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2 Questions for the
mailbag:

 

1) There are a
plethora of guides out there for the average fantasy player to reference to
establish the value of a player during draft time. But, I know of nothing
comparable to reference when using a FAAB budget for picking up a player off of
the waiver wire. Is there a good place to go to get an idea of how much to bid
on a player who is on the waiver wire? If there is nothing out there, do you
have any ground rules that you can suggest? In my league ($100 FAAB), I have routinely
seen people bid $0 for a player, but then I have also seen bids on what I
considered average pick-ups balloon to as high as $14.

 

Great question.  As a
quick primer, FAAB is short for Free Agent Acquisition Budget and it serves as
an alternative to waiver wires for distributing free agents.  It’s basically a mini-auction held every week
and if your league doesn’t use it, I highly recommend you consider implementing
it next year, as it’s both a fairer way to distribute free agents and a lot of
fun (who wouldn’t want to have a mini version of draft day every week?)

 

I agree with you, weekly guidelines for FAAB bidding are
seemingly sparse across the internet, which is shocking when you consider the
amount of content devoted to this silly hobby of ours each and every week.  The only dedicated column to the subject I
know about is written by Jeff Erickson at Rotowire, but its part of their pay
content.  So unless you are willing to
part with real bucks to get some guidance on how to spend your fake bucks, you
are on your own.

 

I guess one of the problems with creating a blanket
guideline for FAAB is the price determination is incredibly fact specific, as
the value of a player can swing wildly based on budget, mixed-league vs solo
league, shallowness of the league, number of bench spots, etc.  Assuming you aren’t in a solo league where
there is a serious incentive to hoard as much FAAB as possible in case a star
is traded across leagues, I think there are three primary factors to consider:

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1.  How important is
that player to your specific team? 
Ideally, you’d win every one of your bids by $1, but sometimes you got
to pull out all the stops to get a guy who fills a desperate need.  If you are weak at a position or a category
and there is someone available who represents a serious upgrade, overbid to get
him.  This advice changes if your league
is shallow and several options are available, but if there is only one guy and
he’s a perfect fit, go the extra mile as the marginal dollar or two of FAAB is
less valuable then addressing a serious need.

 

2.  Does another team
share your need?  Almost every team could
always use more saves or speed, so guys who can provide either will create
fierce competition.  But if you need help
in another category, such as average or you have an injury at a specific position,
quickly pull up your leagues rosters page and see if anyone else has the same
hole.  If you are the only guy in the
league who needs a shortstop or catcher, you can lower your bid
accordingly.  And if you find someone
else has the same need, see how much FAAB they have left and factor that into
your bid.  A little scouting work can go
a long way here.

 

3.  What time of the
year is it?  In mixed leagues, the best
values almost always come off the board in April.  Your entire league has plenty of money to
spend, so anyone off to a solid start will get bought.  Sometimes you’ll get Carlos Quentin,
sometimes you’ll get Fukudome, but whether they bust out or just bust, you can
bet they’ll be on someone’s roster by May. 
Personally, I like to be real active early in the hope to get a guy who
can give me solid numbers all season.  Later on, much of the money will be spent
chasing new relievers or speculating on rookies entering the league, neither of
which provided sure things.  Both approaches
represent gambles and personally, I like to take my risks early in the season
where I can get more impact if they work out and have more time to make
corrections if they don’t.

 

So there you go, that’s how I approach it.  Plenty of ink has been spilled on the subject
though, so if you want to read some serious experts, I suggest you check out
these columns:

 

Baseball Sherpa

 

Baseball HQ

 

2) With Patrick
Swayze’s declining health, are we ever going to see a Point Break 2? I remain
convinced that Bodhi did, in fact, paddle to New Zealand.

 

How could he paddle to New Zealand, there were cliffs on
both sides!  Besides, your belief
directly contradicts Johnny Utah, the greatest FBI Agent, nay, human being the
world has ever seen.  If he says “he’s
not coming back” you gotta believe him, especially if it’s accompanied with him
dramatically discarding his badge onto the shores of Bell’s Beach.

 

That being said, once Utah left the scene it’s entirely
possible that Bodhi was able to elude the Australian task force that accompanied
Utah and escape.  He did have the cover
of a 50 year storm and a lifetime’s worth of experience of being radical to aid
his getaway.

 

If you had asked me nine months ago, I would have said
Swayze’s health meant that the project was dead.  But now that I’ve seen him tackle a guy out
of the way of a ginormous explosion 500 times in promos for “The Beast” I’m
convinced he’s good for at least a cameo. 
Perhaps he can be the mysterious head of an Asian surfing crime syndicate
full of his followers (he was always great at getting people to follow him despite
questionable leadership and decision making. 
Keeping an FBI agent alive and bringing him into a robbery did far more
than just “up the stakes.”) 

 

After 75 minutes of exxxxtreme action, we finally find out
that Bodhi is behind the whole thing.  He
then can shoot 2-3 scenes where he spits out half-baked mysticisms and gets in
one quick fight on a longboard.  I think
he can handle that no problem.  I do
insist though that he is only referred to by his underlings as the Bodhizafa,
so finally someone, anyone will call him that.