Now that we are through the series looking at the latest fantasy baseball ADP rankings, it is time to start looking at more strategy as it relates to fantasy baseball snake drafts and auctions. Auction formats have been growing over the last 10 years or so in popularity as it gives owners a better chance to roster players they are interested in rather than snake drafts where depending on what slot you have for the draft you are going to be blocked from acquiring certain players because they are gone before your pick. Here is a closer look at some of the things that you are going to want to be aware of as it relates to auction leagues to give you the best chance of winning.

Fantasy Baseball Auction Dollar Values:

One of the hardest things that people will struggle with when they first start playing in auction leagues is determining dollar values for the players. Luckily readers of this site have a solution to that because they can get mixed, AL and NL only league dollars values in the 2011 FBT Fantasy Baseball Draft Guide.

What you don’t want to do is head into an auction using values from a magazine. By that time, the prices are out of date and the league format for what they are basing their dollar values on is likely not the format that you are using for your league. Also, most magazines will not have dollar values that match up to the player pool. For example, in a 10 team league with 9 pitchers per team, you will need 90 players with a dollar value assigned to them and in most cases the magazine will have 70 players with dollar values or 100 players with dollar values which don’t equate to their own league size.

Also keep in mind that the dollar values are just a rough guide to follow, they are not an end all be all. For example, the dollar values in the guide for sale on the site take into account player performance as well as bidding from owners to give you the best realistic estimate for what a player is going to go for. There are many different factors during the draft that will influence how true dollars end up being to what is forecasted regardless of what source you use.

For example, in a mixed league auction format last year, one owner decided to go with an all relief pitcher strategy and focus the majority of his money on offense. He bought the top three hitters in the draft and was willing to go $3 to $5 more than their value to get the guys he wanted. By going with all relief pitchers, he also impacted the price of starting pitchers because that was one less owner bidding on them as well as the price of closers because there were now a few less in the pool.

When you are in an auction format, you need to be able to recognize these trends so you can adjust prices as you go to account for these type of situations. Another instance happened in a NL only league a few years ago where one owner bought the top two shortstops in the league. He then proceeded to nominate a shortstop every time it was his turn to nominate a player. It ended up raising the buy price of the next group of shortstops by several dollars because people did not want to be left with a weak player at that position.

In addition to paying attention to situations like these during the auction that might spring up, you can also track dollar values during the draft to see how the money is trending. At some point once you are 30 players in or so, you are going to find that the money spent is running more or less than what you have projected. In either case, you then know in your head to adjust the prices of players up or down accordingly. There will be pockets during the draft where there will be bargains to be had as players start to run lower on money so if you are able to track where the overall money is at during each point, you will have a chance to grab several players that should return you a nice profit.

Managing Your Auction Budget:

One of the biggest challenges for fantasy baseball owners participating in an auction for the first time is how to manage their budget. It can even be a challenge for seasoned owners if you do not head into the auction with a well formulated plan for how your are going to spend your money. Each draft it seems there are one or two owners that end up leaving money on the table that ends up costing them a player or two which can make the difference between winning and losing a league.

The easiest way to make sure that you make full use of your fantasy budget is to assign dollar values to each position so you have an idea of what players you want to target and what you want to spend. You should also have an idea of what percentage split you want to have between pitchers and hitters. This will give you a good baseline heading into the auction which can be adjusted as you go. Here is an example of how you want to think about laying out a possible roster for a 15 team mixed league.

First we need to decide on the percent split. Most teams use a 70-30 split on average so we will use 65-35 with more money geared toward hitters as they are more predictable. Since the majority of leagues use a $260 budget, that will leave us with $169 to spend on hitting and $91 to spend on pitching. So here is what our team could look like with 14 hitters and then 9 pitchers.

1c – $13, 2c – $3, 1B – $25, 2b – $13, SS – $20, 3B – $15, MI – $3, CI – $3, 5OF – $20, $18, $17, $13, $3 U – $3

SP1 – $19, SP2 – $15, SP3 – $12, SP4 – $10, SP5 – $4, Sp5 – $2, RP1 – $12, Rp2 – $10, Rp3 – $7

As you go through the draft and enter the dollar amount for each player as you buy them, you can then adjust the dollar amounts for the other positions. For example, you see a $20 catcher where the bidding stops at $14 so you bid $15 and buy him. You are now $2 over your first catcher slot so you need to adjust one of your other positions by $2 to make up the difference, so instead of spending say $7 for your 3rd relief pitcher, you would change that to $5.

The same concept applies if you buy a closer for $19, you would flip flop your dollars for your number one relief pitcher and your number one starting pitcher so your budget is always on track for $260. You will notice that I did not leave $1 for any of my rosters spots. At the end of the draft when everybody is low on money, by setting aside more than $1 per roster spot, you have a much better chance of getting the players that you want. If every team only has $1 left per position, the end of the auction then turns into a draft because nobody is able to go over $1 in the bidding.

Nominating Players:

When it comes to nominating players, there is a strategy that you should be using for that as well. If you have 23 rosters spots to fill in your league, that means you are going to have 23 different chances to nominate players so you need to think about what positions and players you want to nominate. You also want to alternate your nomination strategy so other owners aren’t able to pick up on what you are doing. For example, you don’t want to nominate the 23 guys you want to buy most as owners will pick up on that at some point and start overbidding you.

Also be careful when nominating a player about what price you put on a player. There is nothing wrong with nominating every player for $1. Every auction it seems there is a player that gets nominated an an owner puts a price on him only to hear crickets in the room and they end up getting stuck with them on their rosters. Here is a look at some possible nomination strategies to consider for the auction.

If you are in a high stakes fantasy baseball league and are concerned that a team is going to employ the all relief pitcher strategy and you want to be able to adjust prices accordingly, you could make relief pitchers your first five nominations. By that time roughly 75 players will be off the board so you should have a good idea of each team’s roster direction.

Another direction you could go is target the 3rd or 4th player at a position and see if you can get a player for a discount if the top three players are still on the board  in case owners want to save their money for them. For example, at shortstop, Hanley Ramirez, Troy Tulowitzki and Jose Reyes are at the top of the list. If you don’t want to spend what it is going to cost to roster those players but you want to get a good shortstop, you could throw out Derek Jeter or Jimmy Rollins with the idea being other owners may not want to bid and fill that slot while other top players are still on the board.

A third route you could go is nominate players you are not interested in that are higher up in the rankings to get them off the board and eliminate a potential opposing bidder on a player you really want. For example, Paul Konerko at first base, Rickie Weeks at second base, Jose Bautista at third base, etc.