This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
Since last week's AL LABR recap was so popular, I'm going to go ahead and break down the NL one in a similar fashion with a few extra wrinkles. The draft dynamics part of last week's piece still applies here, but it is a little more extreme in the NL for a couple of reasons. First off – there is the Doug Dennis factor. I don't believe Dennis has ever spent double digits on any pitcher in the history of this draft, and a 230/30 split is the norm there so that impacts how hitters will go. Derek Carty is essentially assured of owning Clayton Kershaw, and the entire room knows it. It comes down to a game of chicken and on one of the recent DVR/Zola podcasts, DVR talked about pushing Kershaw to $44 to make Carty pay $45. DVR did push Kershaw up from the initial bid of $40, but stopped at $43 and Carty said he went as high as he would have gone at $44. True to form, Dennis spent the fewest percentage of his dollars on pitching while Carty's acquisition of Kershaw essentially assured him of being on the high end of
Since last week's AL LABR recap was so popular, I'm going to go ahead and break down the NL one in a similar fashion with a few extra wrinkles. The draft dynamics part of last week's piece still applies here, but it is a little more extreme in the NL for a couple of reasons. First off – there is the Doug Dennis factor. I don't believe Dennis has ever spent double digits on any pitcher in the history of this draft, and a 230/30 split is the norm there so that impacts how hitters will go. Derek Carty is essentially assured of owning Clayton Kershaw, and the entire room knows it. It comes down to a game of chicken and on one of the recent DVR/Zola podcasts, DVR talked about pushing Kershaw to $44 to make Carty pay $45. DVR did push Kershaw up from the initial bid of $40, but stopped at $43 and Carty said he went as high as he would have gone at $44. True to form, Dennis spent the fewest percentage of his dollars on pitching while Carty's acquisition of Kershaw essentially assured him of being on the high end of the group:
| TEAM | PITCHING | PERCENT |
| Dennis | 30 | 12 |
| Karabell | 60 | 23 |
| Colton/Wolf | 63 | 24 |
| Melnick | 67 | 26 |
| Radomski | 72 | 28 |
| Gardner | 77 | 30 |
| DVR | 77 | 30 |
| Walton | 78 | 30 |
| Del Don | 83 | 32 |
| Ambrosius/Childs | 85 | 33 |
| Moyer | 95 | 37 |
| Carty | 98 | 38 |
| Overall | 885 | 28 |
When you factor in Dennis's heavy hitting approach as well as Karabell and Colton/Wolf going heavy on hitting, more dollars are going to hitting. The AL LABR auction had an overall split of 69/31 with six teams outside of the traditional 70/30 split (with a+/- 3 fudge factor). In this NL auction, we end up with the same number of six, but with $91 fewer dollars spent on pitching. Now, where did those dollars go?
We looked at the speed market in the AL last week and discussed how much deeper that is in the senior circuit. Our Rotowire projections show 21 players with at least 20 steals this season in the National League and 20 in the American League. That one steal is nothing, but in the American League, only five players are projected for more than 30 steals and only one, Jarrod Dyson, is projected for 40. Our projections show six players for at least 40 steals so there is more top-end speed there. Here is how the speed went in the LABR draft compared to the aforementioned CBS auction a month earlier:
| PLAYER | STEALS | LABR | CBS |
| Billy Hamilton | 63 | 25 | 27 |
| Dee Gordon | 54 | 24 | 29 |
| Jonathan Villar | 48 | 29 | 27 |
| Trea Turner | 45 | 34 | 36 |
| Starling Marte | 40 | 29 | 27 |
| Jose Peraza | 40 | 22 | 18 |
| Travis Jankowski | 34 | 13 | 10 |
| A.J. Pollock | 29 | 27 | 26 |
| Keon Broxton | 28 | 17 | 17 |
| Charlie Blackmon | 27 | 30 | 31 |
| Manuel Margot | 24 | 15 | 18 |
| Eduardo Nunez | 24 | 20 | 20 |
| Paul Goldschmidt | 23 | 38 | 39 |
| Hernan Perez | 23 | 10 | 13 |
| Gregory Polanco | 23 | 28 | 27 |
| Orlando Arcia | 22 | 13 | 12 |
| Wil Myers | 22 | 27 | 25 |
| Odubel Herrera | 21 | 20 | 22 |
| Chris Owings | 21 | 10 | 9 |
| Jose Reyes | 21 | 14 | 10 |
| Ender Inciarte | 20 | 18 | 15 |
The LABR folks spent five fewer dollars on the same player pool, but the overall prices were mostly in line with one another outside of a few outliers. What is noticeable is that, unlike the American League, single-digit 20-steal guys were not there. The fact there is more speed in the National League did not necessarily discount anyone because the group of speed is more spread out there with several high-end steals totals.
The power department played out in much the same way. Here, both LABR and CBS spent $599 on the hitters we project to hit at least 25 home runs and only Braun's price was over a $3 difference:
| PLAYER | HR | LABR | CBS |
| Nolan Arenado | 42 | 38 | 41 |
| Kris Bryant | 37 | 37 | 37 |
| Giancarlo Stanton | 34 | 27 | 27 |
| Anthony Rizzo | 33 | 33 | 35 |
| Trevor Story | 33 | 26 | 25 |
| Bryce Harper | 32 | 35 | 35 |
| Yoenis Cespedes | 31 | 27 | 26 |
| Adam Duvall | 30 | 15 | 17 |
| Carlos Gonzalez | 30 | 27 | 26 |
| Matt Kemp | 30 | 25 | 22 |
| Freddie Freeman | 29 | 29 | 28 |
| Jay Bruce | 28 | 16 | 16 |
| Joc Pederson | 28 | 19 | 19 |
| Joey Votto | 28 | 29 | 31 |
| Ryan Braun | 27 | 31 | 27 |
| Paul Goldschmidt | 27 | 38 | 39 |
| Curtis Granderson | 27 | 13 | 13 |
| Kyle Schwarber | 26 | 21 | 22 |
| Matt Carpenter | 25 | 25 | 23 |
| Jedd Gyorko | 25 | 13 | 15 |
| Andrew McCutchen | 25 | 25 | 25 |
| Corey Seager | 25 | 30 | 31 |
| Yasmany Tomas | 25 | 20 | 19 |
There was the shiny new toy factor in the NL LABR auction as well. The new toys on the offensive side were names such as: Eric Thames, Manny Margot, Lewis Brinson, Cody Bellinger, J.P. Crawford, Jesse Winker, Roman Quinn and Tom Murphy. Much like the American League exercise, let's take a look at what was spent on these guys and who was taken shortly before or any time thereafter:
| PLAYER | $ | OTHER1 | $ | OTHER2 | $ | OTHER3 | $ |
| Eric Thames | 22 | Brandon Belt | 22 | Maikel Franco | 22 | Justin Turner | 22 |
| Manny Margot | 15 | Brandon Drury | 14 | Jason Heyward | 12 | Dexter Fowler | 17 |
| Lewis Brinson | 3 | Franklin Gutierrez | 1 | Desmond Jennings | 1 | Angel Pagan | 1 |
| Jesse Winker | 2 | Franklin Gutierrez | 1 | Desmond Jennings | 1 | Tommy Pham | 1 |
| Roman Quinn | 4 | Trayce Thompson | 2 | Desmond Jennings | 1 | Angel Pagan | 1 |
| Tom Murphy | 10 | Francisco Cervelli | 8 | Cameron Rupp | 9 | Travis d'Arnaud | 8 |
Bellinger and Crawford were the last players taken at their respective positions and were taken extremely late, so they were left off the chart. Thames is the big one as his projections for power and speed earned him a very high $22 and on par with three known quantities at the corner in Belt, Franco and Turner. That trio all went after the money was spent on Thames, who was the 37th player posted for nomination and there was clearly not any positional scarcity involved. If you are paying for that price, you are firmly invested into the highest probability of his outcomes rather than the safe zone in the middle.
Manny Margot was the 102nd player put up for bid and one of the last true leadoff guys with speed and runs potential. If the "P" word scares you, track records were available later and I included Fowler because his strong track record for leading off, scoring runs and stealing some bases only cost an extra two dollars. Tom Murphy had the Colorado Catcher Inflation (CCI – trademarking) factor in play when some experience and more power and/or dead cat bounce was in play. As it were, Murphy is not even yet assured much of the playing time in Colorado.
The pitching side of the ledger is where things got interesting. We knew fewer dollars would be spent there because of Doug Dennis, but that unstable closer market came very cheaply. Whereas the American League saw several dollars go to closers, the same could not be said for the National League.
| TEAM | CLOSER | $ | SETUP | $ |
| ARI | Rodney | 5 | ND | 0 |
| ATL | Johnson | 9 | Vizcaino | 1 |
| CHC | Davis | 15 | Rondon | 2 |
| CIN | Iglesias | 10 | Lorenzen | 3 |
| COL | Ottavino | 7 | Holland | 2 |
| LAD | Jansen | 22 | ND | 0 |
| MIA | Ramos | 11 | Barraclough | 5 |
| MIL | Feliz | 8 | Knebel | 2 |
| NYM | Familia | 11 | Reed | 4 |
| PHI | Neris | 4 | Gomez | 2 |
| PIT | Watson | 11 | Nicasio | 2 |
| SD | Maurer | 7 | Hand | 2 |
| SF | Melancon | 17 | Strickland | 1 |
| STL | Oh | 16 | Rosenthal | 1 |
| WSH | Kelley | 10 | Treinen | 2 |
It is somewhat humorous that nobody wanted to spend money to roster Rodney while they also were not even willing to spend one dollar speculating on his backup as he was the only Arizona reliever rostered. Jansen was deservedly the only closer to break the $20 barrier, but Oh and Melancon were the only other two to eclipse the $15 barrier. Johnson came rather cheaply given the lack of depth at closer and Familia's pending suspension also brought his costs down. The room just did not spend on saves nor did they really go in on the setup men outside of Kyle Barraclough's insane strikeout rate.
The starting pitchers were mostly balanced, but there were 11 pitchers that cost at least $20 in the auction. When you are spending that total on a pitcher in a single-league format, that is a SP1 or a high SP2 for some teams. Nine teams purchased at least one of these guys while one, Derek Carty, rostered two of them. Doug Dennis predictably stayed out of this as did Brian Walton. Carty spent $64 to get Kershaw and Rich Hill as he continues to go after Dodger pitchers who get to throw to one of the best framers in the game, Yasmani Grandal.
| PICK | PLAYER | $ | OWNER |
| 1.1 | Clayton Kershaw | 44 | Derek Carty |
| 3.1 | Noah Syndergaard | 31 | Wolf/Colton |
| 3.9 | Madison Bumgarner | 30 | Ambrosius/Childs |
| 1.10 | Max Scherzer | 28 | Steve Gardner |
| 4.2 | Jon Lester | 24 | Bob Radomski |
| 4.12 | Carlos Martinez | 24 | Lenny Melnick |
| 4.4 | Jake Arrieta | 23 | Steve Moyer |
| 5.8 | Stephen Strasburg | 23 | Dalton Del Don |
| 4.9 | Johnny Cueto | 22 | Derek Van Riper |
| 5.1 | Rich Hill | 20 | Derek Carty |
| 6.9 | Jacob deGrom | 20 | Eric Karabell |
The room bought the three aces and Gardner could have a bargain in Scherzer if the finger issue clears up here in short order. A healthy Scherzer goes $35 so a 20 percent discount for the tenth overall player in the auction is a nice deal. In all, 27 starting pitchers went for at least $10 while another 42 went for single digits. Some of the more intriguing single-digit buys include: Robbie Ray ($9), Ivan Nova ($9), Taijuan Walker ($9), Vince Velasquez ($8), Tyler Anderson ($3) and Brandon Finnegan ($3).
The depth in the National League pool was also visible in the reserve rounds as several players that I thought would be end-game material in the auction fell to the reserves. Such names include Derek Dietrich in a utility role in Miami, Jake Barrett to speculate on saves in Arizona, Eddie Butler being rebuilt by Chris Bosio in Chicago, Brett Cecil in a high-leverage relief role in St. Louis, Felipe Rivero's nastiness in Pittsburgh pen or Nick Kingham in the Pittsburgh rotation.
