Fantasy Auction Strategy
I am an auction junkie. I freely admit it. I love the auction draft for Fantasy baseball. I adore it. I am not sure why. Maybe because it is the idea of bidding, outbidding and spending money even if it is not real money. I also like bargains. Well, in all honesty, I love bargains. To quote Scottish economist Adam Smith, “Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.“ So it this that has led me to use this strategy for a lot of my auction drafts: spending as little money as possible on pitching and loading up on hitting.
In case you are wondering, I have won, and I have seen others win using this strategy. But before I discuss the particulars of this strategy, there are a few other tips and strategies that need to be followed for this strategy to be utilized to its fullest.
[the_ad id=”567″]One of the strategies that I like to follow is gathering knowledge ahead of time on what your opponents are likely to do at the auction. There are small nuances you can pick up on that will help you as the auction progresses. The simplest thing is finding out where your opponents live or what teams they root for. I’ve discovered that there are at least one or two players in every league who try to acquire players from their region, only because they see them more often. Living in Central New York, I know that many of the league members are Mets or Yankees fans and will be aggressive in bidding for many of their players. I’ve also found that there is often a team that loves prospects. They’ll make one or two big buys and then sit on their money until later in the auction so they can poach all the cheaper prospects with the hope of finding the next Kris Bryant. I combat this by nominating candidates earlier in the draft, so more teams in the bidding pool have exposure to these players. Knowing this combined with other bits of information leads to the goal of making other teams at the auction uncomfortable, so they are thrown off their strategy. There is a lot of “gamesmanship” in an auction draft, or any auction for that matter.
After these factors are put into play, the actual strategy during the auction is to spend as little as possible on pitching. The basic part of this strategy is to load up on hitters by spending a large portion of your auction budget on hitting. Yours truly and others who employ this strategy will allocate 80-90% of their budget on hitting. You’ll have plenty of offense that you can use later, either to trade for needs, if your league allows it, or to have insurance in case you lose some hitters to injury. Good hitters are always in demand, whether it is in the trade market or the free-agent pool, and you want to give yourself enough bats to be active from a position of strength. After that, you have literally dozens of ways to spend your remaining budget on your pitching staff. If my budget allows it, I will pick up one “stud” type pitcher and use him to anchor a staff of lower priced pitchers. I also will NOT spend a lot of money on closers. There is too much uncertainty with most closers to spend lots of money on them. Last year, much to the chagrin of the other teams in my 14 team league, I kept 4 closers in our keeper league. By the end of the year, due to injuries, trades, and demotions, I was left with just one closer. Being watchful and aggressive on trades and free agents can help keep you keep a competitive lineup of closers. Another strategy that has been seen a few times, and with success, is one that I call the “Dollar Store” strategy, as which its name implies, means that every pitcher on your roster is purchased for one dollar. In LABR, the national “experts” league, Larry Labadini did just that in 1996. The key to this strategy is that an owner would trade his excess offense for pitching as needed once he saw who was performing, and who was not. You need some good trades and timely free-agent pickups in this strategy, but it can get you in contention if the right moves are made.
The reality is that you’re not limited in what you can do with a small pitching budget. You can create a plan based on personal preference, your league’s innings pitched requirement, the flow of the auction or any other factors that need consideration.
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It can be a successful strategy but only if you really, really, know your relief pitchers. The only way you can spend 80-90% of your budget on hitting and still buy a stud starter is if not just a couple, but most of your remaining staff are a buck. There are always a few 7th inning guys who have terrific ERA’s and ratios with good strikeout numbers. You won’t be able to afford any closers at all, but could maybe get 1 through free agency. And by the way your stud starter can not be Kershaw or Scherzer or Bumgarner etc….you would not have the money. But you are correct that this COULD work if you knew your middle relievers inside out.
A very interesting article…A like. 🙂
And thanks for the tips….I will have those in cosideration for my future Fantasy Auction League.