.50 Players

How many .50 players do you think your teams average in an 80 million dollar league? I noticed when I first started playing here years ago many (especially veteran) GMs would have sometimes 5 or 6 (.50) players on their rosters. I am seeing less and less of that. Has the pricing on the bottom of the scale changed or have GMs figured out it usually pays to have slightly more expensive backups who can contribute somewhere? Having 3.00 million worth of guys (six .50 backups) who are almost completely worthless is more of a waste of money than paying a bit more for backups. Just curious. Thanks in advance for any replies....

I usually have 1 or 2 .50 guys on my bench. My latest team has none. I will usually also have 1 .50 pitcher.
I kind of think the .60 to .70 range is the sweet spot for a useful bench player. Of course, if you have a lot of high injury regulars, you may want to spend a little higher on the bench. I have Bloomquist (.99) for example on one team

Seems every season the cost of Def and OBP goes up, pricing what may have been a .50 player up to .6 or .7 mil. Back in the days there were always 8-15 guys who played both 2B and SS with at least a 2 at one and a 3 at the other. Not as much at .50 anymore.

saw .50 mcgwire hit 45 hrs...1986 set

Seems every season the cost of Def and OBP goes up, pricing what may have been a .50 player up to .6 or .7 mil. Back in the days there were always 8-15 guys who played both 2B and SS with at least a 2 at one and a 3 at the other. Not as much at .50 anymore.

Good point. It begs the question has my tolerance of .50 guys gone down, or has the overall quality of the .50 player gone down?

Seems every season the cost of Def and OBP goes up, pricing what may have been a .50 player up to .6 or .7 mil. Back in the days there were always 8-15 guys who played both 2B and SS with at least a 2 at one and a 3 at the other. Not as much at .50 anymore.

Good point. It begs the question has my tolerance of .50 guys gone down, or has the overall quality of the .50 player gone down?

a bit of both. At the beginning of the online game the prices were.... well pretty bad tbh. I mean I loved the 02 and 03 sets (would still put $$ in them if they brought them back), but pricing really started to stabilize around the 06/07 sets. If anyone was around during the 01 set, you know that was just HORRIBLY priced. But I'm veering off, back then, there were not a lot of decent .50 guys either, mostly due to bad pricing. I would pretty much always have 3 rated (sometimes worse) backups at Middle infield/CF.

As pricing stabilized, again this just could be a process of those sets, I was always able to find some guys with decent D and cheap. Maybe it's the players that have changed, but I always find myself with guys costing more than .50 (with 2 notable exceptions this year).

In a lot of previous seasons, I could always find a couple of under 1 mil guys who would do wonders. 2012 Fontenot, 2007 Estrada, 2008 Alou (cheating he was 1.1 mil), 2009 Jakubauskas, I could go on. But last 2 season, nothing short of platoon options around 1 mil.

Again, this just could be that offense has been trending down in the MLB for years, and when pricing they price from the top down. Hence less offense overall, makes those with even a little offense more expensive. Ipso factso (however that is spelled) pricing goes up for all hitters, except the real dredges.

You guys are getting right at the heart of what I was trying to figure out. I think the pricing has changed a little bit...

What geekor said. There are no more bargains like we used to have in the past.

But also, I think coaches are less tolerant in having very bad players eating up innings/at-bats. Actually, it seems to me the opposite. I don't have much experience since I came back, but I see more and more players at around 1M being used as replacement players with no other role than to replace an injured player---which is, it seems to me, too costly.

But the lack of talent among 0.5M players is more obvious than in the past. When I look at this year's set of 0.5M players, I see only two players whose values are worth over 0.5M if they play everyday--both as dh only: Suarez and Quentin.

There are a few other players who may have positive values as replacement players or if they play specific roles:

Corey Hart as back-up at first base;
Schafer and Florimont as pinch runner/defensive replacement--but then only if you can limit their number of at-bats to a minimum;
L.Garcia is a superb pinch-runner but his bat is so horrible that he is useful only if you limit his at-bats at litterally zero. Considering that he can replace at almost all positions, I would probably pass on him, I don't have enough trust in Hal's coaching.

Infante and Upton can have productive at-bats and they don't hurt too much if they're called up to replace someone in defense.
Jeter and Cody Ross could be useful behind players with minimum injury risk and in leagues with no dh.

I would probably say that all the other 0.5M will have negative value (value below the baseline set at 0$) if they play at all, but they could still be useful (not having them could cost your team more). I think for example of Punto or Tony Gwynn who have good defensive numbers

The only .50 from 2014 I have on a roster in a regular 12/$80M league is Tony Campana. LF 2 e3, CF 3e3, Steal B, 1-17 running. After 150 games: Struck out in his one AB, 3 stolen bases, 4 runs. 1 put-out in the field. Teammates say he talks about his Ohio upbringing a lot in the Strat clubhouse.

Otherwise, I noticed the only .50's I have on a roster are backup catchers.

I'd add Schafer to the list as a backup CF