Auction Prep: Know Your Foe

When preparing for a draft or auction, it is pretty typical to determine what positions you feel best about the deep options and therefore don’t have to spend big resources upfront. Love a bunch of shortstops you can get after pick 200/for less than $5? Then you don’t need to break the bank for Francisco Lindor.

In keeper auctions, that depth can shift unexpectedly (as we discussed earlier this week), so you need to now only know what positions are deep but what positions are deep among players actually available. But there is another factor that impacts position depth: what other teams need.

I have a process that I (ideally – time doesn’t always allow) go through before each auction where I identify three things about each team in the league, including mine:

1. How much money they have to spend
2. How many spots they have to fill
3. What needs they have at each position

Number 3 isn’t always easy to do, especially in Ottoneu leagues where bench depth means it can be hard to tell what a team “needs.” Does a team with Mookie Betts plan to use him at OF or a MI spot? Does a team with Josh Naylor feel set at 1B or are they in need of another bat there? Does that manager consider Jonathan Aranda a starting 2B/MI or do they view him as an upside play and not count him towards their Opening Day lineup depth? These are relatively easy questions to answer for your own team, but not at all for another team.

What I try to do is just assume I manage that roster and then make quick, gut decisions. This is purely about moving quickly (I don’t want to spend hours on this). I am also focused on what they need more than what they might want. This is because my goal (which we will get to later) is to have a sense of what positions I can “wait” on at auction vs. where I am going to need to throw my money around. If five other teams need a 2B, that will dictate competition for the top 2B and give me a sense of when the 2B market might lighten up. If another 3 teams might want some additional 2B depth, they are less likely to spend big for that spot, whether that means going after a Jose Altuve or bidding up Andres Gimenez.

I want to run through an example, but I am going to do this for a CBS H2H keeper league I play in. It’s a good example for Ottoneu leagues because it works similarly (shallower rosters with just 25 players, but the with a $260 cap, price increases of $2 or 15% (whichever is larger), and max 14 keepers per team, you end up with per-player economics similar to Ottoneu. The highest paid player in this league last year was $67 Juan Soto, with two other players over $40 and seven more over $30. Similar shape of a value curve, just with fewer players.

It’s also a good example because it is much simpler to think through. The 25 man rosters are 12 bats (C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, CI, MI, OFx4, U); eight arms (SPx5, RPx5), and five bench spots. I tend to assume teams will carry seven SP, three RP, and use the other bench spots to make sure they have depth at MI, CI and OF (carrying just one catcher per roster).

Here are my keepers:

• Ezequiel Tovar
• Jose Ramirez
• Kerry Carpenter
• Matt Wallner
• Tanner Houck
• Jared Jones
• George Kirby
• Ryan Pepiot
• Jason Foley

I also have the most cash to spend, by far. But let’s pretend I was doing this exercise and this was not my team but another team. I would look at this roster and determine this team needs:

• A catcher. This seems pretty obvious.
• At least one, and maybe two 1B. They need a starter for sure and might want a 1B at CI or as a backup, depending what they do at util. I will put them down for 1.5.
• Maybe another 3B. They’ll need a backup and maybe put a 3B at CI. I’ll put them down for 0.5.
• At least one 2B, but really two. Like first, they need a starter, but they also need a MI and probably a backup 2B/backup MI, so I am going to put them down for 2.
• One SS. That might be a backup, it might be a starting MI, it might be Tovar insurance. But they need one more and not really more than that.
• Three OF. Wallner and Carpenter are already probably platoon guys, so if this team wants to fill the lineup daily, they need three more OF.
• One U. This could be any position, but it is a need.
• Three more SP. They may take four more, since Kirby is headed to the IL, but I’ll assume three for the draft and the IL move later.
• Two more RP to fill the lineup.
• One player TBD. If they do everything I said above, they have added 15 players but have room for 16. They would have starters at every spot, a backup for MI and OF, and enough pitching. This TBD might be a CI, if they don’t get one somewhere else. It might just be a flier they like. It might be an extra SP or something I can’t predict. But it’s likely an end-of-bench type.

Now, that is a lot of text, but it took me about a minute to come up with those numbers. The thought process I typed out moves much quicker when you don’t have to explain it to someone else.

Having spent 10-15 minutes to do that for every team, I am left with a table that looks something like this:

You can see the league has 152 keepers, which means 148 open roster spots, and I have identified how I think the league will utilize those spots. With that, I can then go to my draft board and try to prioritize where I should spend. For example, you can see I need a C, 1B, 2B, and OF, among other things. I could choose to spend on Adley Rutschman, or Matt Olson, or Ketel Marte or Juan Soto, but I probably can’t spend on all of them. Where do I spend big and where do I go cheap?

Well, my chart tells me eight teams need catchers. Here are the top available catchers, in no particular order: Rutschman, Cal Raleigh, Will Smith, Logan O’Hoppe, Shea Langeliers, J.T. Realmuto, Tyler Stephenson, Gabriel Moreno, Austin Wells, Ryan Jeffers, Tyler Soderstrom, Sean Murphy, Francisco Alvarez, Alejandro Kirk.

That’s 14 names, all guys I like to some degree. Even if I got “stuck” with Alvarez and had to pick up Keibert Ruiz or someone as a free agent short term, I wouldn’t be upset. Would Rutschman, Raleigh or Smith be better than Soderstrom, Wells or Moreno? Of course! But I don’t have to spend here to come away with a starter I am okay with.

Here are the top names at 1B: Freddie Freeman, Matt Olson, Christian Walker, Josh Naylor, Tristan Casas, Paul Goldschmidt, Rhys Hoskins, Nathaniel Lowe, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Ryan Mountcastle.

That’s 10 names. I counted teams needing 13.5 1B. Even if I cut out the 0.5 1B from the list, I end up with nine teams that definitely need a 1B. And while I don’t hate Mountcastle or Encarnacion-Strand, if I have one of them as my starting 1B (vs. a starting CI or Util or backup option), I won’t be particularly happy. So when I build my auction plan, I’ll prioritize spending on Olson or Freeman (or be ready to go overboard to make sure I get Walker, Naylor or Casas) and not risk being stuck in the next tier.

For this league, I am finding that 1B and OF are my going to be my challenges, while 2B, C, and SP, I feel more confident I can find value cheap. RP is a bit of a conundrum. This is a saves league and there aren’t many closers available so I’ll either have to prioritize big money for a big name closer or just punt saves and go get a couple dirt cheap RP who will provide me great rates, but no saves.

But all of that is influenced not just by overall positional depth (C and 2B are not deep positions) or even just auction depth (2B isn’t particularly deep in this auction), but by having a sense of what the rest of the league will do and using that to adjust my plan accordingly.