Keep an eye out for two more PCL deals.

Big trade today in the PCL:

Slyke (1st place) gets Pujols, Carpenter, and F. Cordero from Godzilla (last place) for Casey Kelly ($10), Jair Jurrjens ($9), and Cameron Maybin ($15).

Feel free to comment, criticize, and bash either of the two owners involved (since it's not me).

Hit his third double in his 36th game? Doesn't seem possible.

we need to free his replacement Mark Hamilton from the Patton dungeons. Hamilton is up.

I did have the time controls set too fast for the first part of the draft. That pace was nutty.

I was expecting people would have more or less the same bid values I did and was shocked: $49 Tulo,$43 Kemp, $38 Halladay, etc.

While everyone likes to bargain hunt, my philosophy is to try and get a few guys who are guaranteed to produce. If you have too many sleepers (or whatever) you can get burned.
I like to spend a good chunk of cash early to lock up guys I like and then wait it out and see who slips through. Hence Polanco at $5, who I maxed out on. I have found myself in situations where I waited too long and wound up paying $36 for Burrell (2004) because he was the only legitimate power guy remaining.
Otherwise, I think Lilly is solid at $12 and then there is that Goldschmidt fellow. Nothing left to do but to play the games.

It's hard to say how any of the bidding went ... it was just so fast ... my guess is that it went $1, $40, $41, $42, $43, ..., $44, ... $45 ... all in about 12 seconds (each dot representing a second of delay).

I will say that I was impressed with the auction tool ... it was easy to learn (via a mock auction/draft) ... and easy to see different views of what was going on and the players still available ... and easy enough to find a player you wanted to nominate.

There was a box to type in a number bid, but I never had time to use it ... all the bidding I did was to click a button which entered a +1 bid ... which a couple of times was not what I intended (ie. the bid was at $10, I wanted to bid $11, but as I was clicking the button, it changed to $12 and that's what got entered ... and I was left hoping someone else would bid $13 :-)).

In every case, the bidding got to a reasonable level very quickly.

We ended up taking breaks about every 45 minutes ... which was about right, I suppose. It felt like I could have used more frequent breaks just to let the tension out ...

The biggest issue was guys losing there connection to the draft room web page ... we'd see a message in the chat pane and Syd would suspend the auction after the bidding on the player was done. Then if that owner wanted to bid on that guy, he'd back him and we'd redo. We only got into a major tangle over this one time ... and I don't think anyone felt bad about any of those incidents.

After a break one time, I could tell from the chat comments that my connection was burping ... panic! But I was still able to chat, called for a time-out ... got out, got back in ... all's well.

A learning experience ... and I can say that I recommend the web site ... pretty amazing software, really.

Except for not letting us do the reserve draft in a snake format ...

Go MOB!

It looks like it was a fascinating five hours. 90% Stage 3 Hell, but the 10 percent (like Wood and Polanco) makes all the difference. How exactly did the auction work? Give us an example of how the bidding went for Pujols.

Syd - THANK-YOU for the *ton* of work you put into getting us ready for last night ... and for making it happen!!! It was very intense ... it was very fun!

I love Wood at 8 and Polanco at 5.
All in all the online draft worked out pretty well, there were a few interruptions but we got it all done in 5 hours.
There was a snafu with the reserve rounds and teams like me at the end of the pick order got screwed.
Otherwise, I think it went greatr. Next year will go even faster.

Here is team GODZILLA:

Doumit 7
R Paulino 1
Pujols 45
J Lopez 12
Blake 4
Furcal 7 (and then I forgot to draft another SS)
Phillips 26
Polanco 5
Bay 12
Ethier 27
Pence 28
Morse 7
Fukudome 1
Diaz 1

Carpenter 21
Bumgarner 14
Lilly 12
Wood 8
McDonald 1
Cordero 14
Lindstrom 5 (What was I thinking?)
Luebke 1
Hensley 1

Reserves:
Mesorcao
Decker
Zito
Melancon
Goldschmidt
Schneider
Brothers
Salas
Flores
Cousins