Additional Analysis

Does FAAB Spending Matter?

Not much.

In Whiskey League, playoff teams spend about the same amount of FAAB as teams that miss.

Playoff Teams vs. Missed Playoffs

About the same

Playoff teams spent slightly less FAAB than teams that missed.

7.6% less

Measured as Share of League FAAB — a team's spend as a % of the whole league's spend that season — the same standardized method used for the cross-league comparison on KAW's analysis page. The point isn't that spending hurts; it's that there's essentially no positive playoff-spending gap in this league at all.

Spend Terciles

Splitting Whiskey League teams into thirds by how much of the league's waiver market they took up:

Spend Tercile	Win %	Playoffs
Low n=28	47.5%	50%
Middle n=28	52.4%	53.6%
High n=28	50.1%	46.4%

Unlike KAW, Whiskey League doesn't show a clear penalty for underspending — the three spend groups finish fairly close together, and the High group doesn't outperform the others. There's no useful spend-tier pattern here, and that absence is itself the finding.

How does this compare with KAW?

KAW's real-money seasons show a much stronger spending gap between playoff and non-playoff teams.

See the KAW cash-vs-virtual FAAB analysis →

Draft Position Doesn't Predict Spending

Later draft picks don't appear to compensate with heavier waiver spending.

Avg. % of Budget Spent

Early

49.4%

Middle

50.6%

Late

46.3%

Whiskey League, average regular-season spend by draft bucket.

There's essentially no relationship between draft slot and FAAB spending.

More detail →

This league's waiver market is quieter than KAW's, whether that comes down to real money on the line, league culture, or pickup rules is impossible to separate from this data alone. The broader comparison — including claim volume and the three managers who play in both leagues — lives on KAW's FAAB analysis page.

Methodology & Caveats

This is observational league history, not a randomized experiment. Everything here is a correlation, not a causal claim.

Every figure on this page is regular-season FAAB spend only — playoff-phase spending is excluded throughout.

This league's budget hasn't stayed constant — it went from $1,000 (2019–2020) to $400 (2021 on). Share of League FAAB (a team's spend as a % of the whole league's spend that season) is used for the playoff-vs-missed comparison specifically because it doesn't depend on budget size, so it stays comparable across that change.

Draft slot has essentially no relationship with FAAB spending in Whiskey League.

KAW's own FAAB history spans three eras — real money with no cap (2013–2017), a virtual budget (2018–2020), and real money with a $400 cap (2021–present) — which is what makes its cash-vs-virtual comparison possible. See KAW's FAAB analysis and All-Time pages for that detail; it's not reproduced here since this page is about Whiskey League specifically.

Spending can be reactive — injuries, a poor draft, or a weak roster can all drive more waiver activity on their own, independent of any effect spending has on outcomes.