Auction Strategy: Money on the Table
I made a mistake in my latest auction draft. A rookie mistake. I left money on the table. You know what, though — I’m not too worried about it. It was a natural risk that was bred from a few of my main tenets. Here are some of those personal rules — which I may have to alter now that I’m going public — and then I’ll discuss how implementing the rules went in yesterday’s particular draft.
1) Throw guys you don’t want. Bid on them a little bit so people don’t know that you’re throwing guys you don’t want. Watch them spend money on players you don’t want.
2) Budget two dollars for every bench spot. This creates end-game flexibility. You’ll be able to steal everyone’s one-dollar picks.
3) Compare early results for stars to your auction value spreadsheet. Adjust your plan accordingly.
You can probably already see how I ended up with money on the table, and how I might not have been so angry about it. But let’s look at the team really quickly, and the other rules might come into focus as well.
$260 Budget; 12-team Roto; BA, HR, R, RBI, SB, OPS / W, SV, ERA, WHIP, K, QS
C Carlos Santana $19
1B Kevin Youkilis $16
2B Ian Kinsler $28
3B Alex Rodriguez $18
SS Starlin Castro $20
LF Logan Morrison $8
CF Andrew McCutchen $28
RF Lucas Duda $6
Util Andre Ethier $5
Util Chris Young $8
BN Jason Kubel $2
BN Jason Kipnis $4
SP Cliff Lee $27
SP Matt Moore $16
RP Mariano Rivera $11
RP Jordan Walden $8
P John Axford $8
P Cory Luebke $11
P Chris Sale $5
BN Clay Buchholz $2
BN Mike Minor $3
BN Jaime Garcia $4
Early in the draft, the first rounders were all going for $40 and more. My value sheet had Albert Pujols first, with $36 in value. By tracking the first picks, I realized that everyone was coming in almost exactly $10 more on the first-rounders. By rule #3, I adjusted my strategy: I was going to possibly overpay for my first two picks, but I would try to do it for less than $10.
I accomplished that with Ian Kinsler, who I had valued at $30, and Andrew McCutchen, who I had at $22. Getting a first-round pick exactly at the price I wanted made me feel good. McCutch was a slight overpay, but not by a ton. There was a slight bump in the road with this strategy — I had Starlin Castro at $20 on my sheet, and with all the exuberance, I decided I’d just bid $20 and cut to the chase. Oops. Probably coulda saved a buck or two there.
By throwing all the pitchers I didn’t want, I didn’t quite flush out enough money. While I paid about retail for Cliff Lee, I ended up overpaying slightly for Matt Moore because I saw a lack of strong #2s that were available by the time I’d thrown all the pitchers I didn’t like. And the four dollars I left on the table would have helped here. I could have gotten the $17 C.J. Wilson, the $18 Matt Cain, or the $17 Adam Wainwright. Still, I like Moore just a tick behind these guys, and in terms of upside, he can hang in this group.
Jaime Garcia is to blame for the money on the table, or at least that’s my story. I zeroed in on him as a perfect #3/4 — innings and quality starts, with upside for more strikeouts and an excellent ground-ball repertoire, plus he’s young enough to reduce the DL likelihood to some extent. Yahoo had him at $4 (I had him at $10), and I had flushed out players that were projected similarly for about $7-9. I felt good about the $7 in my wallet for Garcia. I threw him finally, +1’ed on a $2 bid… and won him.
Overall, I’m happy with the team. I’ll find a starter to help shore up the back end of my staff, and with two second basemen, third basemen, and center fielders, I might even have some trade value. I certainly have depth at key positions. I got some top-end talent without paying for a $40 dude, and I succeeded in creating a balanced team.
So I don’t feel terrible about the money on the table. Just, you know, a little embarrassed.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
16 team auction 5×5 just completed. I have guys wanting to trade for one of my hitters. Here is what i have. c-Mauer,Pierzyski 1b-Agon,Konerko 2b-Phillips, MI-Raburn, SS-Hardy, 3rd-Moustakas OF-Belt, Beltran,Granderson, LOMO and Vernon Wells. THoughts on my offense? Now for the SP-Josh Johnson, Gio Gonzalez, Kuroda, Chacin, Feliz, Blackburn, RP- Walden, Holland and David Roberston. should I stay with the pitchers I have? make a trade. say for a stud pitcher? I know i could use some speed.. concerned about pitching.. thanks
I see you’re punting AVG
It could be a problem, but I’ll be watching it. I think I’ll keep Young on my bench at first, and I also might expect a better BA from Kinsler, Santana, LoMo and McCutch than you do. Not great BAs, but not what they did last year.
anyone in an auction with eno sarris should have known you could just bid up duda. Especially since Duda will be playing a lot of 1b on that team…
haha, yeah that was them bidding him up. they even goaded me! but I have Duda at about $11 so I was cool with it anyway.
So I should be happy with my $1 Duda? He’s not even in my starting lineup right now (Konerko, Morse, Grandy, Bruce, BJ Upton, Chris Young filling up my 1B, CI, OF, Util spots)
I left $33 on the table at my last auction because I was focused entirely on extracting as much value as possible. It was a big mistake, and a point I’m intent on learning from. The lesson: Focus first on putting together a team that can win. Finding value is simply a principal that is used to achieve this, albeit the most effective principal. In past years I have had rosters that were full of players whose value was greater than their cost – $2 Kelly Johnson’s and $3 Hiroki Kuroda’s. Unfortunately this doesn’t translate to winning my league.
In the end, achieving balance between extracting value and assembling a competitive roster has been key to my success. I think Jamie Garcia is an excellent player to target in meeting both of these criteria.
I left $11 on the table for my linear weight points league. I was kicking myself for not spending what I needed to in order to land Napoli and Greinke earlier in the draft, but I managed to make a few trades and end up just about exactly where I wanted to be.
I blame my leftover money on the other drafters just not leaving any money for the last few picks, which let me just walk away with who I wanted for next to nothing. I ended drafting Anibal Sanchez, Huston Street, Rafael Bentancout, Matt Thornton, Vinnie Pestano, and Chris Ianetta for a total of 8 million.
Free advice: You have to treat an auction somewhat similar to a draft. You should claim one player per each “round” regardless of the league overbids on guys; you just have to be the one who overbids the least.
Example – If your 12-team league overbids ~$5 on the top 12 hitters, then you must “go with the flow” and overbid a guy in that first round for ~$2/$3 more. Otherwise you’ll wait too long and you’ll not have top guys and you’ll end up with money not spent.
Love what Mike D says here. That’s what I was getting at with my resolve to overpay for a star, but try to overpay less. I had Kinsler in the first round, and I was going to go to as much as $35 for him — that would have been an overpay by my sheet, but by less than the other overpays.
So I agree with Mike D on this, was trying to say it in a slightly different manner.
I’m rather inexperienced when it comes to auction drafts, but I’m inclined to disagree under certain circumstances. If you’re throwing players you don’t want and the players you have identified as vastly undervalued have yet to be nominated then I don’t think it makes sense to overpay with everyone else. It seems like that strategy will only work under if you are under the assumption that everyone in your league has roughly equivalent values across players (which in a public league I certainly do not). The reason I left so much money on the table was not because I didn’t spend on the bigger talent but because I got my last 10 picks for much cheaper than I expected (it’s only in hindsight that I wish I went over-budget earlier in the draft).
Of course you cannot hold out in an extreme fashion and not draft anyone, but I think it’s foolish to go with the flow and pay Carlos Gonzalez over 40 million when you know that you can get Matt Holliday for under 25.
$33 still on the table?!?!?!!!
I ended leaving some money behind and was happy about it.
Its a keeper league and the money doesn’t roll-over into the season. I figured on trying to get players as frugally as I could and only slightly overbid on 1B, SS, and 3B and only for youth/upside.
My idea was to give more flexibility for next year when our budgets will be greatly reduced by the large amount of keepers.
I decided to stay away from first tier 2B and was able to get 2 players w/ upside for the same price w/ only a marginal spread in points, e.g. Ackley’s ($8) only 75 pts behind Kinsler($26).
Filling in the IF first, asides from 2B, ended up being a solid strategy as most were on a crazed spendy run for premium pitching which I also cut out, I’d rather wait a few rounds and have a $23 Haren/ $20 Cain than a $40 Verlander.
Throwing players you don’t want is a great strategy the first 12 rounds, you only have to stomach the rather bare roster while everyone else’s fills up.
I think what Enos meant by throwing players you don’t want is: nominate a Fielder instead of a Votto and watch someone else spend their cash. You still get a top 5 or 6 1B, but at a discount.
I agree with you completely on your Haren vs. Verlander strategy. People are paying for last year’s wins, not realizing how much luck played a role in 24 wins.
Anyone have a good source for auction values? I am a noob to auctions, have always done drafts. When drafting I don’t use the preset rankings (yahoo or whatever site you are using) for more than an indicator of where someone may be drafted if one of my opponents is scrambling on a pick. I use MDC as a guide, and I guess I’m looking for something similar to that that for auctions. I would guess that the preset auction values that sites have should also not be relied upon heavily (please correct me if I’m off on this, as I said before I have little to no experience with auctions). Thanks for any help.
This should help you make your own, Zach Sander’s auction value spread sheet. http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/index.php/2011-fantasy-baseball-rankings/ that has last year’s end-of-season values in it right now.
The scaling of that worksheet seems off. The positive dollar amounts only sum to $2800. If there are 12 teams with $260 budget and league managers only draft positive value players, they won’t fill out their rosters (12*260=3120). That doesn’t make sense to me. I can see how the value can be greater than cost, but not less.
If all players are retroactively scaled to how valuable they were, we should be able to marry value to draft prices. Value=Cost. Otherwise, we have unallocated dollars that should presumably be spent on the best players (maximizing value/starting spot). This is why I suspect the sheet you used might be hurting you systematically.
I dunno, I used that sheet to make my values for this year and got $3400 with a couple players listed twice (positions). So I feel like it has that part okay.
“mulkowsky” made the same observation about value back in October. In the spreadsheet linked above, I can rescale it to get something like $3400, but the sum of F2:F277 is $2,821.91. So what am I missing?
Thanks, much appreciated.
http://sportsdraftdaily.com/
shawn childs gives auction values for a.l., n.l., and mixed. he also covers both labr auctions.
I suspect your valuesheet is underestimating the worth of 1st rounders. $36 max for Pujols? My guess is that the difference is how you are using/defining replacement level. The fact that you are able to get quality players for less than $5 is exactly the reason why elite guys should go for more than $40. With only 12 teams, shallow benches, and no CI/MI, the stars are worth more.
And Castro at $20 seems high, given your value of Pujols at $36. “Pujols +12th best SS” will give you better stats than “Youkilis+Castro.”
This is a false choice. youkilis + castro = $37. pujols + 12th ranked shortstop (JJ Hardy, $6) = $53. Better would be to compare my $28 Kinsler plus $20 castro to his $47 pujols plus $4 aybar, but even then I have $3 in the bank.
Pujols + Aybar by Zips – .289 45/173/153/35
Kinsler + Castro by Zips – .288 33/178/136/46
And I have the younger duo and a second baseman and $3 extra while he’s got the older duo and a first baseman.
Link to draft results so I dont have to posit false choices? 🙂
So you believe all of the top players are bid too high in auction leagues?
And besides, my entire argument is that the elite batters are worth more than the values you posted (namely, that Pujols is highest at $36). Even just looking at your roster, your purchase of Kipnis for $4 shows how easy it is to get value at the end.
Stars and scrubs works too well if the top players are going for less than $40 in a shallow league. I mean, you have Castro at $20 but Tulo at less than $36. That doesn’t seem right to me.
Good luck!
http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1/16464/draftresults?drafttab=picks&sort=cost&order_by=desc
and yes, if your league is drafting three guys over $47, I do believe they are overspending.
Do I believe Pujols is only worth $36? I’m agnostic. I could have paid $41 or $42 and still been fine with my ‘within ten dollars overpay’ strategy. But I have Kinsler as worth $30 and in the top 12, so there’s at least one player that wasn’t overbid in the first ’round.’
Good stuff. I just did my first auction draft last week and it was pretty daunting. I worked out a budget just like you did, but things quickly get crazy as teams overpay for players and others go much cheaper than you’re expecting.
I was fairly broke for the last 8 picks or so, but I had budgeted a $182/$78 split with about $12 budgeted for 7 bench spots. I gambled that some value could be had late, and I think it paid off. I most definitely used all of my $$$!
Here’s the team I put together:
12-team $260 6×6 roto (R, HR, RBI, SB, AVG, OPS, W, SV, K, HLD, ERA, WHIP)
C – Brian McCann ($14) – steal of the draft, still don’t know how it happened
1B – Joey Votto ($39)
2B – Brandon Phillips ($19)
3B – Ryan Zimmerman ($24)
SS – Asdrubal Cabrera ($13)
LF – Josh Hamilton ($25)
CF – Desmond Jennings ($19)
RF – Shin-Soo Choo ($17)
UTIL – Yoenis Cespedes ($4)
BN – Colby Rasmus ($1)
BN – Alfonso Soriano ($1)
BN – Daniel Murphy ($1)
SP – Cole Hamels ($25)
SP – Mat Latos ($15)
SP – Gio Gonzalez ($9)
SP – Jaime Garcia ($5)
RP – Jose Valverde ($7)
RP – Huston Street ($7)
RP – Francisco Cordero ($1)
P – Scott Downs ($1)
P – Joel Peralta ($1)
BN – Ubaldo Jimenez ($7)
BN – Justin Masterson ($1)
BN – Trevor Cahill ($3)
BN – Edwin Jackson ($1)
Leaving $3 on the table in a thin roto league doesn’t mean much as long as the league has a healthy free agent market throughout the season. Your roster will look quite different by year’s end.
If the league was a deep league then that $3 matters a little more if there are fewer free agents to claim to fix your “mistakes”.
I ended leaving some money behind and was happy about it.
Its a keeper league and the money doesn’t roll-over into the season. I figured on trying to get players as frugally as I could and only slightly overbid on 1B, SS, and 3B and only for youth/upside.
My idea was to give more flexibility for next year when our budgets will be greatly reduced by the large amount of keepers.
I decided to stay away from first tier 2B and was able to get 2 players with upside for the same price with only a marginal spread in points, e.g. Ackley’s ($8) only 75 pts behind Kinsler($26).
Filling in the IF first, asides from 2B, ended up being a solid strategy as most were on a crazed spendy run for premium pitching which I also cut out, I’d rather wait a few rounds and have a $23 Haren or $20 Cain than a $40 Verlander.
Throwing players you don’t want is a great strategy the first 12 rounds, you only have to stomach the rather bare roster while everyone else’s fills up.
This is what I ended up with fwiw.
2 Joey Votto, Cin 1B $40
22 Starlin Castro, ChC SS $25
30 Brett Lawrie, Tor 3B $24
60 Jay Bruce, Cin RF $19
73 S Strasburg, Wsh SP $20
79 Chris Sale, CWS RP $7
88 James Shields, TB SP $22
92 Max Scherzer, Det SP $11
116 Mike Minor, Atl SP $8
129 Bryce Harper, Wsh RF $8
141 Brett Gardner, NYY LF $8
147 A Sanchez, Mia SP $13
158 Corey Hart, Mil RF $11
184 Martin Prado, Atl 3B $4
188 Drew Stubbs, Cin CF $4
200 H Kendrick, LAA 2B $5
212 Kurt Suzuki, Oak C $1
214 Jason Kipnis, Cle 2B $5
222 V Pestano, Cle RP $2
224 Felipe Paulino, KC SP $3
235 K Kendrick, Phi SP $1
241 F Salas, StL RP $8
245 Lucas Duda, NYM 1B $3
We’re a linear weights pts h2h keeper league. Saves and wins don’t count which explains the RP’s.
Pretty close to what I was going for except i missed out on Haren and McCutchen, with this startegy there were only 2 fellas w/ more $ than me by the 16th.
Ended up getting B.J. for CF.
This is the first year, any thoughts and comments appreciated, it was my first auction, love the site!
Love your draft. Unsure Minor and Scherzer were worth $19, but in a linear weights league, they’re worth more than in 5×5. You’ve got so many values, and I love the Votto pick. Any time you can get a first-rounder for $40 or less, it’s a win in my book.
For a first time, I think you did pretty well. Considering the upside of Sale, Kipnis and Duda, I think you got those guys at a bargain price.
Strasburg is a sexy pick in most leagues, but he still hasn’t resolved his mechanics issues–too much arm lag in his delivery, not enough use of his legs and body. He might turn out to be another Josh Johnson. I’d try to sell high on him if I were you.
8 of 12 owners left money on the table at my draft. (I didnt) Basically it was because everyone held back on the stars thrown out with the first 15 or 20a nominations. Then everyone had too much left at the end for mediocre players. A lesson on being TOO conservative.
A little high on injury risk between 1B, 3B, and the always dangerous catcher spot. Not that a high-risk/high-reward strategy is necessarily a bad thing.
Nice pitching staff but that hurts paying a buck or two less for Moore than Wilson or Cain. I’m a huge Jaime Garcia fan though.
Yeah I tried to mitigate the injury risk by getting multiple options. Now I just have to hope that Youk and A-Rod aren’t hurt at the same time..
Does it make sense to throw out guys you DO want in the first round, with the line of thinking that people will overbid if comparable options are gone? For example, if I want Pujols, I shouldn’t risk Ellsbury, M-Cab and Fielder being off the table first, since people will be more desperate to get him. What say you on this?
I’d throw at least one ‘first round’ type so you can see what a first-round price is and if you’re willing to pay it. But there is some merit – once you are comfortable with paying $45 for your star – that you throw the guy you want.
Personally, I think it always makes sense to toss out the best player(s) at the deepest positions as early as possible in the draft. It’ll establish a baseline without creating a mad scramble that’ll drive up prices. At a deep position, you’ll have some owners sitting back waiting for their “sleepers” and occasionally you’ll score one hell of a deal but more often than not you’ll just use your spot on gaining information rather than a player.
Yeah I love throwing starters.
Yesterday I participated in auction 12team H2H 6×6 mixed league draft and this is the team I ended up with.
I left 16$ on the table, which could be a mistake but that’s only relative because as long as you have a competitive team I don’t think it matters, provided you DO have a good team, it only says you were better at finding values, which I think I was.
I prefer having leverage on other guys because it isn’t Pujolses of the world that wins leagues but those 5$ late rounds picks and w/o money you can’t overbid other managers,
For example, I was in bidding war over Beachy, who ended up costing 29$, yes 29$, I was at 50$ needing 10 more players, the other manager had like 40$ needing like 7 players. While he was left with 11$ needing 6 more players with little to no flexibility which translated into him having to stomach 6 god awful picks, I ended up with players who, I think, could give me an edge. In the end I was glad I didn’t win Beachy at, say, 25$. It was the same story with Minor, who cost 15$.
Saying that you could buy this guy or that guy with the money you left is just plain stupid because drafting the guy in the middle of the draft would change the whole dynamics of the draft, leaving you behind and ultimately having to put up yourself with players you don’t want. It could only apply if the player would be drafted with the last pick with the last money.
So the only obvious mistake to my draft, is that I could use some 15$ SP, with the money I left on the table, instead of Cozart, unfortunately I was going for Beachy and other guys like Garza/Latos/Zimmermann slipped through my fingers and after Beachy there wasn’t anyone of the quality left. Nominating Beachy earlier would results into him costing less and me drafting someone else of the quality. As the saying says, learn from your mistakes 🙂
C – Ramos 1$
1B – Fielder 39$
2B – Ackley 5$
3B – Zimmerman 20$
SS – Hanley 29$
LF – Desmond Jennings 17$
CF – Granderson 32$
RF – Bruce 16$
Util – Dee Gordon 7$
Bench – Maybin 2$
Bench – Cozart 2$
SP – CJ Wilson 13$
SP – Gio 13$
RP – Greg Holland 4$
RP – Farnsworth 4$
P – Morrow 10$
P – Scherzer 11$
P – Cahill 5$
Bench – Lynn 3$
Bench – Marshall 3$
Bench – Thornton 1$
Bench – Myers 4$
Bench – Pomeranz 3$
Yeah add your missing money to GIo and you have a real ace. Otherwise, looks like a solid team. Great buys on the closers.
I’m in a 10 team AL only auction draft soon. It’s a 5 x 5 categories league H2H league. We have 4 keepers already selected per team.
I like to nominate relievers early. It’s worked for me in the past–everybody is so focused on the top position players and available SPs, when you throw out a name like Santos I expect the response will tepid. If I can get him for $7 instead of the ESPN suggested $10, I’ll have more money for other positions. And in a categories league, relievers have a huge impact not only on WHIP and ERA, but on Ks as well. That’s why Pestano and Robertson will be early targets as well.
In the leagues I’ve played, people appear to be more conservative with their money for all non-star players, so you can get good relievers cheap early and then go after some of the guys you really want with more cash.
Enos: do you think this strategy is sound?
Whatever keeps you from spending double-digits on closers is great. I only have one closer in double-digits, but end up having to pay over slot on those. Maybe throwing them early is a good idea.
Do not, however, throw your $1 players until the very end. They’ll get bid up.
Thanks for the response. Avoiding paying double-digits is precisely my goal. I like to have an extra $8 or $9 available to target and perhaps overspend on positional needs.
Speaking of which: five teams in my AL-only league need 2B. By my calculations, I have more money but for one team–which has a 2B.
Kinsler, K. Johnson, Kipnis, Ackley and Weeks are available. Do I overpay for Kinsler’s combo of power and SBs or settle for a Johnson and save money for SP, which I really need to address?
It all depends on your league. I am in an 8 team AL only super competitive auction league. Some years stars are undervalued, with the middle and late players going for way to much.
This year was the opposite, with power on the decline, superstar power went ballistic. I tried to lay off and get value in the middle and late.
Not sure if it worked, we’ll see. But the point is you have to adjust every year, every pick during the draft.
PS A few years ago I had $7 extra at the and, which was unheard of. But, I ran away with the league.
Based on the title I would have expected that you left $20 or more on the table. Leaving $4 isn’t a big deal.
Same thing happened to me in the THT Auction. It turned out Brad Johnson and I were both waiting on Lucas Duda to fill CI, and there was a massive dropoff after him. I blinked and he didn’t, but the way we were bidding him up, it basically came down to one of us getting Duda and the other having the flexibility to trump the rest of the $1 guys and leaving a few bucks on the table. I also don’t hate my team. I got the stud I wanted and plenty of bargains in the mid ranks.
Hate to be a hater, honestly I do, but this is some of the worst auction advice I’ve ever seen. Just throwing out guys you don’t want is the most obvious tactic in the world. It doesn’t drive up the value on those players. What it usually does is means that the players you want linger a bit longer and become subject to inflation. Such hackneyed thinking. Read the table. Throw out some guys you want, some you don’t, some you want to see the price on.
Worse still is fretting over where talent is going vis a vis your pre-auction values. The auction is a free market. Players are worth what somebody is willing to pay for them. If you sit around waiting for value, you might end up feeling like you got value versus your spreadsheet, but your roster construction is bound to be out of balance. You are going to need some guys that hit home runs and some pitchers that strike guys out. They are going to look over priced against a spreadsheet. You have to go get them anyway.
You want to see what the market is? Then throw some guys you don’t want to see what the market is. Why jump in and spend before knowing the market? You don’t have to throw guys you don’t want the whole time, that wouldn’t even work, practically. Not suggesting that.
What did I say? I adjusted to the market. I decided I was going to overpay for a star, but not by ten bucks. So I got Kinsler for less than my sheet, McCutch for more, but that gave me 50/50 stats from my cF and 2B.
I wouldn’t suggest to anyone that you have to stick to only value. And I didn’t do that here. #3 seems pretty clear in that regard.
Hey…kind of my bad. You did say you were taking a second look at your rules and it looks like you got the right take aways.
As to rule one, I think you pretty much discovered it doesn’t take a significant amount of money off the table and it robs you of one of your 23 opportunities to do something useful. If you are constantly throwing out guys you don’t want, then it makes it painfully obvious when you are forced to nominate a guy you do want and you might have to pay for it. It’s just one of those rules of thumb that looks good on paper, but doesn’t do a thing for you. To answer your question directly, the reason to jump in before you know the market is to set it or beat it.
As to point 3, what possible utility is there in a spreadsheet that values Albert Pujols at $36 dollars? He won’t go for that. You need to know that going in. There are reasons to buy top talent especially in a mixed league. $36 bucks for Albert Pujols is either algorithmically derived or just a total misunderstanding of the auction. There is no such thing as an overpay or an underpay as that presumes a level of precision in your projections that is impossible. You should have pre-auction values that reflect your anticipation of the marketplace, have plans to find your way through to acquire players with the right skill set to get your roster construction correct. Worrying about value against your pre-ranks distracts you from the actual task at hand.
Sorry for my earlier rudeness. No call for that.
If your sheet tells you that Albert Pujois is worth 36 bucks in your league( assuming you did your homework and didn’t take ESPN’s word for it), then when he goes for 46, it tells you something. Your league is now +10. You track it and adjust. You follow whether pitching is as overinflated as hitting, and adjust. This is what Eno is saying, and he’s right. If top tier hitting is all going for +8 to +10, then getting someone you want and need for +2 is good strategy.
Good info!
I’m in my 6th year in a 25 year old 12 team auction league, however, we lost a few members for this year. So, we’re a 7 team, $260, 25 man, NL East and NL West only, 5×5 league (Runs, SBs, RBIs, OBP, TB, K, S+.5 hold, W, ERA, WHIP).
I usually throw out some players first (e.g. I can throw out Lee, JJ, Hamels), and later try to pick up younger pitchers (D. Hudson, Luebke, Bumgarner, etc…).
What can I do about 2B? Other than Uggla (who’ll go for $50, I’m sure!), there’s some slim pickin’s. Espinosa was kept by someone else, so what now? Or, do I punt 2B?
Thanks, in advance!
$ bucks is no big deal. Once, a long, long time ago, I left 26 $ on the table in an NL only league, I refused to pay what I thought were overly inflated prices. Turns out, I had miscalculated draft inflation (keeper league), and the league all drafted stars and scrubs. So I passed on the big buck stars, and couldn’t SPEND enough on the second tier guys. Never again. I always spend on 1 or 2 big dollar guys in that league, then wait on the bargains.
*4 bucks, sorry. And, hey! Ray Flowers left 10 bucks on the table in LABR this year, it happens to the best of us!