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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Yesterday was my first normal draft of the season. It is a 12-team auction keeper league with standard deep rosters. It’s 5×5 roto, and we use OPS rather than average. We have a $310 budget. You can keep an unlimited number of players at the cost of previous draft price plus $7. Undrafted players cost $8 to keep.

After reviewing the keeper rosters, I adjusted my goal for the season from winning to acquiring as much keeper value as possible while contending. I have a few streaming tricks that should keep me within striking distance even as I optimize for next season. The best keepers are usually found in-season, but I sought to draft as many as possible.

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An unambiguously true fact: Matt Holliday is an old man in baseball years and in dog years. Another unambiguously true fact: Holliday has been remarkably consistent throughout his career. Hear ye:

• He has hit at least 20 home runs in nine straight years, a streak currently matched only by David Ortiz and Miguel Cabrera;
• His walk rate has hovered between 10 and 12 percent for the better part of a decade, and his strikeout rate has always resided in the mid-teens;
• He has averaged 647 plate appearances per season dating back to 2006;
• And honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a batted ball profile so absurdly consistent.

Yet a slight dip in power and a career-worst batting average (.272, aka what some players can only dream of hitting) in 2014 couldn’t have come at a worse age, and it all has fans and projection systems alike running for the hills, as shown below.
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Auction drafts enable me. I love the freedom to pick who I please with total disregard to ADP. I can decide what a player is worth to me at that exact moment in the draft and act accordingly. Too much freedom can be a bad thing, which is why we need guidance in an auction. Specifically, everybody should be referencing some kind of value sheet.

Most publicly available values are optimized for a 12-team, $260, shallow roster league. It’s the most common format, yet so many of us play by different rules. You want a custom sheet optimized for your league. Enter our Auction Calculator.

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This past week, in the ottoneu Slack Community, (check this out if you are interested in joining, which you should be if you play ottoneu) there was a heated debate about paying for top RP, particularly in points leagues. One side was arguing that the elite RP put up a Pt/IP score that few other players can manage. That if you are willing to pay $35 more for Mike Trout than Ryan Braun (projected to have a 200 point gap between them), why not pay the same premium for Aroldis Chapman over a guy 200 points below him – Santiago Casilla?

The other side argued that spending $30+ on a relief pitcher would be crazy – there are always solid RP options on the wire, so why not just wait and see who will be the next Wade Davis?

Both sides are right.

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Last Sunday, the FanGraphs Ottoneu League #2 did our auction. Chad Young, Brad Johnson and Scott Spratt have each given their thoughts on it. It was a unique auction (most are in some way) and by making a few early adjustments I was able to come away from it better than I expected.

To begin with, I hate to start any fantasy season in complete rebuild mode. I want to have a chance to win if everything goes right. Before last season was half way over I had about zero chance of winning so then I started a rebuild. I had the most free agent dollars, I picked up some $1 players (Harrison, Petit, Boxburger, House) and waited for a team to drop a high dollar player to free up some cash. The plan worked great by getting Joey Votto and Brian McCann. Also, I like prospects, even if they have limited upside, near the majors and picked up players like Matt Wisler, Carlos Rodon and Ty Kelly.

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On Sunday, I participated in the FanGraphs Staff Two Ottoneu auction. One of my favorite things about Ottoneu and auction drafts in general is the ability to compare their results to the greater market. If you trust crowdsourcing as a fair representation of a player’s value, then the team that came away from the auction with the most surplus value relative to player average prices across all Ottoneu leagues is the best team entering the season. You can find those total surplus dollars listed for each team below, as well as best and worst values by the same criteria. To see Ottoneu market prices, click here.
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