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 By that time, the prices are out of date and the league format for what they are basing their dollar values on is likely not the format that you are using for your league.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.

As my first article about baseball I would like to do as I always do at start picking my things I am all in on and things I’m staying away from.  Since my player rankings are nothing I am committed on quite yet with spring training still about two months away there is only one thing that really holds strong in my mind this year and I am ALL IN about it, Auction leagues.

By now almost everyone that reads this knows what an auction league is vs the typical serpentine style player picking draft by round.  I am fine with the fact the draft by rounds is the most common and probably should be for a long time.  Auction style is not for beginners.  Really when you are thinking about going Auction or Draft format you need to think of what type of players are in the league.  The people that I think fit the Auction style and shouldn’t go Round draft fit at least 3 of the 5 following criteria:

1. If you’re the type of player that would be reading an article like this on a site other then MLB or ESPN.com: Just going outside of the typical media mainstreams show you are looking to take that next step into your fantasy baseball and some of the advice you find in places like this will be the difference from winning or losing in a league

2. If you start your baseball research for the upcoming season in or before January: Spring training doesn’t even start until the very end of February and then you still have over another full month before the start of the regular season.  Keeping track of off season moves and team restructurings can give you a leg up but lets not kid ourselves, it is more about passion then an actual advantage.

3.  Your team never makes less then 100 waiver moves in a season: Some of the things that separates the men from the boys is taking that step from just doing the football season is adjusting the the everyday games and the everyday moves.  In football making 100 moves can be a bit for the ridiculous but in fantasy baseball I consider it a baseline.

4.  You never pay for saves: If there is one lesson it seems people always talk about but then again every year people seem to keep doing it and have pitchers like Neftali Feliz and Matt Capps make them regret it.  None of the top five RP drafted last year finished in the top five RP for the year and only one of them even finished in the Top 10 (Mr. Rivera)

5. You have ever drafted someone who you didn’t like just because 2 rounds after they were supposed to go you found them to be a “Good Value”:  So many times people go into a draft very against a player, someone like Grady Sizemore who you know is not going to be good but suddenly after 50 or 60 players are off the board you start thinking…Maybe he will get back into his old form regardless of his injury risk and falling average over the last 4 years. Never Again Grady…

Really most of these just check your level of commitment to the game because in the end the only difference between a successful auction and a horrible one is preparation.  With a lot of sites already setting out rankings a team can auto draft in a round based draft and still win with good management. In an auction league it keeps more of the human element in the game and really helps define the skill level of the players.  Another benefit is there is no real draft order so your chance at the players you love and are ALL IN on like me, you can go for them and you won’t feel obligated to draft Pujols if you end up with the #1 overall pick in a round based league.

I hope this helps spark the auction wild fire in more fantasy baseball owners. If you have questions or are searching for fantasy baseball advice you can find me on twitter @FantasyFanalyst.

The majority of keeper auction leagues have contract limits which means you are likely going to be able to be competitive for a certain amount of years before you have to rebuild. Some owners think they can draft every year and have a shot at winning, but that is not the case. In an auction league with keepers, there is too much inflation to prices to be able to draft a team and make a run at the title unless you get extremely lucky, it is a shallow league and the rest of the owners are not very good.

Your best chance at rebuilding is by doing it from day one of the season. That way you can focus on which rookies you want to target in the draft as well get first dibs on the best keepers in trade from other owners. If you wait until June before deciding to throw in the towel and rebuild for next year, you are already behind the other rebuilding teams. At that point, you are rebuilding for two years away instead of being competitive the following season.

Heading into the auction there are two types of players you are trying to draft. Players that will help your team next year and form your core and the second group are players that you can trade to bring back in return younger players and draft picks.

Here is a look at my team from a NL only auction league from last season. This is a 14 team league with a $275 salary cap plus a six round reserve draft where the draft picks can be traded.  I went into the draft knowing I wanted to rebuild from day one.

My keepers:

• Ryan Doumit – 11
• John Baker – 10
• Rickie Weeks – 25
• Cameron Maybin – 16
• Tim Lincecum – 22
• Chad Qualls – 6

Out of this group, the only players I wanted to keep for this year were Lincecum, Qualls and Doumit; the other players were traded.

Drafted:

• Edgar Renteria – 13
• Matt Kemp – 36
• Jake Peavy – 31
• Aaron Cook – 13
• Ricky Nolasco – 26

This entire group were players I wanted to trade. While Kemp was at a good price, there are always outfielders in the $30 range I knew I could grab in 2010.

Core: these were the main players I targeted to form the cornerstone of my team for the next few years:

• Alcides Escobar – 2
• Carlos Gonzalez – 3
• Jonny Gomes – 3 (did not plan on him being a core guy but at $3 for 15-20 home runs makes him a core guy)
• Jason Heyward – 1
• Pedro Alvarez – 7
• J.A. Happ – 2 — I was able to get him as a relief pitcher due to our rules based on a certain number of appearances as a starter / reliever.
• Tim Hudson – 3 — injured players are a great place to look for keepers when you are rebuilding. If you are in an NL only league this season and are rebuilding, you should be targeting guys like Edison Volquez and Jordan Zimmermann.
• Stephen Strasburg – 5

Farm System:

Before the auction I had several other players I did not want to keep going into the draft so I flipped those for draft picks, so instead of the usual six picks per team, I went into the draft with close to 20 picks to search for players that would be able to have an impact for me in 2010. As from my previous articles, I am always looking for players that have the best chance of helping me the following year so I am targeting guys that are in Triple-A or in Double-A with a shot to get to the major leagues based on the guys ahead of them at their position. Here is who I got:

• Drew Stubbs – 5
• Chris Coghlan – 5
• Everth Cabrera – 10 – his salary was higher because he started the year in the major leagues
• Gerardo Parra – 5
• Bud Norris – 5
• Aroldis Chapman – 10 – picked up September 1 when rosters expanded. Again, it pays to know and understand the rules of your league. In my league in September we can add three slots so I look for guys that may be coming over from Japan or were drafted in the June draft and could make a direct leap to the major leagues.

Picked up in trade:

• Bronson Arroyo – 8
• Omar Infante – 3
• Eric Young Jr. – 5

In addition I have 23 out of the 84 draft picks in the reserve round. Six of my own picks plus 17 I picked up in trade, including three additional first round and second round picks.

So overall my team looks something like this heading into 2010:

• C – Doumit – 11
• C – open
• 1b – open
• 2b – Infante 3 / E. Young 5
• ss – A. Escobar 2, E. Cabrera 10
• 3b – open
• of – C. Gonzalez 3, Gomes 3, Stubbs 5, Coghlan 5, Parra 5,
• utility – Heyward 1, P. Alvarez 7
• sp – Lincecum 22, Arroyo 8, Norris 5, Strasburg 5, Happ 2, Hudson 3, Chapman 10
• rp – Qualls 6

You can see from the roster layout that there are several trade opportunities I will have to improve the team by moving a shortstop, outfielder and starting pitcher.

With the additional draft picks I will also be able to use those to trade for guys from other teams that will be rebuilding this season.