HERE IT IS
I’ve always wanted to make the prices this way. First write the profile, then set a price. Then scroll through the list and make adjustments.
With the print magazine deadline in early December, there just wasn’t time to work that way, but this no less rigorous but longer schedule let me give it a try.
Are these prices better? It’s too soon to tell, but here’s the Top 25:
I’ll let you be the judge. Feel free to comment. Remember that the context is 24-team mixed 5x5 using batting average instead of on-base percentage because we haven’t moved enough folks yet.
These are the guys I’m high on, both deservedly so (Gerit Cole, Spencer Strider) and somewhat adventuresomely (Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Bobby Miller).
Photo: Boomer-44
I’ll be back on Monday with the hitters.
Subscribers can access the full list of 235 pitchers with an aggregate value of about $1860. That’s a little light, 30 percent of the budget, but I’ll be adding some dollars, I’m sure, after I finish the hitters and add in the projections. For now, if you like a guy more than me feel free to add a buck or two and it won’t mess up the balance.
Plus I like to go light on the cheapest pitchers. The reason they’re so cheap is because no one thinks they’re a sure thing to do anything, but some do. If you can’t know which of a random group is going to surprise,, you get more bang for your buck if you go for the cheapest ones.
I make the prices based on what the player did last year, how the market priced the player last year, and my estimation of whether he’ll do more, less, or the same this year.
Prices are most useful as a guide during your auctions, and for ranking players for drafts. Let’s say you decide that Gerrit Cole is worth, say, $34. On your auction day, if the auction slows down before it reaches $34, if you need an ace pitcher you can feel comfortable bidding.
And if the bidding blows past the $34, as it might because this year’s group of aces has lots of talent but also many question marks, you know that every dollar spent more than $34 is money that won’t be spent on other players. If enough players go above your prices you can be sure there will be some bargains later.
The prices below are my best first draft for 2024 for the pitching field. (First-draft hitters’s prices will come on Tuesday, the 9th.)
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