Thursday, March 29, 2018

The FGR League Auction Results

We are less than a week from the start of the Masters which is more than just a little arousing so let's kick-off what I plan to be a deluge of writing with a healthy dose of authentic frontier fantasy golf gibberish starting with a fun little game for the whole family . . . of drunks you hang-out with at the golf course.   

Every year since 1997 I have run some variation of a fantasy golf league that involves ten to twelve really cool dudes selecting six players for the season. (If you want more details on how the intricacies of it, click here and please excuse the production quality as it was 2012 and I was just a young fantasy golf writer trying to find his way). The original format was a draft and then it detoured into a ill-conceived salary cap game for a year or two and then it was back to a draft before settling into an auction format for the last two years which is where it will probably stay until the day I wake-up and ask "what in the fuck am I doing with my life?" 


This year's auction was held the week before the Valspar Championship for no particular reason other than that's when I finally got my shit together and found a date that worked for everyone. By the way, big props to the person who invented email which now makes it so much easier to find a date for large group gatherings and also facilitates unlimited follow-up communication when no one writes the date in their fucking calendar. I don't know where we'd be without it.  

The Ravens arrived in 1996.
Get your shit together Carney.
We convened at a Greene Turtle (think Applebee's with slightly authentic local decor as opposed to completely fabricated local decor) where I had reserved a private room so we could really dork it up at full volume. Alas, when we arrived I was told that the room was currently being used by the local chapter of the Ravens fan club so we'd have to wait. In other words, "the room is currently occupied by a bunch of losers so you losers will have to sit tight." 

Eventually the Ravens fan club finished doing whatever a Ravens fan club does and we got rolling. The way this works is that we pick a random order and then go through it nominating players to be auctioned. You get a salary cap of $100 and you need to fill the first four spots on your roster with it so, if you spend $80 on your first player, you can't spend more than $18 on your next player as you need at least $1 per open roster spot. For the last two roster spots, we snake draft per the previously determined order because by then almost all of the best players are gone and you reach the point when middle aged man attention deficit disorder kicks-in and everyone starts getting ornery and losing focus (and by "everyone", I primarily mean me). You'll just have to trust me when I tell you that it's about as much fun as you can have on a Wednesday night outside of Baltimore without bringing heroine injections and threats of divorce into the equation.


After that unnecessarily long preamble, here were our results with analysis to follow:

PLAYER
PRICE
PLAYER
PRICE
Thomas, Justin
$80
Noren, Alex
$17
Johnson, Dustin
$70
Schaufelle, Xander
$14
McIlroy, Rory
$66
Hoffman, Charley
$14
Rahm, Jon
$65
List, Luke
$14
Spieth, Jordan
$65
Kuchar, Matt
$13
Fowler, Rickie
$52
Watson, Bubba
$13
Day, Jason
$45
Leishman, Marc
$11
Fleetwood, Tommy
$44
Bello, Rafa
$10
Rose, Justin
$42
Hadwin, Adam
$10
Mickelson, Phil
$35
Reed, Patrick
$10
Berger, Daniel
$30
Pieters, Thomas
$8
Stenson, Henrik
$30
Woods, Tiger
$8
Matsuyama, Hideki
$25
Woodland, Gary
$6
Koepka, Brooks
$24
Grace, Branden
$5
Finau, Tony
$24
Oosthuizen, Louis
$5
Hatton, Tyrrell
$24
Scott, Adam
$5
Harman, Brian
$22
Simpson, Webb
$2
Sergio, Sergio
$21
Perez, Pat
$2
Cantlay, Patrick
$21
Na, Kevin
$2
Casey, Paul
$20
Vegas, Johnny
$1

Remember that this was done over three weeks ago before Rory re-introduced himself to the golf world and before Bubba confirmed his previous re-introduction to the golf world. Obviously Rory at $66 is now looking like a solid value, Paul Casey at $20 is looking like a good value and Bubba at $13 is looking like you just found a big box of Krugerrands in your grandfather's attic . . . you just need to get them out of the house without waking-up that cranky old bastard (It's ok. I'm just kidding and both of my grandfathers are dead anyway).


Enough with the nerd chatter already. We
want a totally irrelevant and gratuitous
yet tasteful picture . . . thank you.
As for my team, I jumped on DJ really early at $70 and then backed him up with Charley Hoffman ($14), Xander Schauffele ($14) and Webb Simpson ($2). In hindsight (which is where I spend much of my time), that was probably a mistake considering I could've paired Jason Day ($45) or Justin Rose ($42) with a guy like Henrik Stenson ($30), Tony Finau ($24) or Paul Casey ($20) for about the same price I paid for DJ. 

On the other hand, I had committed to walking-out of this thing with either DJ, JT or Jon Rahm and I knew I was going to have to pay to get one of them. Not to mention, from an entertainment standpoint it's hard to top DJ when he's in full effect and just obliterating a golf course on the weekend. Now I just need him to make it to a weekend.      

That somewhat half-hearted justification notwithstanding, if I was going to re-draft based on these prices, here are the three combos I would find most appealing:


1. Jason Day ($45), Henrik Stenson ($30), Bubba Watson ($13) and Tiger Woods ($8);


2. Justin Rose ($42), Sergio Garcia ($21), Paul Casey ($20) and Alex Noren ($17);


3. Dustin Johnson ($70), Bubba Watson ($13), Xander Schauffele ($14) and Webb Simpson ($2).


Of course Option 3 is just my team with Bubba instead of Charley Hoffman but hey, I'm not ready to give-up on my preseason preview rankings where I had DJ ranked 3rd, Schauffele - 9th, Hoffman - 16th and Simpson - 26th. Just don't ask me why I went with Simpson over Kevin Kisner who I had ranked 14th preseason because I don't have much of an answer other than my standard defense of "I'm an idiot." 

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com

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