Don’t Price Enforce
I’ve been vocal about this in the past and I’ve been asked to explain why I am so adamant about not price enforcing. The simple reason is because the risk isn’t worth the reward. But I can offer more detail than that.
To start, we need to align on what we mean when we say price enforcing. And that’s not necessarily easy. But I think it comes down to one basic line with two key elements:
Price enforcing is bidding on a player you don’t want to win because you think the price on that player is too low.
Pretty straight-forward. But both of those elements are key. The majority of my bids are on players who have a price I think is low and who I DO want to win. That’s just bidding.
What makes price enforcing its own category is just what the name says: you’re bidding to enforce a price rather than to win a player.
Defining the term helps but if I’m going to tell you the risk isn’t worth the reward, I need to define the risk and the reward, too.
The potential reward to price enforcing is driving up the price of a player another team ends up rostering. They were going to get a $37 Bryce Harper but you bid $38 and they went to $39 and you’ve pulled $2 out of their remaining budget. Maybe you get into a bidding war and drive the price up more than $2 but that will be less common and it also increases the likelihood that the gambit fails and you eat the risk (which we’ll get to soon).
The thing is, that reward isn’t very rewarding. Yes you’ve pulled a couple bucks out of the auction pool but I’m not sure that matters a ton. It’s not nothing, but how much do I stand to benefit?
The $2 (or $3 or $5 or whatever) benefit is split amongst 11 managers, myself included. That’s a tidy $0.18 (or $0.27 or $0.45) per manager. That’s…not that exciting.
What about the risk? The risk is you get stuck with a player you don’t want. You’ve eaten up cap and a roster spot with a guy you didn’t want and you now have to adjust your auction plan for that. You can mitigate that risk post-auction by cutting the player in question, but by then you’ve already missed out.
To me, that risk isn’t worth it. I think we overstate the downside of another manager getting a good value. If you think Bryce Harper is a bad fit for your team, and you don’t want him on your roster, and you think his market price is $40 and someone else wins him for $35, that’s not ideal, but it really doesn’t hurt you that much. At most, if everything breaks the wrong way, that manager might spend $5 on a guy you did want and drive up the price for you. More likely, they add a dollar here or there to a few other guys, some of whom you might bid on, some of whom you don’t. Or they hold the $5 to spend on free agents in-season where, again, they might bid you up, they might bid up someone else, we just don’t know. The hit you by letting that player go for below your perceived market price just isn’t that big
Plus, with 480 players rostered, every team will have good values. There is nothing you can do to stop that. What you can avoid is carrying bad values or players you don’t want on your own roster. Price enforcing is basically the only way to mess that up – you bid on a guy you don’t want, misread the market, and win. Taking the risk that I am stuck carrying a player I don’t want at a price I don’t want to pay just to try to make someone else pay $2 isn’t worth it to me.
My policy: any bid I make, I’m hoping the clock ticks down to zero so I can win the player. If I am only bidding in the hopes that someone else pays more, I am not placing the bid.
A long-time fantasy baseball veteran and one of the creators of ottoneu, Chad Young's is the Managing Editor for RotoGraphs, and can be heard on the Keep or Kut Podcast. You can follow him on Bluesky @chadyoung.bsky.social.
Getting stuck with players is rough, but do you think there’s any benefit to throwing your bids around so that others don’t know exactly who you want? If one only bids on players one wants, others may pick up one’s strategy based on those bids. Perhaps I’m overthinking it, but maybe it’s still okay to bid on players during the bid scrum to throw others off, just don’t be the last one bidding.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I don’t really pay any attention to who’s bidding on whom. I’ve never really felt like I can figure out what someone’s looking for based on who they bid on.
As for me, I have a price in mind for most players, and they change as the bidding progresses, but if they’re under my target, I bid, otherwise, I don’t. Especially in OttoNeu, it moves to quickly for me to think much beyond that.
Yet, I think one can engage in sufficient strategical subterfuge just by occasionally bidding early on players you don’t want. If you know Player X is going in the $30s and you toss in a couple token bids around 15 and 22, most owners won’t notice that your team name only pops up when you’re super serious. That’s not price enforcing, just active participation.
Right. I feel that, if one takes time off for 4-5 unwanted players up for bid, it’ll be very obvious that one wants a player when he/she suddenly chimes in on the 6th person up for bid. If anyone is paying attention, that’s a tell. Whether that tell actually is valued knowledge for anyone is another thing.
Honestly not sure I understand the value in this. First of all I don’t think most people pay much attention to who else is bidding except in the moment. I might know that right now I’m head to head with team X for this player but beyond that I’m not paying much attention to who bids. Second, even if someone is tracking, does it matter? If I only bid when I want a guy, other managers will assume I want guys I bid on. If I also randomly bid offer times they’ll make the same assumption. So how does that impact their behavior? I don’t think it should. So my take on this is that making bids for this kind of subterfuge has a low likelihood of being noticed and a high likelihood of having no impact of it is noticed. If you want to bid $10 on an Acuña you don’t want, fine. There’s no harm in that. But it’s not going to help either imo.
Oh, we have caught a guy upping the price and got him stuck with someone he didn’t want. It really through his draft off. I got someone last year, because I was being patient and the guy wanted me to spend money thinking I needed players. I stopped, and he was like, “Are you not going to bid anymore.” You get what you deserve when you price control.
I certainly know when good competition is bidding, I also know when they want a player..some will have a hard price cap but others have a get your player ,mindset…I will enforce the extra buck or two on them as long as I don’t mind the player
@Joe Wilkey: “I have a price in mind for most players, and they change as the bidding progresses, but if they’re under my target, I bid, otherwise, I don’t.” That’s pretty much me. I may not be targeting that player, but if he comes at a good price, I’ll take him. So I will bid him up until the price is not particularly a bargain. Some might call that price enforcing.
OTH, if I bid him up and he comes close to my bid limit, then I might back off before then because 1) he’s not a good fit for my strategy; and 2) he’s no longer much of a bargain. But if he is still a bargain and I win him at a good price, then I’ll adjust my strategy.
in my experience it’s definitely needed to put in realistic bids on players that may not be your first option in order to throw other bidders off. I had one particular year where another player who doesn’t do his pre-draft homework who just waited around to see what players I wanted since I was only bidding on players I wanted. I was left with the miserable alternatives of having to overpay for every player I targeted or to go with Plan B at nearly every position. If I put in a bid on a player who may not be my first choice, if I play it right I can win both ways. If the player goes for less than expected, I have a decent player at a good value. If the player goes for at/more than expected, I bow out, but am seen as having been “in the running” for the player, so it is less clear whom I’m targeting in addition to making sure that players are bought at their appropriate value. I realize that ignoring what other teams are doing is the proper strategy on paper, but don’t forget that auction drafts are a human event and some players play that game. If they can prevent a better team from executing their draft plan, that is a win for them. As Mike Tyson said, “Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
This assumes rationality in bidding. I would guess that much of the bidding is the result of what Keynes called “animal spirits”.
I find it harder to resist price enforcing at lower values, especially in a fast-paced auction in which there’s a good chance a couple owners may be temporarily distracted. The clock is ticking down on a $10-$15 talent sitting at $5. I’m trying to save roster spots/money for other players/positions, but it sure takes discipline to allow a competitor a 50% discount on a player who could break out and become a multiyear bargain keeper.
I have definitely price enforced on a guy going slow early on, and because I was bidding and buying time other owners caught on and started bidding. I’ve seen guys almost go for $5, I jump in to price enforce at the last second. I bid to $14, and someone joins and eventually the player goes for $30 and I didn’t bid past $14.
Is it “price enforcing” if a guy is about to go for like $14 and you bid up 1 because you think he is worth $24, and the reason you werent bidding to that point because you just assumed the price would be too high?
I have done this and have been acccused of enforcing in drafts some times, but I would take the guy at $X, just not the $X+$Y I thought he was going to go for.
Exactly. I think Chad’s definition, the clause “a player you don’t want to win”, is so narrow as to exclude what you’re describing. There are plenty of players I hadn’t wanted to win because I figured would go for higher prices; in the context of your example, one can make room on their roster for a player expected to provide $9 of surplus value. Or someone else bids again and the surplus to them is reduced.
For the record, that’s what I consider to be price enforcing, and I don’t think that’s bad — in fact, I think it’s a wholly rational strategy to win in ottoneu!
Only problem is if you end up running out of roster spots (for what you actually need), instead of cash, winning too many players at what you think are good bargains, LOL. Presumably, in a truly competitive league, that shouldn’t likely happen (unless you actually overvalue too many scrubs 😉 ), but…
Regarding UnCool’s comment, I think the 2nd type of price enforcing described by O’Kielboomer is okay early in the draft but more danger later when you are in danger of running out of roster spots. It’s easy to adjust if you get a bargain early in the draft, but harder later.
In that scenario, if I think a guy will go for $24 and bidding is at $14 my decision to bid $15 or not is entirely based on “if I win this guy at $15 will I be happy?” If yes, I bid. If not, I don’t. Because that means I don’t value the guy at $15 and if I don’t, there’s a decent chance I just misread the market and no one else does either. And then you’re bidding $15 to drive up the price on a guy with $14 market value.
Bidding cause I’m surprised a guy is going so cheap and maybe I can grab a good value isn’t price enforcing – it’s just bidding on a guy I think is good value.
100%, and very clearly stated – would be hard to see someone argue logically FOR price enforcing
It’s pretty easy actually.
The goal of an auction is to acquire players at surplus value. A player you “don’t like” who you have projected to exceed their current price is a good candidate to bid on. Just because you didn’t expect him to be that low doesn’t detract from the player being a value at that point in time.
The whole premise of the “price enforcing” idea is based upon playing favorites on players, which you shouldn’t do because you should be trying to accrue value instead of certain players.
I don’t think this is accurate. It’s not about playing favorites. If I have room for a player and didn’t expect him to be that cheap and I’m happy to win him, that’s not price enforcing – that’s just bidding.
When you say “projected to exceed their current price” you need to be clear what you mean by that. If you mean “I expect his value to my team to exceed his current price” you should bid cause you value that player at more than they’re price. If you mean “I expect his market price to exceed his current price” but don’t think his value to your team is higher than his current price, then a bid would be price enforcement and, per what I laid out in the article, high risk and low reward.
I think we all agree here, but we are arguing semantics. It’s a good idea to bid on a player when “I expect his value to my team to exceed his current price,” and hat should incorporate slots available.
Been waiting for your article on price enforcing since our comments in your Feb 8th article! Thanks for writing this, here are my thoughts:
With respect to the clause “a player you don’t want to win”, you gotta pick your situations judiciously. You probably shouldn’t price enforce on a player you don’t want to accidentally win at any price, for me that’d be Red Sox players. But in most cases, whether you want a player or not is dependent on their price and value at any given time in the auction.
Ottoneu is all about getting as much surplus value out of your $400 roster as possible, and warping that a bit further with loans as those support your longer-term goals in any given season. In that respect I don’t understand why you’d want to completely eliminate price enforcement as an auction strategy. Instead of this Harper example, what about your Bogaerts example from the 2/8 article? If you’d pivoted from your pre-draft strategy and gotten him for $18-22, you’d still have excess cap space for post-draft targets and a great trade chip for a season you aren’t considering yourself a contender.
Tl;dr price enforcement is but one of many strategies to win great value players at auction and denying others from doing the same
I don’t think that Xander situation was a price enforcement situation. At the time he was up for auction, I didn’t think his value to my team exceeded the price he was going for. In retrospect, that was a bad call. But the mistake wasn’t refusing to bid on a guy I didn’t value, it was attaching the wrong value to the player.
Re: your TL;DR you can’t “win great value players” via price enforcing because you’re paying more than you think the player is worth. You’re basically bidding in the gap between your value on the player and your assumed market value on the player. So if you win you’re getting a value relative to your expected market value, but overpaying based on your actual value. And the fact of winning means your assumed market value was wrong.
So now you have a player you value at (for example) $10, but you’re paying him (for example) $15 because you think the rest of the league values him at (for example) $20…but now we know they DON’T value him at $20. So you just have an overpaid guy.
You said you were shocked Bogaerts went as cheap as he did, it seemed from your post that you recognized not bidding was an error both in the moment and in retrospect.
Winning an auction on a player going below the value you expected doesn’t mean your assumed market value was wrong, auction sale prices don’t represent those for myriad reasons- timing/player order, contextual budget and team construction, random error (misclicked, got up to get a beer, etc., at least in a fast auction).
I don’t even know what to do with that last example to be honest, I think there are many more examples that actually happen in a draft of players going for cheaper than you expected AND than your value for the player.
Fundamentally I think your definition of price enforcing is overly broad and we’re each hammering on the edge cases to make our points…maybe at the end of the day we agree on when it’s smart to bid or not, you just wouldn’t call it price enforcing when most others would!
A roster spot is part of a player’s cost. Without that context, price enforcing is sort of a meaningless term.
If you were in a league with unlimited roster spots but a fixed budget, then “enforcing” a $39 Harper just means your price on Harper is $39. You think Harper is worth $39 (at least), nobody else does, there’s no other costs, you should win Harper. That’s how an auction works. Presuming you’re operating within the same cumulative economy, that just means you have other players valued lower than the highest bid across the rest of the league to account for the difference in cash.
Returning to the real world where roster space is limited, there’s a good argument to be made that if you’ve got the highest bid on Harper specifically, you should just place it. Every player consumes the same number of spots, but very different amounts of cash, which means their $ vs. spot costs are pretty inconsistent, i.e. the majority of a dollar player’s cost is the space they consume and not their auction price. To use actual numbers, in a 12-team league with $260 budgets and 26-man rosters, $39 Harper is 1.25% of the auction dollars available and 0.3% of the roster space, and a $1 player is 0.03% of the available dollars and 0.3% of the roster space; 97% of Harper’s cost is money, 91% of the dollar player’s cost is the roster spot. And Harper’s $/spot ratio gets higher the more he costs.
Consequently, it’s somewhat irrelevant to consider the cost of rostering Harper as part of his overall cost (it’s there, it’s just meaningless), so he does sort of live in the hypothetical world from earlier. He’s worth rostering, the question is just how much of your auction budget are you willing to part with. And if it’s more than anyone else, then you should win him and figure the rest out later.
Conversely, price enforcing on low-value players is indeed a terrible bet. Not only do you run the risk of filling up on junk, it’s very likely you won’t even create the intended outcome; another team likely has a plethora of $1 players available (not every player with >$0 value can be rostered) so if you bid one up they’re not going to spend three times their valuation to take them back. They’ll just move on to the next flier. As you move up the price ladder, the value of “price enforcing” gets higher and higher as spot cost relative to the overall cost decreases.
The conclusion should then be that price enforcing is a great strategy on high-value players, where it’s known by its other name of “being the high bid”. Don’t do it on low-value players, though honestly that hopefully doesn’t need to be said (don’t roster dollar players you don’t want! News at 11!). The middle is a little more confusing where things like roster composition might come into play, though it’s also the “boring” bit where you can steal a $15 player for $10 because nobody’s paying attention.
The Harper scenario you lay out (bidding $39 cause you think he’s worth $39) isn’t price enforcing. It’s just bidding what you think a player is worth. You state that it’s other name is “being the high bid” but if a $39 bid on a player you value at $39 (or more) is price enforcing, then every bid is price enforcing. Price enforcing has to be defined in some way that separates it from other bids, which is what I try to do in the article. Price enforcing is a strategy to drive up bids and make a player more expensive (thereby enforcing a higher price), not a strategy to win the bidding.
I guess then there’s a key question to be answered: whose price are you trying to enforce?
“you think the price on that player is too low.” implies to me that I’m the one who thinks Harper is worth $39 (or at least more than the original $37). Which makes intuitive sense – otherwise I’m trying to enforce a price I don’t actually know. I would like another team to pay the maximum they are willing to for every player they buy, so if they’re willing to spend $39 on Harper I’d rather they do that then spend $37. But I only know they’re willing to spend $37, I don’t know that they’re willing to go to $39.
If this is merely about not trying to guess what your leaguemates are willing to pay for a player and instead sticking to your own values, then yeah you’re right and nothing more should be said. Though I’m not sure that’s a heated debate. For what it’s worth, I’d advocate for an altered definition under that circumstance:
That definition makes sense. I think the key point is it is not a bid to win, it is a bid to drive up the price, and that carries risk, because you might win.
In a league that have had some long history with, I tend to sometimes price enforce when I know that the other bidder really wants that player. They will be in a battle with another league member for a time, and they won’t have hesitation in their bids, such that it gives the impression that the player is going to be theirs or else. If that battle briefly ends, I’ll throw in a few more extra bids just to see if the other person will go a little further. They usually do.
I would agree that those extra dollars are probably meaningless in the long run, and that I would only do this price enforcing if I know the other person very well given our league history together. I also would hesitate doing this if I was strapped for cash.
However, even though it’s only a few dollars, sometimes at the end of the draft you’ll have taken out a competitor for some low-salaried players that you’re eying because they won’t quite have enough to compete then. Or, if you’re bidding on a middle-ranged guy, they won’t go as deeply in on someone because they won’t be as freewheeling with their cash since their leftover salary doesn’t seem as lofty. Who really knows.
Maybe this is how one feels when one takes the stairs instead of the elevator. It’s not a lot of exercise, and it probably won’t matter much in terms of fitness, but it’s something that might help anyway.
The thing is it’s more likely to have no impact. It’s you, that other manager and 10 others. Maybe you take away $2 he can’t spend on a mid tier guy you like or maybe it just passes that value to some other manager who then uses those savings to take a player away from you. Which is why I think you have to assume some sort of distribution of the impact across all teams (which is the $2/11 managers I show in the article). If you stand to gain 2/11ths of a dollar and the cost is a $20 guy you don’t want, you only need to be “wrong” once every hundred times or so for the strategy to hurt more than it helps. Given most Ottoneu auctions have something like 150-200 players in them, if you find yourself price enforcing on 10% of players, you only need to accidentally win the bidding once every 5 or so YEARS to have it be a net negative.
“Given most Ottoneu auctions have something like 150-200 players in them”
Most people on this site don’t draft with Ottoneu – you may want to reflect that reality in your comments and writing for this site.
1) If you are reading this deep into a comment thread on auction price enforcement strategy on FanGraphs and you are not playing Ottoneu, you should definitely check it out.
2) I write about Ottoneu. This is like telling the MLB.com beat writer for the Twins to stop focusing on the Twins because most MLB.com readers aren’t Twins fans. It’s my job lol
I agree in principle. But I also believe in adapting in an auction, which may mean bidding on a player that is undervalued that you didn’t particularly plan to target, but objectively gives you more value than some other player of roughly equal capability.
In this spirit of being less definitive and more adaptive in who you target in an auction, I would also say be less definitive about how you think league-mates will bid.
I like Chad’s objective definition of price enforcing.
There is also a subjective definition…when you bid on a player going for a “low” price and then find yourself praying for someone else to outbid you 28 seconds later…you price enforced.
I suspect most of us have been there. The feeling is unmistakable.
I dunno. The whole ‘don’t price enforce’ thing really backs you into a corner. If you’re the best fantasy player in a sharp room, you’ll get burned. You’re tipping your pitches.
It could totally work if you’re one of those managers who shows up for fun and wanders away when football returns. Those folk aren’t really trying to win anyway so there isn’t much point to them using advanced betting strategy. Nor are they reading articles about betting strategy. In fact, they’re the ones whining about auctions being too long.
Anyway, I advise developing an array of strategies to be deployed contrary to whatever is the standard for your league. If everyone’s throwing around price enforcing bids, then you don’t need to play along. They’re doing the job of confusing everything for you. If everyone is making straight bids, then it’ll (probably) pay to be the force of chaos in the room.
After all, price enforcement is based on the idea that a player is undervalued. It’s rarely bad to acquire underpriced players. As long as you’re enforcing on undervalued players and have the ability to change plans mid-draft, I don’t see a problem.