Posts Tagged ‘auction’

2009 Fantasy Baseball Auctions – Advanced Strategy

Posted by Todd Lammi on April 2nd, 2009

by Todd Lammi

In my previous post, I talked about some basics surrounding fantasy baseball auctions. Now it is time to delve a little deeper into some more advanced strategies for success in your fantasy baseball league auction.

1) Be Patient – during the early part of the auction, it can get somewhat frenzied, because usually the big names are thrown out and the dollar amounts are being thrown out back and forth at a rapid pace. Don’t get caught up in the excitement and spend several dollars more than what a player is worth. Remember, you are trying to buy the best value for your team. If you have $260 as your team budget, by the end of the year, you are hoping that $260 team returned $300-$350 worth of value. If the players you bought end up only returning $260 worth of value, the same as what you paid for them, chances are you are not going to finish in the top three places of your fantasy baseball league unless you get extremely lucky with your in season free agent pickups.

There will at some point come a lull in the auction where a group of players will go for less than what their value is. That is the point of the auction that you want to be ready to grab those players. Don’t be worried if there are 20 players already gone from the auction board and none are on your team. You might find yourself buying the next two to three players in a row because their final dollar amount is under the value you assigned to them.

2) Be Prepared – in an auction league you don’t have the time between bids to look through your sheets, or flip through a magazine as you do in a draft where there is some set time between draft picks. In an auction, the action is non stop, so be prepared with all of your information so you do not have to reference it between or during bids. There are usually several breaks in the auction, this is your time to regroup, look up information and double check your dollar totals per team.

The second area to be prepared in is in terms of understanding each teams depth chart, especially in you are participating in an NL or AL only auction league. Being able to grab two to three players for under $5 who will get 400 at bats compared to getting stuck with three players that do not end up making the major league roster could be the difference between whether your team finishes in the money or not. In an NL or AL only auction, the more roster spots you have filled with players that have starting jobs and are able to accumulate stats for the entire course of the season, the better your chances of winning become.

3) Be careful price enforcing – usually in every auction there are a couple of owners that try to price enforce. If David Wright’s value is around $40 and the bidding starts slowing down around $37, an owner in an effort to price enforce might say $38, feeling that someone will bid $39 because Wright’s value is $40.  Also, letting an owner accumulate players below their draft value means that owner is already getting that extra value we talked about earlier. The one caveat to price is enforcing is to make sure you can afford the player if you get stuck with him and two, make sure it is a player you want on your roster. I have seen far too many times where an owner tries to price enforce, there are no other bids and he gets stuck with player and ends up grumbling to himself, as he has now thrown his auction strategy out of whack.

4) Vary your nominating strategy – some fantasy baseball owners nominate the same type of player every time, but it is a good idea to change up the way you nominate players so other owners do not get a read on what your strategy is and what players you might be interested in. For example, an owner might only nominate players he is interested in buying, some owners nominate only players they have no interest in buying. For me, I try to employ several different tactics. If I am planning on spending say $25 at second base in an NL only auction league and I have targeted two players for that spot, Brandon Phillips or Rickie Weeks. If there is a second baseman in the $18 range that I don’t have interest in, like Kelly Johnson, I throw him out there. Doing that does two things, it sets the price market a little bit, you can see what Johnson is bought for compared to his value and two, it somewhat eliminates the owner from bidding on one of the two second basemen that you want later on, unless said owner plans on sinking $40+ dollars into his second base and middle infield position which is not too likely. If there is an end game player you are looking at in the $5 range, say an Erick Hinske, nominating him early in the draft might allow you to acquire him a little bit cheaper because other owners don’t want to waste a roster spot that early in the auction process.

5) Be aware of who else likes your players - if you play in a league that allows trading, for every player that you buy, right down next to that player who was the last owner bidding against you. That way during the season, if you decide to trade a player, you might have a potential trade partner already lined up based on the other owner showing interest during the draft.

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2009 Fantasy Baseball Auctions

Posted by Todd Lammi on April 1st, 2009

by Todd Lammi

If your favorite day of the year is your fantasy baseball draft, I am about to introduce you to something that is ten times better, and that is a fantasy baseball auction. No longer do you have to worry about players sliding to you in the draft, or having the 10th pick in the first round, knowing that you have no shot at nine players in front of you, in an auction, you have much more control of what goes on around you.

While there is the extra excitement of bidding on players and trying to slip through your favorite sleeper for $2, there are also additional challenges presented in an auction that you do not face in a draft. In addition to tracking the players that have been picked, the players still left on the board and your own team and its stats, in an auction format, you also have to track dollars for your roster and the entire league.

For most players when participating in a fantasy baseball league auction for a first time, they usually run into one of two problems, either they run low on money with multiple players left to buy, or else they have already filled their roster, but have several dollars left to spend.

I am going to give you a couple of tips in order to prevent this from happening and to ensure that your first auction experience is a great one.

When you are preparing for the auction, make sure that the dollars you have assigned to each player add up to the total dollar amount that is to be spent for the league. For example, if you are playing in a 15 team league, and each team has $200 to spend, make sure that the combined salaries you have for the number of players that need to be bought equals $3,000 ($200 x 15). This way you will have closer to a true dollar amount of what a player is worth. So many of the cheat sheets or projections floating around out there provide dollar totals, but they do not add up to what a league total dollar amount is. Each league is different in roster size and team size so make sure that your dollar values are adjusted accordingly.

To make sure that you spend all of your allotted dollars and on the flip side, to make sure you do not run out of money, it is a good idea to go into the draft with dollar amounts assigned to each position on your roster. If you team budget is $200, determine what amount you want to spend for hitting and pitching. On average the split is roughly 70-30 skewed toward hitting. That means with a $200 budget you would plan on spending $60 on your pitching staff. Assuming you have a 10  man pitching staff, you dollar amounts would look something like this:

1Sp – $15

2Sp – $8

3Sp – $7

4Sp – $4

5SP – $2

6Sp – $2

1 Closer – $16

2RP – $2

3 RP – $2

4 RP – $2

You have $15 budgeted for an ace on your staff and $16 budgeted for a closer and so on down the line to fill out your rotation and bullpen. This gives you a good plan of attack to start with. If you happen to spend $17 for an ace starter, simply adjust by $2 another spot on your staff to make sure you hit the $60 mark if that was your allocation to build your staff with.

I usually try to leave $2 for each of the positions instead of $1. At the end of the draft when people are low on money, the auction at that point basically turns into a draft because each person is down to a dollar per player. By having $2 left per player, this ensures that you have a much greater chance of getting the players you want late in the draft.

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2009 Fantasy Baseball – Winning a keeper league

Posted by Todd Lammi on March 8th, 2009

by Todd Lammi

Do you care if you win your fantasy baseball keeper league? It seems like a simple question but the answer seems to be a little more complex for some people who play fantasy baseball.

Let’s assume a few parameters and you will see what I mean. The assumptions are as follows: it is a keeper league (the number of keepers does not matter), the league will redraft every 5 years and there is an entry fee to play of over $100.

Now you might say, a $100 or more does not matter to me as an entry fee, I am paying that money for the joy of playing fantasy baseball for six months and that is a cheaper form of entertainment than anything else I could do for that same time period. To which I say, that is probably true, however, if that is your mindset, you are better off playing fantasy leagues at Yahoo or some other free service where there is no entry fee involved then.

Most owners, will buy a magazine or several magazines, sign up for newsletters / projections / draft software, etc. so in addition to the entry fee you are paying, tack on another $50-$100 in draft materials / seasonal information. On top of that, factor in the time that you will spend playing fantasy baseball. Wading through all of the information over the internet, watching Baseball Tonight or watching games on ESPN, add on another 10 hours per week of your time spent on fantasy baseball. Taking that 10 hours per week times an average of $20 per hour (or insert whatever $ amount you think your time is worth) times 30 weeks of the fantasy baseball season equals $6,000. I know, I know, this is not actual money coming out of your pocket, but my point is regardless of the entry fee, there is a cost (investment) associated with playing fantasy baseball, and like any investment in stocks, or certificates of deposit or even a savings account, you should want to see a return on that investment, either in the form of a check or trophy or both.

So with that out of the way, let’s examine the difference between a keeper league and a one year or annual league. Mmmm, there really is no difference. The categories are the same, the rules are the same, the only thing that changes between the two in most cases is the mindset of the owner. Okay, stop, go back and re-read that last sentence again, because it is important to think about.  The one thing I have noticed most in the years I have been playing fantasy baseball keeper leagues when determining the difference between the people who win leagues and the ones who don’t is the mindset of the owner.

For example, we just had a trade deadline in one of my basketball leagues recently. I offered another owner who is bunched together with five other owners in a tight race three players for LeBron James. These were three solid players who would have most likely given him the title and the cash prize. His response when he rejected the offer was, I can’t do the trade, it gives me too many keepers for next season. Wow! I can’t say that I was shocked, because I have heard a similar type answer in different sports, in different fantasy leagues  every year I play, but it still baffles me that when an owner has a great chance to win the league, they pass on it, in order to protect their keepers for the following season.

There are no guarantees for next year in a keeper league. Improvements of players, declines in performances, injuries, and changes in players roles all make it hard to assume that because your team is in the top three one year it will be in the top three the following year.   My advice is when the opportunity presents itself, go for the win every time.

If you have only played keeper leagues in the past, it is a good idea to try a one year league to get yourself in a different mindset when it comes to trading and waiver pickups. This will help you strike a good balance then in your keeper league for still keeping young talent, while at the same time playing to win your league.

Bill Simmons of EPSN had a great line in one of his recent articles regarding the Portland Trailblazers, saying “Portland seems content to be just a Promising Young Team With a Huge Internet Following for the next 12 years.” Don’t let this happen to your fantasy baseball team. It might be nice, to have the best collection of young talent, but if you have no league titles attached to your name, it doesn’t really matter, especially since your team will be broken up in a few years anyway for the redraft.

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