Baseball - Baseball

If you ask any fantasy owner what they enjoy the most about playing in a fantasy league, 90% of those owners will answer “The Draft”. Most people just love the camaraderie of the drat, love hanging out with friends, love getting out of the house and spending a few hours drinking beers and pretending to be a GM for a day. I would love to know anyone that dreads drafting a team. Even if it is over the internet, friends love talking trash to one another and busting other people’s chops for the heck of it. But there is nothing like a live draft, spending those few hours in the same room with people you don’t get to see as often as you use to, catching up, kicking back, and wanting more than anything to draft a better team than anyone else because you want to hold it over their heads during the off season that you just schooled them. Oh, if it’s a money league, that’s a bonus too on top of the bragging rights.

I can’t stress enough that if you can hold a live draft you must do it. There is also one type of league and draft that is better than any other especially when it’s live at someone’s house or a bar, and that is an Auction League Draft.

 

I won’t go on and on about how great auction league drafts are, but I will talk briefly how great the league itself is. Auction leagues allow you, the owner, to build the team you see fit. In regular drafts, you are in a way holding your team’s fortune in the hands of fate. Let me explain. For a few years, Albert Pujols was the best fantasy baseball player, by a wide margin. Every owner coveted that #1 overall pick in re-draft leagues because they knew who they would draft; Pujols. If you were able to start your draft with Pujols, you most likely clinched yourself a playoff birth, assuming you didn’t botch the rest of your draft.

In an Auction Draft, it’s up to you. You can have any player you want. You decide which players you will not be out bided for. It’s 100% in your hands. Since it’s in your hands, how do you go about constructing the best team possible?  The first thing you need to do is have an understanding of the personalities of the owners in your auction draft. The auction draft is like playing a game of poker. You need to know who’s a bluffer, who’s a gambler, who’s timid etc…Information is power. If you know this and understand this, you will have an upper hand.

If your league is constructed of all your friends, then you should have an idea or a sense of how each owner will approach the auction. If your league has been around for a year or more, then you probably picked up some tendencies from the other owners on how they bid. But if this is the first time your league is doing an auction draft, or even the first time you are doing an auction, you need to understand the different types of bidders at auctions. I liken some of the personalities with those from the TV Show “Storage Wars”. There is Dave, “The Mogul”, who’s been around and knows what he’s doing and is successful. There is Darrel, called “The Gambler”, who will bid high on a unit he feels he’ll make a ton of money. Barry, “The Collector”, who isn’t in it for the money necessarily, but in it for fun and hoping to keep some things, but because of that he loses money on units a lot. And then there is Jarrod and Brandi, “The Young Guns”, who are fairly new to the business. Jarrod isn’t the smartest bidder, so his wife Brandi goes to the auctions with him to rein him in. But let me break this down even further and break it down in fantasy baseball terms for the 7 type of bidders you will find at every auction draft. They are the following:

1 – The owner who bids on every player right from the start of the auction and has his roster complete within the first hour.

2 – The owner who drives up the price on everyone with no intention of ever wanting the player for their team. If you know who this is, it’s always fun to look at their face when you just beat them at their game.

3 – The sneaky owner who is lying in the weeds, let’s everyone waste their money and then gets players on the cheap.

4 – The owner who blows 80% of his salary cap on a couple superstars then fills out his roster with scrubs and guys he hopes will be sleepers.

5 –The owner who talks too much and tells you how you paid too much for that player.

6 –The owner who kisses everyone’s butt and tells them how great they did on that particular bidding war.

7 –The owner who tells you how great the player they just won is and forecasts how he will be the MVP or Cy Young.

I will admit it’s a lot easier spotting and determining which owners fall into each type of bidders if you are doing a live draft, but you can also figure this out even if your auction draft is done online. If it is your first year participating in an online draft with that particular league, you should get an idea of the owner’s tendencies within the first hour.

Now that you have an understanding of the different types of owners/bidders you can expect at your auction, it is time to strategize and plan for your auction. No matter what type of auction league you are in, the most important thing is to figure out the best way to get the most talent on your team while maximizing your dollar. But now we need to break down the strategy based on your league. There is usually 2 types of leagues; Re-draft Auction League (1^st year Dynasty Leagues can fall into this category as well) where you start off with a clean slate every year, and the other is a Keeper/Dynasty Auction League, where you carry over the salaries of any keepers and have to fill out your roster at the auction with the remaining budget that you have. Let’s take a look at both.

 

Re-draft Auction Leagues:

First, I’m going to generalize that your league has a $260 salary cap, which is standard for most leagues, especially those that are starting out. Let’s also assume that you are fielding a 24 man roster which means you have on average just under $11 to spend on each player. Before heading into the draft you need to have an overall ranking of all your players regardless of position. You must also rank your players by position and within those positions you need to put those players into tiers. Based on those tiers, you should set a limit on how much you are willing to spend on those players. Not all tiers at each position are created equal. For instance, you may set a limit at $30 for a 1^st tier 1B. But a 1^st tier catcher you may be willing to go as high as $35. You do this because maybe the drop between tiers isn’t as dramatic for some positions as it is for others.

After you rank and file your players, you have to decide how you want to construct your team. It is extremely important to know how you want your team to be made up heading into the auction and not do it on the fly. If you do it on the fly you will be scrambling to figure out how to round out your team. There are also two parameters in constructing your team in an auction draft. First parameter is do you want to go heavy on bats or on pitching, or do you want a balanced team. You can decide to spend all you money on bats because that’s your preference and your scoring could lean towards bats being more important. And the same can be said about pitching. The second parameter is deciding on how you want to spend your money. You must decide how you want to construct your team. There are a few ways to do this.

• Spend your money on a few big time superstars and round it out with some sleepers that you can (hope) get for cheap. The risk here is great because if one of those superstars goes down, it can be devastating to your team. But the reward is great.
• Spend money on one superstar pitcher and a superstar bat then fill out the rest of the roster with high upside players. Somewhat similar to the option above, but if you only target one superstar bat and one superstar pitcher as opposed to grabbing 3-4 superstar players no matter where they play, you are in essence starting to balance your team and you will have money to spend on good, quality players instead of spending it on cheaper guys that you hope have a breakout year or a bounce back year.
• Spend your money on all good players, not superstar players, but good ones like Brandon Phillips, Ike Davis, Alexei Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval etc…for a more balanced team where the risk is lower because you aren’t relying on a couple great players to carry your team with some other players you hope to break out. Sometimes doing this, the reward isn’t as great, but it can put you at a peace of mind...
• Spend your money on mostly all young up and coming players (this heavily pertains to first year dynasty leagues where owners build towards the future) and on veterans that you believe will have a bounce back year. This is very risky, but some owners LOVE having young guys, even in re-draft leagues. Owners also do this because these players don’t cost much and they also like having a nice cushion with their salary cap, which allows them to make moves/trades for higher salary players later in the season if they are still in the hunt.
• Spend your money on established veterans. There are many owners that prefer this route. They know what they are getting. Minimal risk.

Things will also change on the fly during the draft. You may spend more than you anticipated on a player and then you have to adjust accordingly. Another great player may fall to you at a cheaper price than you expected which means you may have a few extra dollars to spend. I can’t stress enough how important it is for YOU to keep track of your budget. Don’t just rely on the auctioneer or anyone else to do that for you. It is your job to know how much you have left to spend.

Keeper/Dynasty Auction Leagues:

This is my favorite, Dynasty Leagues. Majority of dynasty leagues involve signing players to contracts. And depending on your league, if a player is signed under contract he can not be cut until his contract expires, or you take a penalty for dropping a player that is under contract. When it is time for contracts to be submitted, you must be certain that you want to sign those players to a number of years. You are committed to them. Take everything into account. Age, Injury History, Size of Contract, Past Performance. You do not want to be stuck with a player and his contract if you aren’t certain that he will be worth his contract down the road. If he isn’t, he will be stuck on your team (in leagues you can’t drop players) because what owner will actually trade for him. The other scenario is you will be stuck taking a penalty if you drop him.

Some leagues may allow you to keep and sign as many players as you want, while others have a max on the number of players you have under contract. In leagues that have a cap on the number of contracts you are allowed, it is extremely important to plan for the out years, meaning, if your league has a minor league roster, you should be able to plan for when those particular players will be up for contract. If there are players in your minor league system that you are certain you will sign to long term deal down the road, barring an injury or failing to perform at the level of expectation, then you should make sure there will be room to sign that player to a contract when you believe it will be due. So don’t go signing a marginal player for 4 years if it’s going to block you from signing a young player you want to lock up. Instead, sign that marginal player to 2.

When you are deciding on who to sign to contracts, it is important to know what players are locked into other teams and what players will be (or if you don’t know, player you believe will be dropped) available for the upcoming auction. Say you have Brandon Phillips and he costs $25 and every good 2B is locked in for 2012, then it’s a good idea to lock Phillips in for another year. But if there are a number of 2B available, drop Phillips, especially in leagues that have caps on number of keepers/contracts. You can get him for around the same price at the auction.

After a few years, your team should finally have an identity, which is based on the type of team you have built and constructed as described earlier in the article. Your plan can change at any time, especially if you find that your strategy and plan you have followed is not bringing back the results (i.e. Championships) that you expected, and then it’s ok to try something else. But if you like your plan, don’t deviate from it. Stick to it. Keep using that formula.

What I’m about to tell you here is probably the most important information I will give regarding Auction Drafts for dynasty leagues. After all contracts have been submitted and you are prepping for your auction, make a spreadsheet that has everyone’s team and roster with each player’s salary. Total up the salary for each team and calculate the average price per player they can spend at the auction. On anther spreadsheet, list all of the available players for this year’s auction. While looking over everyone’s roster, you should get a feel for what kind of team they have constructed and will continue to build. Based on that information, you need to figure out which available players each team will target. If you can figure out which players for each position they will target, it will give you an advantage by allowing you to drive up a price on a player that you really don’t need, thus leaving them to spend/bid less money on a player in a position you both need which means you have the chance to get that player at a cheaper price.

Lastly, know exactly how much you want to spend, give or take a few dollars. If your salary cap is $260, spend only $245 if you want some flexibility to make trades so you can absorb a contract if you’re in it. Me personally, I don’t like to leave too much money on the table. To me, that just means I cheeped out and failed to go after a player that is better than one I have which will just hurt me in the end.

There you have it. That is my formula for auction drafts. If you are going to take anything away from here, please take away these points.

• Know the other owners personalities and tendencies at the auction
• Plan, plan, plan.
• Go into the draft knowing what type of team you want to build/have been building.
• Know how much money you want to spend.
• Make sure to research, rank players, prepare, and read as much information possible.

 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on twitter @FD_RealMills16. Hopefully I can help you build your own dynasty team.