Bibee, Allen and Ottoneu Auction Strategy

Tanner Bibee and Logan Allen are the primary characters in today’s story, but this article isn’t really about them. In fact, I am going to say very little about their value, production, or future performance. Instead, this story is about Ottoneu in-season auctions and how different auctions at different times can lead to different results.

Let’s start with the basic facts of the story. Bibee and Allen are both top pitching prospects. They are both in the Cleveland Guardians organization. They both debuted recently. As of April 25, both were still free agents in Ottoneu league 13, the FanGraphs Staff League #1.

Who was the better, more interesting prospect? That depends who you ask. Here at FanGraphs, Bibee was ranked 70th and Allen 58th. At MLB Pipeline, Bibee was 57th, and Allen outside the top 100. Baseball Prospectus similarly left off Allen but had Bibee 52nd. Baseball America had Allen 77th and Bibee 78th. Pick your pitcher – you can’t go wrong and you’ll have plenty of analysts agreeing with you whichever way you go.

But our story isn’t about their value, it’s about their auctions. Allen debuted on April 23rd and late that night, Team Dark Overlord started an auction for Allen in League 13. Six teams placed a bid:

For context, there are three teams here that represent FanGraphs (Tall Glass is Alex Chamberlain, Dark Overlord is David Appelman, though much of the heavy-lifting is done by Ottoneu veteran Ryan Beck; and the Hawken Hawks are the team I share with Niv Shah). The other three teams are two FanGraphs alums (A Little… is Robert Sanchez and It’s a Perm is Eno Sarris) and Carlos Marcano, who writes for Pitcher List and Baseball Prospectus.

Bibee, meanwhile, made his debut on the 26th and Team Dark Overlord again started an auction that day. This time there were seven bids:

Joe Musgrove On $19, Hawken Hawks $12, Team Dark Overlord $8, TLR’s Retirement Project $8, A Little Out of Context $7, Fire Saga $7, The Speedsters $4″ width=”1080″ height=”963″ />

The new teams entering the fray are two more FanGraphers – Jake Mailhot (The Joe Musgrove On) and Alex Eisert (Speedsters) – and Pete Ball, my co-host on the Keep or Kut podcast (Fire Saga).

With two relative similarly valued prospects making their debut within days of each other, how did we end up with different teams bidding (Tall Glass only bid on Allen while Musgrove only bid on Bibee)? Why was the top bid on Allen only tied for the third-highest for Bibee?

In-season auction strategy can be challenging in Ottoneu and these two auctions help show why. I connected with some of the other managers to get their input on why they bid how they did.

To start, you’ll see that Niv and I bid $8 on Allen and lost the tie-breaker, then came back and bid $12 on Bibee and just straight-up lost. We actually thought we were bidding relatively high for Allen at $8 (which was kind of true) and we were okay with that given we have a ton of cap space. When we lost that bidding, we decided to come back stronger for Bibee. This was less about Bibee being inherently more valuable and more about determining that we underestimated the market with Allen and didn’t want to make that mistake again.

For Ryan Beck, who started both of these auctions, timing of unrelated events played a role. Ryan bid $5 on Allen and then went up to $8 on Bibee, but tells me, “Bibee and Allen have similar value in my eyes.” So what gives? First, he realized, like we did, that he underestimated the market and would need to be more aggressive. Second, Garrett Whitlock, who Ryan rosters, hit the IL on April 28. When Allen was up for bid, Whitlock was part of Ryan’s rotation. By the time the Bibee auction was ending, Whitlock was hurt and going to be out for a bit. So his need for Bibee had increased.

But he stopped at $8 when he already saw three teams bid $8 on Allen. This was related to OPL – Team Dark Overlord has been atop the OPL leaderboard recently and Ryan needed to get his roster lined up for the May 1 OPL snapshot and the second round. He needed to add multiple SP and that meant he had to make his dollars stretch. Paying $10+ for Bibee would have prevented him from putting the bids he needed on Drew Smyly, Vincent Velasquez and Domingo German. You could say Bibee is more exciting than those three – I certainly would – but adding three pitchers was important to him in his situation. So he spread the dollars around.

Jake Mailhot also said his decision had little “to do with Allen/Bibee’s talent” and agreed they are pretty even in his mind. But he didn’t bid on Allen went to $19 on Bibee. Again, outside factors played a role. Seth Lugo had been put up for auction before Bibee and Jake lost that auction with a $5 bid. He still needed a starting pitcher, which boosted his interest in Bibee.

He also came around to the idea that he should bail on Jesse Winker, who he had rostered at $22. A couple days may not seem like a lot, but he wasn’t quite ready to pull the plug on Winker when Allen was auctioned. Then Winker started to lose playing time and Jake made the decision to bail on Winker and “go all-in on Bibee.” He also added Brent Rooker looking to “inject some talent into my roster.” A couple of days later and he was more willing to shake things up and that meant he had more cash available.

Alex Chamberlain went the other way, winning Allen at $8 and then sitting out Bibee. You might think that, having added Allen, he decided Bibee wasn’t necessary, but he says he just missed the Bibee auction. I can sympathize. Sometimes I miss an email. Sometimes I see an auction late at night and make a plan to look at it the next day…and then don’t. Sometimes I just don’t think a guy is all that exciting until I look closer, and by that time it is too late.

But for Alex, at least, player value was at least somewhat of a factor. He told me he favors Allen and was surprised how much more Bibee went for here (as well as how much more attention he seemed to get in NFBC and other formats). I am speculating/reading between the lines a bit, but I wonder if Alex didn’t notice the Bibee auction and feel content he had already gotten the better of the two, at least in his mind.

One thousand words later, why share all this? Two reasons:

1. People often ask me what they should bid in an auction for a player. I used to put suggested bids in my Hot Right Now columns. But once the season starts, it becomes effectively impossible to tell a manager what the “right” bid is for a player. From this article alone, you can see that it is a factor of player talent/value, available cap space, willingness to make cuts, need for the position, etc. In general, at this point in the season, players are either only worth a buck or two as a flyer or they are worth paying a premium for because they can have a big impact – and then you have to figure out what that premium looks like for your team and for that player at that position.
2. People often try to predict what a player will go for at auction and place a bid based on that prediction, but as you can see here, it’s extremely difficult to make that kind of prediction. One team might prefer Allen, another might prefer Bibee, and another might not care. One team might have decided to shake things up and be ready to go super high with their bid. One team might have a new need based on an injury that changes their bidding behavior.

One of the beauties of Vickrey auctions like Ottoneu uses (where the winner pays only $1 more than the second highest bid) is that you don’t have to worry about #2. Decide how much is too much for that player, bid $1 less, and see where you land.

That $12 bid we made for Bibee was based on a decision that we were fine letting someone else have him at $13 – that was more than we were willing to pay. It pushes him to a $15 keeper and we weren’t willing to go that high. We didn’t bother thinking too much about what other teams were going to bid. We didn’t try to predict who might jump in the bidding. We set a value, placed our bid, and that was that.

That’s my auction strategy and these two auctions do a nice job of illustrating why.