Using BABS for AL-LABR

Hey, Babe – take a walk on the wild side. (Lou Reed)

Me? A walk on the wild side? Nah. I like to come into my fantasy auctions with the goal of mitigating risk. In the olden days, the Mayberry Plan helped keep tabs on risk. Lately, there have  a ton of useful articles on Ron Shandler’s Broad Assessment Balance Sheet (BABS), a great way to balance skills with risk. By grouping players in similar asset/risk tiers, it also highlights potential bargains for players in the same group. 

Doug Gruber recently broke down the auction approach to BABS, which gave some details for a 15-team mixed auction. I decided to try out some of the principles in the 12-team AL-LABR this year. 

After reading through the BABS details, the obvious question arose: how does it fit in with the concept of a projected positional budget? I generally use a Spread the Risk strategy and create a desired budget for each position. It’s not a hard cap; it’s designed to guide spending appropriately for the depth of the talent pool across the diamond.

Fitting BABS into budget goals

After viewing the distribution of players at each position in RotoLab, here’s the proposed budget:

position	players	total $	$ breakdown
C	2	$16	$15/$1
COR	3	$51	$25/$14/$12
MIF	3	$60	$25/20/15
OF/UT	6	$68	$25/$15/$15/$7/$5/$1
SP	6	$53	$22/$18/$10/$1/$1/$1
RP	3	$12	$10/$1/$1
All	23	$260

But … is this a realistic budget distribution for a BABS auction approach? The answer can be found by looking at each position to see how the players with the best skills and lowest BABS-defined risk are distributed in that pool. RotoLab shows the expected player values are on the Draft page; the asset/risk values are on the BABS page along with average auction value (AAV) from leagues in the database. 

For a 12-team “only” league, the goal is to accumulate 22 assets on offense (9 power, 4 speed, 9 batting effectiveness) with 10 assets for pitching (4 ER, 4 K, 2 Sv) with as many full-timers as possible. There are only seven full-time pitchers – those with over 180 IP projections – but getting two from that group would be great. A risk total of $30 or less will be exceptional, while $30-39 is acceptable.

Here’s the assessment of how BABs fits in to a Spread-the-Risk approach in a 12-team AL-only league.

Positional Breakdown and BABS

Right off the bat, the catcher position makes it clear that the positional budget may be challenging. The top three at the position—Yainer Diaz, Salvador Perez, and Adley Rutschman—all have one or two skills assets in their favor, and minimal (< $1) risk. But each is likely to go well over the $15 budget for a top catcher. The choice was either to bump up that part of the budget (to the detriment of another position) or target the lower-priced second tier of acceptable catchers. Connor Wong, Ryan Jeffers, and Alejandro Kirk have zero or one asset with a risk cost of less than $1.50, and should cost $15 or less (when positional scarcity is accounted for).

Both of the middle infield and corner positions have plentiful targets in the $20-25 range that account for 2-3 assets with minimal risk costs. I should be able to hit the budget goals here while keeping risk costs to a minimum. Jake Burger, Jordan Westburg, Maikel Garcia, Vinnie Pasquantino, and Alex Bregman all offer multiple assets with risk costs of $2 or less and should fall into acceptable price ranges.

While the top of the outfield category is full of multi-asset players, it is also rife with risk costs. Aaron Judge, Julio Rodríguez, Yordan Alvarez, Jarren Duran all have injury costs of $3.00, while Jazz Chisholm Jr. has a risk cost of $5. That’s fine for the Spread the Risk approach, since there are no plans to go over $30 for any OF, and all of those guys should top that mark. The next tier down includes multi-asset players such as Wyatt Langford, Lawrence Butler, Anthony Santander, and Cody Bellinger, each of whom has a risk cost of $2 or less.

Avoiding the highest cost starters helps avoid high risk costs (Garrett Crotchet, $7.25!). The not-quite-top of the starting pitching position is full of skill assets, but some come at a higher risk cost – Max Fried, Gerrit Cole, Grayson Rodriguez, etc, are over $3. This is a position where higher risk is likely to be needed. But the focus will be on names like Framber Valdez, Pablo López, Luis Castillo, Bryce Miller and Tanner Bibee, who have multiple skills and risk costs of less than $1.

Not surprisingly, very few top relief pitchers come with low risk costs. But even the second-tier closers have similar issues. Since this budget avoids spending more than $10 on a closer—and most established closers will go well over that amount—the focus will be on the likes of Carlos Estévez, Lucas Erceg, Jason Foley, or Kenley Jansen, each of whom has less than $1.25 in risk costs. Since saves often come from the free agent pool during the year, I’ll remain vigilant during the weekly FAAB process.

How’d I do? The 2025 Baseball HQ AL-LABR team

Here’s a look at the BaseballHQ AL-LABR team, with assets and risks, taken from Rotolab:

Not noted here are the six reserves: Ryan Bliss, Orelvis Martinez, Joey Loperfido, Alec Marsh, Garrett Whitlock, and Hunter Harvey.

From the figure, it’s cleared that I succeeded in some ways, but fell short in others. The pitching side looks fine. I succeeded in getting two of the eight full-time starters (Valdez, Castillo), with a PT score of 6. I also met or exceeded each of the asset targets.

Unfortunately, I fell short on the hitting side of the ledger. While I exceeded the PT targets, I fell short in the asset classes, particularly in average. So, there’s some work to do for this team to finish at the top of the heap. 

Some closing notes

It’s clear that by taking a BABS approach in a 12-team only league, acceptable targets become scarce in the end-game; it’s possible to have the risk budget balloon without careful consideration. Fifth outfielders, backup catchers, high-skill relief pitchers, lottery-ticket starters – many of these are rife with high risk costs, and can blow the risk budget in your last few picks. I found that for the last few slots, there were few targets with a risk assessment of $2 or less. This resulted in the need to boost the number of acceptable candidates, done by expanding the list to include risk costs of $3 or greater. Many of these guys will be turn-and-burn when the waiver wire opens up, but when tracking costs in-auction, these guys can be risk killers. 

In this auction, my last pitcher was Matt Brash. I decided to take a $1 gamble on an injured high-skills reliever who could produce saves in the right situation. While I will DL him at the first pre-season FAAB opportunity, taking on his $5 risk assessment at the auction boosted the risk budget from $31.75 (close to exceptional) to $36.75 (mid-range of acceptable). Since he won’t be on the team to start the season, I decided this was an acceptable option.

In conclusion, while it would be nice to have a team at the top of the projected standings, the use of BABS succeeded in keeping skills and risks at the forefront of my mind during the auction. It also helped identify potential bargains among players with similar asset classes and risks. Give BABS a whirl at your next auction or draft and see if you agree!

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