In 2013, I won the inaugural year of the Tout Wars Mixed Draft league. I was rewarded with a promotion to one of the three live auction leagues and was ecstatic to have been slotted into the storied American League only version, made famous by the fantastic book Fantasyland. Unfortunately, year one in AL Tout Wars went terribly, as I finished 10th. As further punishment, my team garnered fewer than 60 fantasy points, which resulted in me beginning the 2015 season with a reduced FAAB.

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It has begun! May your leagues bring you much joy. What follows is one approach to auctions that should bring you future joy.

I participated in two auction drafts. In both, I decided to spend little on pitching. In The Fake Baseball’s Friends and Family League (TFBFFL), I spent almost the minimum on our (co-own the free team with Zach Sanders) rotation and bench. I spent $16.00 on 12 pitchers ($2 max), but the results were not horrible: Drew Hutchison, Homer Bailey, Carlos Martinez, Henderson Alvarez, Shelby Miller, John Lackey, Sean Doolittle, Carlos Rodon and Rafael Montero. I dropped Chad Qualls already for Zach McAllister. We have enough bats to upgrade.

In my next auction, I wanted two better pitchers, but I still gave myself a $40 cap. I wound up spending $45 on the following:

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I participated in two drafts this past weekend. Both were 10-team auctions, one a season-long rotisserie keeper league (“LOWV,” henceforth), the other a head-to-head points redraft league (“Sandlot”). They are just home leagues, not renowned leagues such as Tout Wars or LABR or anything like that, but hey! Breaking down any draft can make for good insight, and if it helps just one person clarify his or her strategy, perhaps it did some good.

“So, Alex, how did you in your drafts?” Great, thanks for asking! I love both my teams. Love them. Except I made the same mistake in each draft: I left some money on the table. Like, $20 in one instance. It became a running gag: “Don’t question Alex — it’s all part of his master plan!” But here’s the catch: I arguably have the best team, per the projections, even after managing my budget so poorly.

So where did my strategy go wrong? Honestly, I’m not sure it did. (Or maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better.)
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Every year, we here at RotoGraphs publish tiered rankings for every position and update them throughout the year. What you will read below are, more or less, my end-of-season projections for National League outfielders, since the season hasn’t started yet. However, these rankings will change as the year progresses, and I would be a fool to tell you the tiers below will look the same in September.

No doubt, this is a contentious matter, and you can tell me how much of a moron I am in the comments.

Without further ado, here is the 2015 season’s first installment of tiered rankings for NL outfielders.

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Last night, I participated in a FSWA* sponsored league with Yahoo’s Scott Pianowski and others from the industry. It’s 14-team H2H with standard deep rosters including two catchers, five outfielders, and just four bench spots. With a $260 budget, the depth offers a modest challenge. We also have a transaction limit of 50 for the season or three per week. As the Daily Grind guy, that’s a blow to my standard approach.

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In late February, Lord Appelman unveiled the FanGraphs auction calculator which is loosely based upon a similar calculator named Last Player Picked. I penned a guide to using said calculator which has proven popular. As we delve deeper into draft season, I find that I’m using the calculator in ways that probably weren’t intended. That’s what we’re here to discuss today.

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I’ve been playing in auction leagues since about 2001 and believe it to be far superior to snake drafts. Why choose a draft format that immediately prevents you from acquiring players as soon as you know your draft slot isn’t number one? I want the opportunity to buy Mike Trout for $48 damn it! Okay, enough standing on my pedestal and rehashing why I think auctions are best. Let’s just talk about some random things that have popped into my head since my Tout Wars auction on Saturday.

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My inaugural season in the famed AL-Only Tout Wars league didn’t work out very well last year. Although my team heading out of the draft was heavy on OBP (not by design, but because those turned out to be the most undervalued hitters), I ended up finishing just ninth in the category, en route to a pathetic 10th place finish. My offense was decimated by injuries and despite spending $205 of my $260 budget on hitting, I tallied just 28 of 60 possible hitting points. So after a disappointing first showing, did I plan to do anything differently this time around? Yes, but the strategic change was rather minor.

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The aftermath of The Great Valuation System Test continues! Before reading further, be sure you know what was being tested and our process, along with the results:

The Process
The Results

At the end of the results article, I mentioned that although we now have a good idea of which valuation system proved best at converting a player’s statistical line into a dollar value, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the system does the best job for every individual player or player type. So today I’ll look into different player groups and individual players and see if we could find any patterns.

I will be excluding ESPN because their rating number is on a different scale and only using the Razzball – 0% Pos Adjustment & 100% versions. I also don’t have room to fit all the systems in so had to cut down in some manner.

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Yesterday, I shared the exciting news that my project partner Jason Bulay and I have completed The Great Valuation System Test, which involved a whopping 13 fantasy baseball player valuation systems. As usual, I feel like I could have done a slightly better job of explaining our process and goal. Essentially, we wanted to determine which valuation system most accurately converts a player’s statistical line (accounting for his position or ignoring it) into a dollar value. I eagerly awaited all the data so I could run the correlations and had my fingers crossed that the system I use, the REP method, performed well, if not the best. So it’s time to unveil the results.

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