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.