Leftover Auction Cash: Maybe Not a Bad Thing
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.)
There are myriad draft strategies for every league format. One of the most popular, I think, is to load up on hitting and complement the offense with a dirt-cheap pitching staff. Indeed, this is the strategy our own Mike Podhorzer recently employed, more or less.
If there’s one thing all strategies share in common, it’s to maximize the value of your draft budget. In other words, use every last dollar to extract as much value as you can from the player pool.
I, however, don’t deliberately try to do this. I simply try not to overspend on any player. That’s it. It’s hardly revolutionary — it’s borderline ridiculous that I even call it a strategy. But I adhere to it pretty strongly, and this adherence is pivotal to the strategy’s success. “Success” is a term used loosely here, but it did lead me to a LOWV championship last year.
Another part of my strategy is to stand by and watch the first several players off the board, no matter their quality. (To attest: I didn’t win my first players until the 13th and 15th nominations.) This caused me to skip some of the league’s most expensive weapons — Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt, etc. — as they tend to go first, but it also allowed me to gauge the relative values of the remaining players. Understanding the trajectory of your draft is crucial to identifying the best and worst values when it really matters.
My strategy forces me to not be attached to any particular player. Sure, there are players whom I target specifically, but it’s because I already think they’re undervalued. Detachment prevents me from bidding up a guy just because he’s one of my man-crushes. In other words, I try to suppress personal bias as much as possible. It also helps me exploit other owners’ biases. Market inefficiencies pervade draft lobbies; more money spent undeservedly on one player means more value to be found elsewhere.
What my strategy left me with in LOWV are guys who may not be most ideal or my favorites but were arguably great values relative to their peers. Unsurprisingly, my team is pretty old (thanks to Adam Wainwright, Ben Zobrist, Dustin Pedroia, Matt Holliday, Adrian Beltre and Hisashi Iwakuma) and pretty injured (Kenley Jansen, Sean Doolittle, Yu Darvish).
Regardless of my draft’s outcome, I came close to leaving a ton of money on the table. I liked Khris Davis (I made a bold prediction about him), but I probably paid too much for him late in the draft. Instead, I could have abandoned the bidding war when it escalated and targeted other available, cheap outfield power, such as
It’s about extracting the most value from your draft budget, as mentioned before, but it’s also a matter of timing, too — a function of the narrative of your draft — which means the most value may not come from using up your entire budget. It’s possible that the best last picks for your remaining slots, in terms of expected value, aren’t the most expensive ones. Don’t be afraid to draft breakout candidates and have money leftover instead of taking established, but possibly declining, veterans, especially if the young guys have what you perceive to be greater expected values. Obviously, you want to leave less money on the table than I did. But if everything goes right this year, I could be the poster boy for the $240-budget strategy.
Ultimately, it’s OK to swallow your pride and take some heat from your fellow owners for your offbeat picks. It’s better than trying to max out your draft budget by forcing a player you don’t like onto your roster, as I did with Pedroia. And unless you have zero roster turnover, you will end up dropping some of your precious draft picks anyway — perhaps for someone you actually wanted to draft in the first place.
Like I said, none of this is revolutionary by any means. But I hope it serves as a friendly reminder for those drafting this weekend. Good luck to you all, by the way!
Here’s my salary-blind LOWV roster:
C Jonathan Lucroy
1B Jose Abreu
2B Daniel Murphy
3B Kyle Seager
SS Ben Zobrist
CI Victor Martinez
MI Dustin Pedroia
OF Jorge Soler
OF George Springer
OF Matt Holliday
OF Gregory Polanco
OF Khris Davis
UT Adrian Beltre
P Corey Kluber
P Adam Wainwright
P Michael Wacha
P Hisashi Iwakuma
P Matt Shoemaker
P Yu Darvish
P Dellin Betances
P Kenley Jansen
P Sean Doolittle
Bench: Corey Seager
Bench: Steven Souza
Leftover cash: $3
What do you think? Does my team make up for poor budgeting? Hindsight is 20/20, and I wish I had gone ahead and shelled out more a middle infielder (or two) that I really liked, or maybe upgraded one of my mid-tier SPs such as Wacha or Iwakuma. My relief corps is certainly a risky affair, but I plan to fill in the injured Doolittle and Jansen with Tyler Clippard and Joel Peralta, respectively, when disabled lists activate. And obviously I am sending Darvish to the DL; I drafted him strictly for his keeper value, knowing I will be able to replace him with a quality free agent such as Homey Bailey or Jose Quintana and keep him next year at less than market value.
Anyone else have the courage to admit they botched their drafts in some manner? Come on, I’m being vulnerable for you here! Let’s be vulnerable together.
EDIT (April 2, 4:22 PM EDT): I posted my points league (Sandlot) draft results in the comments. This is the draft in which I left a ton of money on the table but still came out of it very favorably.
Is this another April Fool’s post? Of course it’s bad to leave $20 on the table!
Actually it depends on your League.
Two Leagues I play in have in-season salary caps that allow owners to make trades for veteran players in a pennant run. It’s about an extra $75 in both Leagues.
If you draft really well and have some cash leftover your total team price could allow you to trade for closer to $100 more if, say you left $25 on the table at auction.
I won one League last year because, before the auction draft, I traded for many of the players that I wanted and then carefully selected what player(s) I’d go after in the draft.
When all was said and done I had an extra $20 leftover which put my total team value at $240. When the trade deadline hit I added several veteran players by selling off my younger cheaper assets.
Of course leaving too much cash is probably a mistake but if you trade for players you want and craft that together with a targeted draft you might end up with money left on the table simply because you got the players you were after.
Well of course it’s different if that money gets banked into your FAAB or rolled to another draft or something. But absent that, in a spend-it-or-lose-it format, of course it’s bad to leave $20 on the table. Of course. Notice we didn’t see that roster posted here, just the one where $3 went unspent (which is not nearly as egregious).
I used to have this issue chronically a few years ago (actually, more like a couple of decades ago) but I seemed to have gotten over it in recent years, but this year, I blew the tires off and reverted back to my old ways in a big way.
We’re a 10-tm AL only keeper and I managed to leave $29 on the table. That’s a dollar for every year that I’ve been doing this (though in fairness, we were a straight draft for about the first five years).
Yup. This was me for many years of drafting, until I got comfortable paying “fair market value” for a couple of top guys so I could look for bargains elsewhere without leaving $10-$30 on the table.
This is indeed why you just pay top dollar for a top guy or two and then worry about value later.
I had a pretty embarassing draft, spending almost all my money on pitchers.
Ended up with:
Kershaw
Scherzer
Sale
Arrieta
Tanaka
Richards
Homer Bailey
Iwakuma
Kennedy
Cashner
Betances
McGee
Doolittle
I left $16 on the table in my NL only keeper league, something I did my first year and hadn’t done the last couple, but I backed myself into a hole with my keeper list by keeping 3 middle infielders and 4 outfielders, that meant that I was set at Middle and close to set in Outfield and needed to load up on corner infielders with a 1B, 3B, CI, and U slot available. My plan was to get a Votto or a Rendon and a Matt Adams, or an Adam Lind to add some high average power at 1B, but I wasn’t willing to spend the insane amounts that those players were going for, so I passed, and then I passed on Yonder Alonso because he stinks. I tried to adjust by picking up the oft injured Carlos Gonzalez, which I did, and the aging David Wright at 3B, but passed on him due to being overpriced as well. That left me scraping the bottom of the barrel at all 3 corner infield slots and still had no power, so I picked up Jay Bruce with my U slot because I needed the homers, but now I literally had 3 CI slots to fill with nobody acceptable to buy, so I picked up Tyler Moore, Darin Ruf, and Maikel Franco and had nobody to spend the money on who was worth the investment of part of the $16 I had left.
This has happened to me before and I’ve seen it happen to almost every new owner in our leagues, when you follow your values sheets too closely you miss out on the top talent and end up with nobody to spend on, your team looks pretty solid to me, but its also a mixed league team, and playing in AL and NL onlys ALL mixed league teams look solid to me, what matters is the competition. Glad you’re happy about your team though, I’m not happy about mine.
In an auction with keepers (some kind of contract w/escalation scheme) it’s good to leave money on the table as long as you get the players you wanted. For example, in my recent draft I kept money in reserve for several players I wanted, in particular Kris Davis. He went overlooked for most of the draft and I picked him up very late for $6. I wound up leaving $6 on the table. If Davis had cost $12, I would have spent my budget but would be worse off next year. In keeper auctions, you should want to spend as little as you can to get a team that satisfies your plan.
But instead of spending $6 on Davis you could’ve spent that $12 on a better player.
That’s what makes auctions tricky (& fun). Had I not kept that $12 in reserve, I probably would have paid equal or more than that for a Khris Davis-equivalent earlier in the draft. You can’t know the sequence of players called at auction and their exact bid prices in advance. If you leave with $100 in your pocket, you probably made some forecasting errors. If you leave with $10 or $20 unspent, you may have had a great draft.
I’m confused. It says you had $3 of leftover cash, which isn’t bad.
Correct, but I deliberately blew $13 on Davis when I probably could’ve gotten an arguably equivalent power hitter (Arcia) for $1 or $2, the difference of which constitutes a lot of the money I would’ve left on the table. Basically spent money just because I could, rather than with purpose. My bad, it was unclear.
I’m confused too . It’s good to leave money on the table because …
Didn’t say it was good. Just said it was maybe not always bad.
Can we see the $20 leftover team? That’s a heap of cash to left unspent, and I’m guessing that team may be demonstrably worse than the one shown. Still a good article and a fun (and at times frustrating) topic!
The problem with that team is I have to explain the nuances of the league, and I didn’t want to waste everyone’s time doing that. But! I know I left a cliffhanger, so here it is.
H2H points, not roto. Basically it’s a point per base — so 1 point for singles, 2 points per doubles, etc., 1 for a walk, 1 per RBI or R, 1 for SB. Critical factor is -1 per K. So I targeted more low-power, high-average guys — who are typically pretty unfashionable in standard leagues, especially roto — in my late picks. We also have distinct SP and RP slots, so my pitching strategy revolved entirely around targeting Alex Wood and Carlos Carrasco, who have RP eligibility and will out-earn almost any legitimate RP you can find. (No limit on starts and innings.) Lastly: 1.5 points per IP, 5 per W, 5 per QS, 0 per L. So pitchers are way more valuable than usual.
The roster is as follows:
C Jonathan Lucroy $19
1B Victor Martinez $23
2B Ben Zobrist $9
3B David Wright $2
SS Jose Ramirez $1
OF Matt Holliday $15
OF Melky Cabrera $8
OF Khris Davis $4
Util David Ortiz $18
SP David Price $30
SP Corey Kluber $25
SP Adam Wainwright $20
SP Matt Shoemaker $6
SP Jose Quintana $8
SP Drew Hutchison $3
RP Carlos Carrasco $17
RP Alex Wood $11
B Denard Span $1
B Jayson Werth $6
B Steve Cishek $5
B Koji Uehara $29 <--------- me flippantly spending the rest of my budget. Because of our draft settings, I was forced to draft Wood and Carrasco as SPs, so I had to draft legit closers in my RP slots. I plan to trade one of them and keep one for insurance. But there you go. I think the max bid left by any team other than mine was $6 when I drafted Uehara, so I technically left $22 on the table. And like I said -- despite all of this, I'm still projected to have one of the best teams in the league, if not the best. All very weird how it played out.
In a non keepe league, it is in ambiguously a bad thing. You literally left money on the table, thus you should have left the draft with more value on your roster.
My spelling mistake is unambiguous.
Your link in the “Indeed, this is the strategy our own Mike Podhorzer recently employed, more or less.” sentence is broken.
Thanks! Fixed.
The thing about extra money left over is that you don’t really know how the draft would have changed had you ponied up the cash to upgrade a guy. You can’t just assume you could have spent that extra $10 to improve one player while still landing everybody else on your roster.
I left about 40% of my budget on the table in my escalation keeper draft. I’m nit thrilled with my C or 1b options (montero, cuddyer), but I love my starting pitching (cole, Walker, Richards, Arrieta, Eovaldi, Quintana). I also feel like I started ahead of the game because I was able to keep Donaldson, Altuve, Arenado, and Betts for the same dollar amount that Trout and Kershaw each went for.
I had the same issue in my NL only league this year. I left $11 on the table and I couldn’t sleep that night thinking about my error. But what it came down to was me liking a bunch of late guys and budgeting a few dollars for each to make sure I got them. I can’t help that no one else bid on them, I needed to make sure I got my guys, and I did. Like someone said above, had I spent the money earlier, that could have thrown off my ability to get the guys i liked later.
Yeah, I agree with some posters that its impossible to say that if you had spent left over money here, then the rest of the draft would have been identical.
I agree its ok to have money left over (approx $5), because I like to control the destiny of the end of the draft.
i’m pretty sure the guys in my 12 team mixed roto auction catfished me. they know i am irrationally in love with sonny gray, and he was the first guy nominated. of course i went to $12 for him. whch was actually less than i paid last year ($16) but i think if i had the cash i spent on gray and huston street ($25 total) i wind up with collin mchugh, an upside-y SP, and maybe a bottom shelf closer (i like my closers disposable). i like the latter option better, although i feel OK screwing up SPs because I can stream SP stats; I can’t stream saves.
I kind of try to screw up SP each year, in a way. There are always breakout pitchers who come literally out of nowhere who are worth streaming. Once I stash Darvish on my DL, I will use that spot for streaming — although, with Quintana currently on waivers, I might not need to.
As a bit of validation, I often leave $5-15 on the table. It’s a tradeoff – get the best of the worst players and miss one core player or get the worst of the worst players and gain one core player.
Right! f the old adage that “your team is only as good as your worst player” is true, then I’d rather have the former happen than the latter.
It’s a bad outcome, possibly despite a good strategy. You predicted the auction would take one path, it took a different one.
I left $13 on the table this year. Historically, my league has way overpaid the top 50 or so, leaving bargains in the 50-100 range where I load up. This year the overpaying just kept going. I also made the mistake of passing over fair value guys a couple times because I thought there was a bargain coming in that position, only to find other teams also targetting that guy and driving his price out of any value.
You can forgive yourself a few dollars: if you’ve got the heavy wallet, you can often get a player cheap because nobody thinks they can fight you for him. So maybe you get a player for $2 at the end you would have had to pay $4 for without the excess bankroll. So maybe you didn’t leave $20 on the table, you effectively left $15.
If you’re left with money at the end, or there’s a round of high value you can’t participate in for one reason or another, that’s good information to refine your strategy or your understanding of your leaguemates for next year.
Okay, let me start by saying, this article was written for me! Alex, let’s commiserate. I have a 10 team mixed auction league that is probably just about as shallow as the one you’re referencing above. My opponents are also not that “deep” in knowledge, so I found that they paid way too much at the top, and didn’t have a great sense of value in the middle. I left $18 on the table – which I’m obviously upset about. I clearly could have had one more “superstar” on my team. I need to go back and compare the results of the draft to my values (which I’ve basically now done below) – but if my instincts are correct, I think I got more than my overall budget in value. My draft value spreadsheet was setup so that my projected values were adjusted to the total dollar pool that would be spent on the total number of players that have to be drafted. Further, I had a field for actual auction outcome, and was running a formula on the post-auction adjustment for each player. That factor was as high as 1.6 through the early nominations, I think it settled around 1.3. Here is the team I got thought: (nomination number – player – cost – my pool adjusted value)
24. Rizzo, $32 (Value $27)
35. Braun, $21 (Value $20)
46. Ellsbury, $17 (Value $21)
57. C. Davis, $16 (Value $14)
67. Alvarez, $5 (Value $9)
72. Hamels, $18 (Value $16)
82. Samardzija, $16 (Value $15)
83. Zobrist, $9 (Value $13)
92. G. Holland, $15 (Value $11)
96. Carter, $7 (Value $13)
105. Arenado, $14 (Value $16)
116. Carrasco, $16 (Value $15)
126. Mesoraco, $12 (Value $14)
132. Betts, $10 (Value $11)
133. L. Martin, $7 (Value $9)
134. Ventura, $4 (Value $6)
141. Wood, $7 (Value $13)
161. D. Santana, $4 (Value $9)
164. Fister, $3 (Value $7)
171. Perkins, $3 (Value $5)
181. Odor, $3 (Value $7)
191. Hutchison, $2 (Value $5)
199. Pederson, $1 (Value $5)
So, based on my values, I got $281 in value and only spent $242. I’m sure some of my values above are a little questionable, so I’m opening myself up to that here, but in general… I think you are right. You can leave money on the table and still feel really good about your team. While this league is so shallow, the best thing is that these guys went stars and scrubs but they don’t really know how to evaluate what they think of as scrubs. Khris Davis could be had on waivers right now, for example. While someone like Carlos Beltran is currently rostered.
Anyway, would love feedback on my team.
That post sale adjustment I am going to label as the “Trout Multiplier” in all future auction spreadsheets.
Mid-tier guys seems to be where you find the most value. It went the same way in my league. I don’t have explicit reservations about any of your players. Looks solid, but it’s all relative. I like the Chris Carter play at $7 — he went for cheap in my league, too, which makes no sense because Chris Davis ALSO went for much more, and they are almost perfect comps.
Should I be dropping Joc and picking up Khris? Joc is basically speculation, but I’m maybe just as high on Khris as you are.
If you’re in a keeper league I think you have to hold on to Joc. I like Khris a lot but unless he has a huge April, he will probably be on your waiver wire for a bit. It’s a gamble but if you can be patient with your team you may see a slot open up either by poor performance or injury. Tough call!
I’m sorry I don’t see Chris Carter and Chris Davis as perfect comps . Carter Ks more often and their batted ball profile is vastly different. Davis hits more line drives and his IFFB % is WAY lower. Carter won’t find 500 AB this year.
“Perfect comps” was a reckless exaggeration, but if you’re talking lots of power with lots of K’s and a 10% walk rate, you’re talking Carter and Davis. But I know what you mean.