Two bombs today. One off Kenyan Middleton in the 5th, then another off Cam Bedrosian in the 7th. Keith Law has him in his top 100 rankings but I can't seem to find out what number he's ranked. Anybody got a subscription The Athletic that knows? I value Law's opinion. I know some people don't like him, but I think he's very smart.

I'd say both are mistakes. I like their potential, but there's not much room for profit at those prices. The CBS guys are famous for overbidding the young players. 

He absolutely refuses to walk more than 20 batters in a season. 

I was more surprised by the single digit prices for Corey Dickerson (somewhat anyway - it is a bad lineup) - but especially Bader, Myers, Pollock, Happ and even Grisham, O'Neill, Polanco, Nimmo...and others

Probably need the stats for THIS Jose Garcia:

(Baseball Register Link)

The way CBS went ... late on if a guy was bid more than 3 or 4 that reflected some enthusiasm at the table for him ... but prices tamped down because so much was spent early.

The system doesn't give you much time - 15 secs for first bid, immediately re-setting to 10 secs for every additional bid.  So someone could close out for $3 in about 15 seconds, if someone bid $2 within a few secs, and the guy who threw him out came back immediately with $3, and then the clock just ran out without anyone else getting a chance to think about it.

But if it was crept up at least to the $6 or more range, it means a few people actually had him on their late game lists and wanted in on the action.

Started for the Diamondbacks today in ST.

Again ... there were a LOT of OF's left lying around as the NL league went into draft mode.  

Markakis, Souza, Chris Taylor, Kiki Hernandez, Bruce, Dom Smith, Desmond, Pence ... all for one or two bucks.If won't shock me if every one of those guys ends up in double digits.

He is risky but for the $6 price Gene set - which was also his price in the CBS NL auction -- I would take him.  I think he goes for more in my auctions.

True enough. The home park edge, which had been between 9-11% for more than a hundred years, has been 5.6% for the last two. Theories?

$28 in CBS, $2 more than Vladdy.

A mistake.

Great stuff!  I never get tired of these stories.  Glavine told another one on the MLB network special about the Braves team of the 90s - at the 11:41 mark of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0pZfwmvNGM

My enthusiasm is not shared. $1 in CBS.

Not taken until the reserve draft in CBS.

I'm entering the CBS prices in the first update (March 5).

As noted earlier, Kole Calhoun went for $4.

Willie went for 20.

Forget it, Jeff.

I am in the same boat as Roll2 in terms of auction set up.  Thanks for the input.  

Let's see ... in 2017 Smith was limited to 120 innings.
In 2018 his season was cut short by an injury requiring surgery, and he logged only 77 innings.
In 2019 a mid-season hip injury took him out for awhile ... when he came back he was good but erratic for 8 starts (3.94 ERA, 49 K in 45 IP - but that included 5 starts with 2 or less ERs, and 1 start with 6 ER in 4+ innings).

Then things started falling apart after about 110 innings - with a 6.91 ERA, 37 K in 41 IP - down the stretch.

For a guy coming off a surgery shortened season the year before, and then having a hip injury (which could have harmed his mechanics the rest of the way) - fatigue makes a lot of sense.

As per home/road - his road ERA in his 10 starts before that horrible last 8 game stretch was 3.76, with 63K in 55 IP.  So if you took WiseGuy's advice about benching him on the road for most of the season, you lost some nice stats.

Officially needs Tommy John surgery.

Cole and Tanaka and pray that the Evil Emperor is not hadaka.

In a league where the auction takes place after the season starts and you can keep, but not acquire at auction, players who don't make Opening Day rosters, I am considering keeping him at 6, regardless of whether he makes the big club or not.  I think he gets twice that back, given the injury risks in front of him in that rotation.  But 10 would make him too rich for my blood. 

I know Alex likes when pitchers throw a Maddux.  Joe Posnanski's incredible top 100 players of all time landed on Greg Maddux today.  There's a lot in it.  But, the best section is this:

OK, let’s get to the legends. I mean, obviously, this is a big reason I loved the guy, a big reason you loved the guy — his entire career overflows with these legendary stories that are particularly his. You tell a legendary story about Ryan and it will involve speed and force. You tell a legendary story about Gibson, and it will involve violence or the threat of it. You tell a legendary story about Koufax, and it will involve a game, surely a World Series game, when he was utterly invincible.

But Maddux legends? They’re a whole other thing.

There is a legend that once Maddux was sitting in the dugout watching the game closely. And then, suddenly, he turned to a teammate sitting next to him and said, “Watch out.” The next pitch was lined foul directly at the teammate’s head, and he ducked out of the way just in time.

There is a legend that in 2006, his Dodgers teammate Brad Penny, who was coming off a game where he got badly roughed up by the Mets, asked Maddux if he would call the pitches for him from the dugout the next time out. Maddux did. The game was against the Cubs. Penny threw seven shutout innings, striking out six and walking nobody.

There is a legend that, while watching José Hernández batting, Maddux noticed a slight shift in the batting stance. “We might have to call an ambulance for their first base coach,” he told a teammate. The next pitch, blam, a line drive smashed into the chest of Dodgers first base coach John Shelby.

There is a legend that once, when asked to intentionally walk a batter, Maddux told manager Bobby Cox, “Why would I do that?” He then explained that he would throw three pitches, and on the third one, he would get the batter to hit a pop-foul to third.

Do I even need to tell you what happened?

There’s a legend that once when he was with the Cubs, Maddux just started screaming at Atlanta’s David Justice for no apparent reason. After Justice struck out, he was enraged. He never forgot it. Later, when they were teammates, Justice asked Maddux why he did that. “Why do you think?” Maddux said. “To get in your head. And it worked.”

There’s a legend — my favorite legend, not least because it’s definitely true — that after he won his 17th Gold Glove, breaking Jim Kaat’s record, he got a congratulatory message from Kaat. But, Kaat pointed out that he still held the record for oldest modern pitcher to ever steal a base. Kaat was 41 in 1980 when he swiped a base against the Pirates.

In July that year, when playing for the Padres against the Braves, Maddux knocked a single off Charlie Morton and then, yep, stole second base. He was 42 years old.

I mean, I have no idea how Maddux isn’t everybody’s favorite pitcher ever.