Thinking About Auctions, Fast and Slow: Strategy

Last week, after powering through two live auctions and starting a slow one, I wrote about the differences between the two approaches to auctions, focusing on how they are structurally different. I also promised to come back with more about strategy in both formats. And here I am!

At their most basic level, the strategy for both auctions is basically the same: acquire as much production as possible at the lowest price you can. How that happens has some slight variations, though, from fast to slow auctions.

Using Your Nominations

The standard fast auction strategy is to use your nominations, particularly early in the draft, to draw money out of the market. Nominate high-priced players you don’t necessarily want (you might be happy to get them at a discount but are fine letting them go). I generally agree with that, though there are some exceptions.

When a single player plays an important role in my plans, I sometimes nominate that player early. Last year, in an auction building for the Ottoneu Prestige League, whether or not I got Kris Bryant and his 3B/OF eligibility had a big impact on how I budgeted the rest of my roster. I nominated him early, was able to win him (oops) and was able to budget accordingly for the rest of the auction.

I also nominate mid-tier or lower-tier guys early if I think there is a lot of hype around them and I am not interested in them. In that case, I can capitalize on that hype by nominating that player when everyone is still flush with cash and willing to chase the shiny new thing. Get them to spend money they don’t need to spend.

As you get later into the auction, you have little choice but to nominate players you want or are at least happy to win, because the risk of being stuck with a $1 player you don’t want increases.

I hold to that in slow auctions, with one big difference. Because slow auctions have at least 12 and as many as 36 players up for bidding at once, there is an added strategic element to how players “stack up” on the board. In a fast auction, I often find myself debating if I want to go to $12 on the guy currently sitting at $11 or if I should wait and try to get someone else I like just as much for a bit less. In a slow auction, you have the option to find out in real-time.

This week, in a league where I needed MI help, I was surprised to see Gleyber Torres going for more than I expected. I was unsure if I should keep bidding on him or wait for Jorge Polanco who I hoped might be cheaper. So I nominated Polanco. Another manager did the same with Ketel Marte and we all quickly learned that no MI would be cheap. I ended up paying $29 for Gleyber. That was over what I had initially intended and in a fast auction I would have bailed and waited on Polanco or Marte and later regretted not spending more on Torres. By stacking up those MI, I could react to the entire market.

When to Bid

For fast auctions, you have little choice but to bid when a guy is nominated. What you can control is whether you bid at the last second, at the start of the clock, or in between. Do you drive bidding up early? Or wait for other bidders to slow down and jump in?

I tend to vary what I do in fast auctions, but in general, when a player I want to win is nominated, I wait. I let other teams bid and see if/when the bidding starts to slow down. If it starts to slow down and I still like the price, I jump in, usually with 5-6 seconds left on the clock. At that point, I am in the bidding and there isn’t a ton of strategy to when in the clock I bid. Bidding immediately after being outbid might signal that I am willing to bid a lot more and drive up the price. Bidding late might signal that I am torn and $1 more might beat me, thereby driving up the price. So I don’t overthink it.

For players I do not want to win, I tend to try to speed up the bidding by pushing the price early. If I am not bidding on SP and you nominate Gerrit Cole, I will probably put down a $25 bid pretty quickly. If for some reason I get Cole for $25, great. I didn’t need SP but I’ll take that. More realistically, I just help avoid watching people bid $1, $3, $7, $9, $11, $12, etc. for a few minutes.

In a slow auction, it can be a bit more complicated. First, I find there is a larger first-mover advantage because you can set a max bid and walk away. This both guarantees that no one else will get the player for your max bid and can create some frustration when a manager hits +1 a few times with no effect. And you can still get a discount if no one else bids you up to your max.

Second, each bid make might have a domino effect on others.  For example, if you bid a pitcher from $17 to $18, the team you outbid now has $17 to work with. They might just go to $19, but they also might pivot to a different SP who costs $6 right now. Or they might decide to go a totally different route, decrease their pitching budget, and spend more on a SS. And those redirected dollars could hit a player you are leading.

As a result, I rarely bid on anyone if I am leading another player who will finish soon. You never know how your bid might cause someone else to rethink their plans and, since it is a slow auction, you have time to wait. For example, as I am writing, I am 5 hours from winning an OF in one auction. There are a bunch of players coming up behind him that I am interested in, but I am going to wait and make my next bids later tonight. No reason to shake any dollars free for other teams right now.

Prep vs. In-Draft Research

Doing research during a fast auction is nearly impossible. Sometimes you can quickly lookup a player to see something like their projected line or pull up Roster Resource to see their expected role, but you have maybe as little as 15 seconds to do that – it’s better to know ahead of time, which makes draft prep more important.

In a slow auction, you actually can do research after a player is nominated. This doesn’t mean that prep has no value. Knowing who is still a free agent, who you are excited about picking up later, etc., still matters. Having a plan allows you to adjust when something surprising happens. Deciding if you are going to bid on an OF up for auction right now depends in part on knowing that player, but also on knowing who else might come up later or who you like that hasn’t been nominated yet.

One thing this does, that I like, is it levels the playing field a bit in terms of information and makes the draft more about how you use that information to value players and build a roster. From my perspective, having more time to read fantasy content, study rosters, etc., isn’t what should determine who is and is not competitive. Putting in that effort should (and does) matter, but I would rather have a league decided by how each manager values players than which manager had more time to study sleepers.