Whitestone’s Waiver Watch: NFBC Main Event (8/7)

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. 

Please note: This week and next week I’ll be away on vacation, so this article will be primarily limited to an update of the regular statistics and will not include individual league standings.

MLB Counter = 69.2% of the season complete

Main Event owners know how to relax, so I decided to take my cues from them this week and kick back. So this week, there won’t be any league standings even though I know all 53 Main Event leagues (and all fantasy baseball leagues in general) are very much up for grabs with approximately eight weeks remaining in the season. We’ll resume our regular programming on August 21 and see who leads each league then. Until then, let’s just chill out baby!

Most Common FAAB Pickups in the Main Event: How Ryu?

The 10 widest acquisitions are in the chart below and feature a returning starting pitcher for Toronto, Hyun Jin Ryu. The rest of the top-10 free agent pickups are really all over the map in terms of positions – some outfielders (Jake Bauers, Johan Rojas), a few hot hitters (Davis Schneider, Freddy Fermin), more starting pitchers (Cole Ragans, Zack Littell and Chase Silseth) and some new faces for this year at least (Brendan Rodgers, Curtis Mead). Mead is the interesting one here. He has loads of talent but an uncertain playing time situation. Perhaps this will pay off for the intrepid owners who grabbed him.  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 20th FAAB run (see below), there were zero $200+ successful bids for the second time this season and just four winning bids over $100 (one each for Adrian Houser, Endy Rodríguez, Jordan Hicks and Curtis Mead). As you can see below, we’ve had 539 total winning bids over $200 and 1,347 total $100+ winning bids in the first 20 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 (1.69 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 Adrian Houser and Endy Rodríguez, both with winning bids of $150, easily beating the $5 and $1 runner-up amounts (by the way, these two bids were by the same owner – how did he have $300 left, anyway?). Nevertheless, these are the lowest WOW bids of the season, as owners are down to the last nickels and dimes.

• 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

FAAB Summary

In the first 20 FAAB weeks, Main Event owners have had 29,778 winning bids (so each Main Event team has won 37.4 bids on average YTD – 1.87 per week). But the activity level dropped for five weeks, with only 1,000-1,300 winning bids. However, this week activity bounced back up to 1,554 (it seems those fantasy owners still in the hunt are adding more low-cost players). In terms of spending, owners have now parted with, on average, $903 of their $1,000 allocation. Comparing that to the last two years at the 20-week mark, that’s more than the $873 spent in 2022 and the $874 spent two years ago. However, the gap has narrowed as the spending in 2023 is constricted. In the prior two years, owners had a little more running room at this point of the season. 

You can see in the chart below (the average amount spent per team column) that there was a huge drop in weekly spending seven weeks ago – from $65 spent per team to $28. Since then, it has been at a lower ebb, but except for the blip two weeks ago ($21.97), we now are in the low double-digits (this week $13.78), and it just might be in the single-digits next week. With 27 FAAB periods and $903 spent in 20 weeks, owners who have an average amount left ($111) have just $13.86 per week for all their winning bids over the final nine 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 $39 per team remaining for the active Main Event owners. That would leave just $5.57 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 17th FAAB period. The Athletics’ Zack Gelof leads us off and has provided outstanding value (just a .246 average but five homers and three stolen bases). An easy thumbs up for the emperor. His teammate Tyler Soderstrom, though, didn’t do much in his three-week stint (.154 average and only one homer), and gets a thumbs down. Alec Marsh of the Royals also fell short with an 8.31 ERA and some ugly peripherals, so he clearly gets a thumbs down. Finally, Kyle Finnegan has been outstanding since he was picked up again – a 0.00 ERA. Wow. Thumbs up for sure! 

This now gives us 29 thumbs up for the season (43%), 27 down (40%) and 12 pushes (18%). That’s better than 2022, which registered a 39% thumbs up on these weekly pickups, and well ahead of 2021 (24%). Are Main Event owners getting smarter?

Overall Leaderboard: Let’s PAUSMA some more!

John Pausma – the great John Pausma – has ordered the temporary halt in the proceedings to remain in place this week. He has worked his way back up to the top spot (he led after Week 2) and says everyone should just “Hold!” Hey John, come on, let’s move on, shall we?

Eric Christenson (Erik the Red) had his five-week reign of terror ended by John last week and this week dropped back further to third place – oh no! In second place is one of the guys I’m worried about, Clark Olson, up from 4th last week (and he also now has the 30th-place team). Brandon King and Rey Diaz are in strong position in 4th and 5th – less than 400 points from the top spot. A little further back we see David Miller, Bob Catsiroumpas and the great Slack-Sack tag team (Brian Slack and Nickolaus Sackett). These guys just won’t quit! Bill Gaffney is holed up in 9th, and Michael Mager lurks in 10th (and 27th). Scott Gilbert is 11th, Jason Anthony is 12th and former leader Steve Maier is 13th. I also need to mention that Steven Weimer is a threat in 14th, and I still love the attitude and moxie of the operatic duo of Robert Mirshak and Ian Kahn (now 16th).

There are a lot of other strong contenders in the top 30 list, including Robert DiPietro in 18th and the people’s choice, Michael Kurland, in 19th. But the frightening presence of Philippe Dussault in 22nd looms over the entire field – could he win again? I just can’t look. Anything can most certainly happen.

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: Philippe is 22nd, zooming up from 75th last week, after having been as far back as 275th place (out of 795 total). He’s scaring me, I can tell you that!.
Robert Cramutola: Bob edged down to 165th from 156th and says he loves Johan Rojas. That is all, no further questions, please.

Good luck during Week 21!