Fantasy Baseball: The Five Commandments of Auction Drafts, Pt. 4
Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
This week we’ve been reviewing the most important concepts to keep in mind during a fantasy baseball auction draft — and how caring for my infant daughter during a draft led to me disobeying every single one of them. And boy did I pay a steep price for it.
In case you missed all the fun we’ve had so far, here are the previous installments:
Commandment #1: Do Your Homework
Commandment #2: Have a Plan, and Then Have Another Plan
Commandment #3: Respect the Nomination Process
and now…
Commandment #4: Exercise Cautious Caution
Everyone starts with $260 and your goal should be to walk out of the auction with at least $300 in player value. Naturally you should want a core of star players—they’re all but guaranteed to put up excellent numbers in addition to being fun to root for — but you’re not going to get much in the way of profit in these elite players. Your dependable profit is going to come from the middle tier of $10-19 players and your biggest percentage profit will emerge from your $1-3 lottery tickets. For this reason I prefer to have the majority of my star players fall around the $22 mark.
According to BaseballHQ.com the most valuable fantasy asset in 2013 was Mike Trout with a value of $47. This means if you are dropping over $50 on him, then he needs to be even better than he was last year just to break even. And if, God forbid, Trout gets hurt, then you’ve just flushed 20 percent of your payroll down the toilet. Nothing can submarine a season faster than freak injuries and/or underachievers. By spreading your money evenly throughout your roster, you’re taking much of the power out of Luck, and putting it into Skill. If you’re confident in your fantasy baseball prowess, then this is the method you should be choosing.
The only potential pitfall with frugality in an auction — and I found this out the hard way — is the same with frugality in real life: you should spend it eventually because you can’t take it with you. This seems like the most obvious of advice, and every time I had heard it in the past I laughed. “You’re telling me to spend all of my money, money that disappears once the draft is over? Next you’re going to tell me that Contents May Be Hot.” You laugh, but I can now say, shamefully, that I have done it.
Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
My Epic Fail:
I left six dollars on the table of my failed draft and I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt, it is the worst feeling I’ve ever had in fantasy baseball.
It’s worse than one of your stars going down with an injury because you can’t point the finger at Lady Luck. Your team is worse than it should be and it’s 100 percent your own damn fault — unless you’re taking care of a baby, in which case it’s likely 80 percent the baby’s fault (but 100 percent your fault that you’re taking care of a baby).
Be cautious with your caution, otherwise you’ll end up like me. With a $254 team.
I’ve mentioned in each of the previous installments that I was distracted by constantly having to fix another bottle, change another diaper, or to just lavish attention on my infant daughter who gets very annoyed if you spend more than 30 seconds paying attention to anything other than her.
Every time bidding passed $30 on a player I immediately stopped paying attention and used the rest of that player’s bidding time to do something baby-related. At one point she passed out mid-bottle and I took advantage of that moment to really assess the remaining player pool. I noticed that only about 10 players were left until my values dipped into single digits.
I had $119 to spend.
I realized at that point that I was screwed. I immediately had to build a new plan from scratch. I dropped a combined $45 on Ben Zobrist and Martin Prado’s positional flexibility, allowing me to throw money at almost any player of value regardless of how much I actually liked him. Those players ended up being Torii Hunter ($9), Matt Moore ($11), Alejandro De Aza ($8), and Josh Reddick ($5). These are not terrible buys, but they’re not guys I was thrilled to have. I punted value left and right, even going to $8 on Scott Kazmir, just to get a player I was happy to get. I was way too cautious and I eventually paid the price.
My Lessons:
- Too much caution is reckless behavior. (Put that in a fortune cookie!)
- At some point you may have to go over your values or be left with too much money and not enough players to spend it on. If you’re going to overpay for a player make sure it’s a player you actually want.
» Next time… Commandment #5: Pay Attention!