April FA Bidding

Generally, April free agent bidding is a sucker's play.

The exception is rounding out your roster with players you liked, but who fell through the cracks. This assumes you can add players without cutting anyone and that the cost, in terms of free agent acquistion money is minimal (my expert league has it that you can bid $0 on someone and get him if no one else bids).

Getting a guy based on a few at bats or innings pitched is silly in the context of a 162-game season. Hastiness can cost you guys that come much more cheaply when free agent money gets tighter in the summer.

Worse, this fickleness can nullify a great draft-day gambit. Last year, in my AL-only home league, an owner took Juan Rincon in the supplemental draft but cut him after making a flurry of ultimately meaningless free agent pickups in April. I picked Rincon up off the waiver wire a few weeks later and he became reaped the benefits when he became one of the game's most dominant middle relievers.

As a general rule, look for upside in early-season bidding. If a player has some interesting skills and is getting a chance to utilize them, he's worth a flyer. But if you're just looking to fill a hole with fantasy flotsam, why bother? Change isn't necessarily good.

Getting a good read on a player is very difficult at this juncture of the season because the sample size is impossibly small. When a player catches your eye, track him over a week or two and try to get a look at him in the flesh (assuming you have the means through the Major League Baseball Season Ticket). When you have a sufficient comfort level, the investment is more often worthwhile. If someone beats you to a free agent by making a decision without doing proper due dilligence, he'll be wrong far more often than he's right. END.