Auction Draft in Progress - Keeper League (need help)

[BCGrindrod]

Here's the deal;

16 Teams
Auction Draft
Head To Head
We get to keep a maximum of [b]5 players each year[/b]

Pujols (only 25 years old) is already at $51

In such a league, do I go higher in order to acquire him or should I simply look elsewhere for a franchise player to build around?

M. Cabrera (only 23 years old) at $35...

A steal in this league or did I jump too much on the Miguel Cabrera bandwagon?

Any suggestions is appreciated.

[chris8]

It would be helpful to know how much you have to spend in total.

Assuming it's the usual $260, then let someone else spend over $50 for Pujols, good as he is.

I also think $35 is too much for Miggy.

[AcidRock23]

$52 seems pretty high for Pujols, given the questions about his foot this year. That'd be 1/5 of your budget for a guy, perhaps the best hitter currently playing the game of course, but nonetheless a guy who 1) opted out of surgery to fix the problem 2) said "if it feels like it did last year, I'll have to take some time off this year". Plus, for keeper, you have to anticipate that he'd be getting the operation(s) this off season so then you may have some recovery time. PErhaps no big deal but is it worth such a huge chunk of your budge? He is a great player and all that but MCab is a reasonable alternative, who can add power/ rbi/ avg at a bit lower levels for a lower price. I'd probably go for somebody else at this juncture. The other thing about MCab's younger age is that he may not have peaked yet and he may be able to push himself up to the next level, in which case he'd be a bargain!

You can either bite the bullet and hope you can grab enough scraps to hold a team together after Pujols eats your budget, OR you can play it conservative and get MCab and let someone else deal w/ plantar fascitis status reports. I'd probably say conservative would be the best thing w/ something like that but, fwiw, I've never had the opportunity to do an auction league either so I may be overly anxious re the prospect of blowing one's money so early. I avoid injured players whenever possible though...

[BCGrindrod]

Thanks for your input gentlemen. Much appreciated.

I may have done the initial bid on Pujols but I'll let the other guy deal with his $51 contract. From a $260 cap, that is indeed a big chunk and I suppose the waiver wire/free agency will be his friend all summer long. That is, if he has the budget for it since free agents will be a $1.00 and a player who is under waivers still has whatever contract that he was originally signed up with.

Gotta admit, Tex looks pretty good at $30!

But I still have an ace up my sleeve if these guys are bent on ponying up the price of these 1B mashers.