Rationality Will Ruin You

Perhaps you’ve seen this tweet at some point over the offseason. It surfaced most recently about 10 days ago via Dave Cameron in his piece about the Dodgers’ intentional inefficiency.

Andrew Friedman: “If you’re always rational about every free agent, you will finish third on every free agent.”

— Andy McCullough (@McCulloughTimes) December 6, 2016

What Friedman says absolutely applies to fantasy baseball. Especially auction drafts. Every year, I see people saying “I’m going to stick to my values.” I’ve been that guy too. Way back when I was the only person in the room with advanced analysis, sticking to my values was a winning strategy. Now it’s a good way to lose every key player.

Auction drafts tend to have a certain cadence. A few big names are nominated early to set the tone. You look at your cheat sheet. You read Kris Bryant, $41. You look back at the live bidding. Bryant is up to $40. You +1. Someone else taps +1. Now he’s $42. You say to yourself, $43 is close enough. +1. Somebody $10 bids. Some more +1’s follow. Bryant’s auction ends at $57. This repeats for several elite players.

Now comes the grumbling phase of the draft. The chat room fills with smug comments about the “crazy” bids. Insane. Unbelievable. [Insert Adjective]. These owners think they’re going to reap the rewards later in the draft. Surely, the early aggressors will adjust their pace so they don’t run out of money within their first 11 picks. Right?

Bad assumption. The aggressors are aggressing because they understand the nature of your league. Let’s say it’s a 12-team, 25 player roster format – 300 players are rostered. That’s fairly typical. The last 75 players drafted will cost about $1. There are way more than 300 fantasy leverageable players in the majors. More like 600.

With proper preparation, an aggressive drafter in this format can overpay for high floor, high ceiling talent then make up ground by drafting the best of the rest. If you’re in a keeper league based on player cost, this approach is doubly valuable. Every $1 Jonathan Villar found becomes a franchise asset. Even a $1 Victor Martinez could fuel a playoff run.

I digress. We were speaking of the point in the draft where everybody says, “y’all’s crazy.” And the crazy continues. It has to stop any time now. Then you realize the best player left is Adrian Beltre. He’s nominated. You’re still sitting on your full $260 so you desperately bid and win Beltre for $34. You had hoped he’d fall through the cracks a bit.

It’s at this point you realize you have two options. Join the crazies for the mid-rounds or finish the draft with $50 to spare. And so the crazy rounds extend. Other “rational” bidders make the same discovery. The crazy gets crazier. The early bidders bow out with $9 and eight roster spots to go. They’ll have to wait awhile before there’s a chance to draft Villar. The rest of you are too busy paying $19 for Jose Peraza and $11 for Matt Strahm. Strahm was supposed to be a $1 sleeper.

More often than not, that’s the cadence of an auction draft. At least, that’s my personal experience with a sample of N>100.

A handful of years ago, I observed a first mover advantage – that is, the first couple players of the draft could be had for a relative discount. Say Mike Trout goes for $50 with the first pick. Then we see Miguel Cabrera for $50. Then Andrew McCutchen for $50. Ryan Braun for $45. Jason Heyward for $40. Soon, one owner is gleeful about his “bargain” Trout, another guy is satisfied with Miggy, and three more are grumpy about overpaying for not Trout.

Exploiting the first mover advantage was a great way to stay rational while ensuring a high baseline of talent. Last year, I found no sign of this advantage in any of my auction drafts. I suspect the market inefficiency has been corrected.

If the first mover advantage is gone, then we’re left with one conclusion – rational bidding is a recipe for failure. That leaves us with two options. We can set the tone for the insanity, throwing ourselves at Trout and Bryant and Clayton Kershaw. In many things, it’s often best to be the aggressive one. It forces your opponents into making mistakes. In a fantasy draft with constrained resources…well, it’s a calculated gamble.

Alternatively, you can sit back and react. Every once and awhile, an auction draft will be surprisingly civil. One hundred players will be picked at or near their value before anybody starts to panic. Taking a reactive approach is best in this type of auction. You would never have known it was an option if you go hyper-aggressive.

Whatever you do on draft day, be prepared to overpay for at least one top 12 caliber player. The alternative is to overpay for a bunch of top 150 players. Don’t worry, you’ll still get to do that too if you pay for the stud.