Fantasy Baseball: The Five Commandments of Auction Drafts, Part One
“All this can be yours for only $45. Give or take.” Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Auction drafts are my favorite. What’s more fun than having a shot at every single player you want on your fantasy baseball team?
Want to have Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera on the same team? Go for it. Want to have zero first round picks and five third round picks? Here’s your chance.
Auction drafts offer an insane amount of freedom in how you construct your roster, and if you’re the type of person who gets off on draft preparation, the prep that goes into an auction can be as mind-bogglingly in-depth and complex as you want it to be.
Three years ago I competed in my first ever auction league and I got trounced, coming in third to last with a top-heavy and injury-ridden squad of stars and scrubs. If there’s one thing that I do well in fantasy baseball, it’s that I learn from my mistakes. Ever since that first beating I have finished in first every time I’ve had the pleasure of participating in an auction.
Last Sunday I sat down at my computer to defend the belt in my 15-team keeper league. Unfortunately, I was playing double-duty on that day: I had to navigate my auction and care for my four-month-old daughter.
The bedlam that ensued was by far my worst auction of all time, one of my worst drafts in a decade, and four hours of sheer stress and misery. By the time I had paid for my last reliever I slammed the laptop closed, changed the baby for the eightieth time, and immediately started making plans to find a babysitter a year from now.
Let’s take a look at the Five Commandments of Auction Drafts and how they pertained to my epic fail.
Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports
COMMANDMENT #1: Do Your Homework
I had previously gone over how to construct your spreadsheets. Make sure these are done to the point where you are comfortable.
As far as assigning dollar values to players, find a source that you trust like FantasyPros.com to use as a starting point and then tweak from there, adding or subtracting bucks based on your own individual research. If you really want to go deep on the math you could use your own projection formula to calculate to the penny exactly how much each player is worth.
If this is your thing I recommend you check out Larry Schechter’s Winning Fantasy Baseball, because he devotes enough time to do it justice. In fact, you should just go and read that whole book.
Spending money in an auction is a zero sum game. Unless somebody screws up and leaves money on the table, there will be exactly $260 spent by each team. I mention this because if you take away value from one position you should be giving it to another, and vice versa. If you are planning on spending squat on closers, distribute that Craig Kimbrel money to your upper tier outfielders, or speedy infielders, or whatever it is that you plan on making a priority.
For players that you are specifically targeting, list on your spreadsheet the breaking point that you just can’t go beyond. For instance, much of my plan focused on grabbing Dustin Pedroia to shore up two important things — my middle infield and my Dustin Pedroia fetish. I had him valued at $27, so I listed my breaking point at $31.
If you’re not specifically targeting a guy, but you still wouldn’t mind having him on your team, list your value and maybe knock it down a few bucks. Don’t be tempted to buy every player that are going at a good “value,” because value is relative. If no one else thinks that a $4 Ryan Howard is enticing, then it could be that you’re just wrong.
Get some guys that you really want, but fill out the rest of your roster with offers you just couldn’t refuse. It’s okay to overpay for a few cornerstone guys, but if you overpay for all of your impact guys, you’ll have a top-heavy team bogged down with risk.
Lastly, if you don’t want a guy, don’t buy him. Either list him for zero dollars, draw a skull and crossbones next to his name, or just plain leave him off of the list. This may sound obvious but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Man, I hate Alfonso Soriano! But five dollars was just too much of a bargain!” Shut up. If you hate fish are you going to buy tuna at the grocery because cans are 10 for a buck? No, because then you’re going to be choking down nasty casseroles for the next month. Do not buy a guy you hate. The whole point of auctions is to only get players you want.
Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports
My Epic Fail:
I make some baller spreadsheets, so I was just fine there. My biggest error, and this could be an entire article by itself, was in not properly adjusting for keeper inflation.
Inflation is a phenomenon that occurs in keeper leagues when guys have breakout years and are then kept for far less than they are worth. For instance, I’m keeping Domonic Brown for $8. I have him valued at $15. That’s seven dollars that’s not going to be spent on Brown and instead spent elsewhere in the league. All of that extra money from all of the keepers is going to go towards the players in the draft, subsequently driving up their value.
I totally dropped the ball on calculating inflation this year, spreading the value evenly throughout the pool and not realizing that almost all of that extra dough would go to the elite players.
My Lesson:
Next year in this league, win or lose, I’m going to be meticulous about calculating inflation. When I do bump up prices, I’m going to maybe give a buck to the common man, but put the majority in the top 30-50 players available.
(Next time . . . Commandment 2: Have a Plan, and Then Have Another Plan)