by Ron Shandler

On a beautiful Friday afternoon in Tampa, Florida, the last place you'd really want to be is holed up in a small conference room for six hours, listening to grown men bid imaginary money on real baseball players. Okay, I do this for a living too, but we all found out long ago that a Rotisserie draft is not a spectator sport. So, what is a casual observer to do?

Shadow draft.

Shadow-drafting is when you sit in at a fantasy auction as a non-participant and attempt to build your own roster of players. You acquire these players by deciding which ones you'd bid an extra $1 for above the final price. In other words, if Pedro Martinez was acquired for $50, and you would have been willing to go $51, then you can have him for that $51 shadow bid.

There are two ways to shadow-draft. The easy way is to just take a set of final draft results and cherry-pick those players you'd want for $1 more. That really doesn't prove anything because timing and draft flow always produce sharp bargains at various times. Anyone can sit back and snap those up in retrospect.

The real challenge is to make your bidding decisions at the time when a typical participant would have to make them. By actually participating in the draft, you are forced to make the hard decisions.

What purpose does this serve?

First, it gives you the opportunity to see if you could have done a better job building a roster, even while paying $1 more for every player. Performance and value are variable, so it becomes an interesting exercise to see whether a team that essentially is $23 overpriced, can contend.

But even more important is that this exercise affords you is the opportunity to better follow the in-draft dynamics. Since you can shadow-draft without being burdened by record-keeping, you can get a better read on runs on players, strategies of the other owners and other out-of-body experiences. These are lessons you can take back to the real drafts in which you participate.

The exercise does have some downside, however, when it comes to realism.

While your "winning bid" will deplete your own budget, your shadow bid does not remove those dollars from the draft pool. If you were actually drafting, the "real" winner on each player would have those dollars still left to spend, which could impact the draft flow at a later time.

Also in this process, we are assuming that your added $1 bid would succeed in buying each of those players. The reality is that any other participant could have decided to continue upping the price, possibly shutting you out.

Still, shadow-drafting can be an educational experience and is far better than sitting around and rooting for Pedro to hit $60. (And once that's over, you still have to figure out what to do for the remaining six hours.)

In LABR

That's why I decided to sit back in the shadows at the LABR American League draft on that beautiful sunny afternoon in Tampa a few weeks back. I was scheduled to participate in the National League the following night, so I figured a little bit of shadow-drafting would get me into playing shape.

I prepped as I would have for any other draft, setting myself up with a highly-targeted group of LIMA-quality batters and pitchers. And then I sat back and followed the festivities.

Two-time defending champion, Michael Brown (Regular guy), tossed out the first name - David Ortiz. Bidding proceeded slowly, as the LABRers got the feel of the room, and Wise Guy Baseball's Gene McCaffrey became the first to spend his money, $12 of it.

Jerry Hairston and Miguel Tejada followed, and the room wondered when the big prize would come out. Pedro Martinez was third out of the gate in 2000, and John Hunt's pre-emptive $50 bid had set the tone for last year's player values. But Pedro was not one of the first three out in 2001.

Billy Koch was #4 this night. Bidding stopped at $30, which many thought at least a few dollars too soon. Perhaps they were holding back...

The bidding on Pedro

MLB Radio's Irwin Zwilling then opened Pedro at $30, and the Red Sox ace sped up to $40... where the bidding stalled. Everyone stopped in stunned silence for what seemed like hours, all eyes on Hunt. John responded.

"$41"

It was not supposed to be like this. Pedro edge up slowly, dollar by dollar, many observers hopefully waiting for Hunt to jump the bid up to $50 and shut things down. He didn't.

When John hesitated, and said "$45," none of us figured it would be over at that point. But the auctioneer announced, "once, twice, gone!" and Pedro once again ended up with the person who many thought was the stud's rightful owner.

After the draft, I asked several of the participants why they let Pedro go for so little. Most responded that they never conceived of being able to land Pedro for their team, so they just wrote it off and assumed that Hunt would wind up with him again. When bidding stalled too low, they became paralyzed, and in the end, turned their preconceptions into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hunt capitalized on it, to the tune of at least $5-10 in savings. One participant suggested that, just maybe, Hunt was playing the room all along. John would probably deny it.

The closer decision

This year, I'm finding that it's difficult to decide how to approach the acquisition of saves. The past three years have seen a near-50% turnover in closers with 30-save potential, making the lofty bids of the mid-1990's no longer prudent. So I've been going into each draft with two plans - one if closers go for at-par dollars or more, another if the room discounts saves.

As LABR-AL entered the second round, Koch and Mariano Rivera had already gone, for $30 and $33, respectively. These were prices about $3-5 below par, I figured, so it might make sense to go after a saves frontliner while the prices were still sluggish.

Derek Lowe came up as player #14, and as bidding closed at $31, I agonized. Should I spend this chunk of change so early? Lots of closers were still out there and it was only the second round. I decided to pull the trigger, rationalizing that I was buying a level of low risk that only a few closers truly possessed. So player agent Bill Moore's $31 acquisition became my $32 buy.

It would turn out to be my biggest mistake of the draft.

The critical 5th round

Forty-eight players came and went, and I still had but my prime closer. In fact, at that point, I was the only team with fewer than two players rostered, although that's not an unusual place for me to be.

Here were the closers that had been bought to that point... Koch, (pick #4, $33), Rivera (#12, $33), Lowe (#14, $31), Yan (#23, $16), Roberto Hernandez (#29, $27) and Percival (#38, $23).

Round 5 started innocuously enough, with Sidney Ponson going for $8 and Jose Mercedes becoming the draft's first $1 acquisition. Then Keith Foulke came out and was purchased for $30. This started a run on closers - seven being bought in the next 12 picks - and with one exception, each was bought for a successively lower price. Following Foulke were Sasaki (#53, $29), Todd Jones (#55, $25), Kohlmeier (#56, $19), Crabtree (#59, $17), Isringhausen (#61, $25) and Wickman (#62, $17).

Most considered Wickman to be potentially the steal of the draft, but a closer look at the rosters revealed what happened. Several teams had opted to go with two closers, and several others were punting saves completely. When Wickman came up, the die had already been cast, and he represented little value for either of the two factions.

Except for me, had I seen it. And had I been willing to abandon my plan and draft two full closers. Of course, a $18 Wickman (my cost) would have been much more valuable than my $32 Derek Lowe. This would have been a no-brainer in a retrospective shadow-draft, but I was playing it straight and stuck to my guns. Damn.

Opener trends

For those of us watching the draft from the sidelines, the question came up as to how often a nominated player ends up on the team of the owner tossing the name out. For some owners, that percentage is near 0% during the first half of the draft, and increasing during later rounds. Following the draft, pick by pick, allows a more accurate view into a question like this.

For instance, follow the names of the players nominated by Player Projections' Bob Stall in the first eight rounds... Rivera, Colon, Wells, Zito, Helling, Mendoza, Febles and Freddy Garcia. Seven of 8 were pitchers intended to flush dollars out onto the table; only Mendoza ($7) ended up on his team. His next eight... Bush, Moyer, Hentgen, Tam, Zimmerman, Venafro, Simas, Trombley. Again, 7 of 8 are pitchers, but Zimmerman, Venafro and Simas were all rostered.

As far as flushing money out, MLB Radio's Irwin Zwilling and Lenny Melnick were among the best. They consistently threw out names that would be among the highest priced in that particular round...

Round Player          R$  Rank 
===== ==============  === ====
1     Martinez,P     $45    1
2     Erstad,D        30    3
3     Hernandez,R     27    5
4     Giambi,Jas      31    1
5     Sasaki,K        27    2
6     Mondesi,R       31    1
7     Dye,J           23    3
8     Justice,D       19    5
9     Weaver,J        17    3

None of these players would end up on the MLB Radio team.

Compare player agent, Bill Moore...

Round Player          R$  Rank 
===== ==============  === ====
1     Hairston,J     $14    11
2     Lowe,D          31     2
3     Valentin,Js     16     9
4     Percival,T      23     7
5     Mercedes,J       1    12
6     Wickman,B       17     6
7     Alomar,S         6    12
8     Fordyce,B       10    11

Moore ended up as the owner of every one of these players except Percival and Wickman.

Plucking them out

In the middle of the Round 5 closer frenzy, I had decided to pick up a $28 Frank Thomas ($29 to me) as my second player. It ended a drought of 43 picks, and with the talent starting to run, I became more active.

At the end of Round 6, I picked up a $15 Joe Randa ($16). At the end of Round 7, I got cooking, buying up Varitek (#83, $11 - my cost), Deshields (#87, $18), Olerud (#90, $15), Higginson (#95, $22) and Sele (#100, $13).

Olerud was a pick I agonized over for a bit. I had a $15 corner spot open, and was actually hoping to grab Vinny Castilla for $10 or less, thus saving some money for another area. But when the bidding on Olerud stopped at $14, I thought, "do I want a low risk player for $15 - a few bucks under value - or a higher risk player for $10?"

I opted to pull the trigger on Olerud. It was a sound decision that even had a positive outcome. Twenty-two players later, Castilla went for $14.

After a brief break, I grabbed Clayton (#109, $11) and Torii Hunter (#110, $15) back-to-back. I sat out another round and then grabbed Cox (#125, $9), Lawton (#127, $24), Mecir (#134, $11) and Piatt (#136, $8). Fourteen players rostered, nine to go.

The second half

It was time to sit back for awhile and let some of the dollars catch up. It was tough to watch some great bargains pass by, but the only way to maintain control during the critical end game is to have the money. So Tino Martinez ($8), Troy O'Leary ($6) and Steve Karsay ($6) went elsewhere. But that was okay. During this third quarter of the draft, the market was also beginning to correct itself from the earlier underspending. When I saw buys like Jeff Tam ($7), Jeff Zimmerman ($5) and Blake Stein ($6), I knew that sitting back was probably the prudent move.

Over 50 players came and went before my next buy. After Dee Brown (Round 16, Player #188) went for $10 - the draft's final double-digit salary - I decided to purchase Scott Hatteberg, who had gone for $4.

The end game

Over 30 players would pass again, and we were into the end-game. I had eight slots to fill, and $21 to spend. Normally, this might be too much left over and would indicate that I had sat on my bankroll too long. But in a shadow draft, the only $1 players are those that fall to the reserve round, so if I wanted anyone of value, I'd have to spend at least $2.

My end-gamers were Jason Tyner (#224, $2 - my cost), Chris Holt (#231, $3), Mike Stanton (#244, $2), Bryan Rekar (#252, $2), Lou Pote (#256, $3), Jay Canizaro (#260, $2)... and then I was stuck. I had two pitching slots left to fill, and the final pitchers to come out - Sirotka, Eldred, Guzman and Bradford - were not names I wanted on my roster. So I scanned the names that would be available in the reserve round and picked out my two final arms for $1 apiece - Cory Lidle and Joe Mays. And I wrapped it up with $5 left on the table.

Is draft control overrated?

It would appear that the shadow-drafter is handicapped by having to spend those 23 extra dollars, which have no value. But those are draft dollars, which are based purely on performance speculation. In-season variability could turn that $23 into $15, or $10, or $5, which then becomes irrelevant. Of course, that $23 could turn into $30 or $40 as well.

Still, given the luxury of an objective stance as an outsider, I think that the amount of record-keeping and stress removed from the process could be an aid to assembling a better team, even at the elevated cost. Though I was not able to take advantage of it, I was able to watch the Round 5 run on relievers develop. I was also able to better see how Stall and Zwilling were attempting to control the draft in their own respective ways. These are things I probably would have missed drafting normally.

This might lend credence to the philosophy that draft prep is overrated. If you spend more time following the economic ebbs and flows, and grabbing the best-priced players available, perhaps it doesn't matter about elaborate planning, budgeting and record-keeping. As long as you know the players - and the difference between $20 of value and $5 of value - you can let market forces take control.

Some may perceive this as a bad thing; we'd like to think that we have some control over our own destinies. But an argument could be made that individual owners have very little control over the draft anyway. In the case above showing the draft openers of Zwilling versus Moore, Irwin flushed out $233 in the first eight rounds to Bill's $118. Did that $115 variance make a difference? That $115 represented less than 4% of the available draft dollars, and would have come out eventually anyway. The timing of those expenditures may have shifted the flow ever so slightly, but there's no evidence that Irwin - or anyone - would have been able to take advantage of it. Or even recognize it.

In the NL

My National League real team is available for public viewing in a variety of lush garden spots on the web, as well as in this week's Baseball Weekly. I've tossed out some comments in the Advisor Forums, here and on some other message boards. Essentially, it was a good LIMA draft, challenged somewhat by a large global shift in offensive investments. I made one critical error - not going and exra buck or two on Jeromy Burnitz or Moises Alou, and settling for Benny Agbayani - and thereby leaving myself with $11 unspent. But if Scott Strickland finds himself as a closer somewhere soon, this team will be right in the thick of it.

Coincidentally, HQ's bullpen columnist, Doug Dennis, participated in the LABR-AL draft, and - surprise, surprise - shadow-drafted in the NL. His team...

CA  Pratt        $3 
CA  LoDuca       $2 
1B  Bagwell     $35 
3B  A.Ramirez   $12 
CO  Durazo      $12 
2B  Alfonzo     $28 
SS  Larkin      $19 
MI  Lugo        $15 
OF  Griffey     $35 
OF  A.Brown     $13 
OF  Grissom      $2 
OF  D.White      $2 
OF  Coleman      $1 
UT  J.Hernandez  $4

P  L.Hernandez  $10 
P  C.Smith       $9 
P  Ritchie       $8 
P  W.Williams    $8 
P  Rusch        $11 
P  Person        $6 
P  Cordova       $2 
P  J.Christ'nsen $1 
P  K.Walker      $1 
P  Mantei       $21

Interesting group. It includes some players he would have aced me out of as well as a handful that I would have killed to own myself - in retrospect.

Doug then took it one step further and drafted six reserve players - after all 13 teams had filled their own reserve squads... M.Myers, Rain, F.Heredia, Service, Reith, Thurman. These were players #377-382. Just goes to show how much depth of potential talent is out there if you look hard enough.