Fantasy File

Bid business: Tips to survive an auction draft

The bidding looks to be fierce to get Roberto Alomar on your fantasy team. AP

By James Quintong, CNNSI.com

You say there's no salary cap in baseball? Ask those who play fantasy baseball and deal with that monster that is an auction draft. Many fantasy leagues use the auction draft to build up their rosters, partly because that's the way it's outlined in the Rotisserie Baseball constitution and because that's the way it was done since the beginning.

An auction draft differs considerably from a straight draft in which you just pick players. In an auction, team owners will call out players with team owners bidding on the services of the player until there is a highest bidder. The wrinkle in this equation is that owners have a fixed cap (usually 260 fantasy dollars) to spend on a set number of players (usually 23). Much of the information you see on this site and other fantasy sites often refer to dollar values that will be used for bidding on players at an auction draft.

There is plenty of additional strategy needed to succeed in an auction draft. Here are some tips you can use to come out ahead in your draft and be on track to a championship.

Have plenty of patience. Auction drafts usually take a couple of hours longer than regular drafts because you've got to allot a couple of minutes per player for bidding. Sometimes the bidding gets annoying when owners wait until the last possible second to sneak in a bid. You can get around that by doing progressive bidding.

In a couple of leagues I play, the bidding is a lot more organized. An owner throws out a name and the bidding goes around in a circle or in a set order (much like a regular draft). You either bid or pass. If you pass, you're out of the running on that player. Bidding goes until one player is left with the high bid. It works especially well if you've got multiple owners drafting from other locations. It keeps bidding moderately organized and avoids people who stay quiet and then bid at the last second.

Don't be afraid to spend money. While you do have a limit as to how much money you can spend on players, you don't get a prize for not spending your cash. It's fine to be cautious when you don't find players to your liking, but after a while you'll need to get some players you do want. If it's worth that extra buck or two over your projections to pick up a superstar like a Vladimir Guerrero or Todd Helton, go right ahead. There's nothing worse than realizing you have 25 fantasy dollars during the final part of the draft with only spare parts and bench players left to pick up.

Poor spending in the middle of the draft sometimes leads to ridiculous bidding for marginal players or for the "last available good player" on the board. For example, a few years ago in an NL-only league, Shane Andrews went for $33 (in the standard $260 salary cap) because a number of people had a lot of money left for few spots. Andrews was allegedly "the only power hitter" on the board (fresh off a 19-homer season). He would hit four that season, further confirming the chuckles that came across the room as the bidding got fierce.

Drafting $1 players is not a bad thing. The $1 players usually come in a couple of flavors: Players who don't tickle fantasy owners' fancies in the middle of the draft and players who may have fallen through the cracks and get scooped up at the end of the draft. In any event, most of these players are low-risk propositions. If they don't pan out, you can cut them with few second thoughts since they didn't cost your team much. If they do pan out, you've got a great value (and in keeper leagues, something to hold on to for next year).

Going along with the free-spending advice, filling out your team with $1 players is fine. Granted, you should've gotten into this situation by spending big bucks on a handful of superstars. If you've already gotten Jason Giambi and Tim Hudson to anchor your team for big bucks, it's not necessarily a bad thing to fill out some of your roster spots with middle relievers and backup infielders -- especially those who won't kill your numbers because they'll only put in part-time work. You don't necessarily want seven or eight $1 players, but having a few doesn't hurt.

The endgame of the draft is often a fascinating exercise of talent assessment, strategy and creative accounting. There always seems to be a solid starting player that falls through the cracks and turns in a productive season for that dollar.

Published dollar values are only a guide. All of those published fantasy guides complete with dollar values are just that -- guides. It's good to read through a couple of different projections, and averaging out the numbers isn't a bad idea, either. But even after you've crunched the numbers, your dollar projections may not mean a whole lot once you get in the middle of the draft when the superstar players are going for $5-10 more than you expected. The ebb and flow of an auction draft is hard to predict early, so don't get too wedded to the numbers you read.

Be cautious of inflationary factors. There are plenty of reasons why prices of players at your draft don't resemble those listed in whatever books you read. Many have to do with the general flow of the draft, but there are certain factors that alter the prices of players. First is the hometown factor. Get into a league with a majority of owners fans of one team, players on that favorite team will almost always see their prices driven up. You'll also see more marginal players on those teams brought up (especially in the minor-league drafts).

Another factor that usually doesn't get included in many fantasy magazines is the keeper league factor. Fantasy owners will usually keep cheaply valued players, thus giving owners more money to spend and thus driving up the prices of the available players. As said before, there's no prize for not spending your fantasy dollars, so might as well bid what you can afford on players, even if the bidding goes to ridiculous levels.

You don't have to throw out every superstar early. Anyone who's played in any type of fantasy draft knows that the superstars are the first players to go. While you obviously need that to fill out your team in a regular draft, it doesn't mean as much in an auction. In fact, by throwing out all of the superstars early, you suck away plenty of fantasy dollars quickly, opening the door for second-tier guys to go for discount prices. It's probably harder to do this in keeper leagues since there will be a dearth of star talent and owners are desperate to get what's left

Sneak a low- to mid-range player early on. While everyone gorges on the star players early on, you might be able to get a steal on a sleeper by throwing him into the mix. For instance, in the midst of bidding on outfielders like Sammy Sosa and Ken Griffey Jr., how about throwing out a Mark Kotsay? Owners are unsure of why he is in the mix this early and will either shy away completely to save up the cash for other outfielders later, or will panic and drive his price up too much. You'll either get Kotsay at a cheap price, or take a lot of fantasy dollars out of another owner's hands and prevent him from getting Andruw Jones or Jim Edmonds when they get called up later.

Keep close tabs on your opponents' rosters. It should be a no-brainer, and it should be easy to do if you're even moderately organized. But when you're getting into bidding wars for players, keep tabs on what your competitors have and need. If someone desperately needs a closer or first baseman, for example, you can exploit that fact to drive up a player's price well beyond his value. Again, that owner is out a few extra dollars that will come in handy for you when getting a player you really need.

James Quintong is Fantasy Sports Producer at CNNSI.com

 

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