players have four first-place positions, 12 second-place and four third-place positions. Excellent job gentlemen!

Fifteen other players are in two cashing spots, with Philippe Dussault (there’s that man again) and Gregg Martin each winning two leagues. In fact, these 21 Main Event fantasy owners below have a combined 15 first-place positions (28%) and 50 cashing spots (31% 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, Schroter, Del Don and Gruber. But start the engines, guys, you just might be getting chased!

Good luck to all the participants in the Main Event during Week 24!