Fantasy Baseball Auction Primer

I was so incredibly hesitant to trying my first fantasy baseball auction. It was 2006 and I had finally learned how to put together a competent team through a snake draft. The idea of someone being able to purchase several first-round caliber players struck me as troubling. But, I was outvoted by my league-mates, and off we went.

My first auction went surprisingly well. Armed with whatever fantasy baseball magazine I had pulled off the shelves the day before and no plan of action whatsoever, I followed the values closely, built my team on the fly, and narrowly missed finishing in first. Having Chris Carpenter, Jose Reyes, Mark Teixeira, and a forgotten Jim Thome certainly helped.

The next year didn’t work out quite as well. I couldn’t understand why. After all, I was armed with the same strategy: 1) random magazine; 2) iron clad values (the basis of which I had no idea); and 3) no plan of action. Seemed pretty rock solid to me.

I finished 10th that year. And eighth the next. And over the next several years, even when I managed to find my way into the money, I never felt comfortable heading into or coming out of the auction.

But in 2014, I read “Winning Fantasy Baseball” by Larry Schechter, perhaps the best fantasy baseball auction player in the world. After reading the book, I drastically changed my auction approach. And although I obviously haven’t won every single fantasy baseball auction league I’ve played in since, I have a) felt well-prepared for every auction, and b) left every auction knowing I had a chance to compete for the title.

Every fantasy baseball player who is looking to improve his or her skill as an auction player should read Winning Fantasy Baseball. But, in the meantime, I will say that if you follow the teachings in this primer, then you will improve as an auction player. I guarantee it.

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So, are you ready? Let’s dive in. To put your auction goal into one sentence, it is this: Leave your auction with more value than anyone else.

Now, there’s more to it than that, but that’s pretty much what you’re shooting for. One overarching goal: value. There are three components to getting there:

1. Create reliable auction values
2. Build a spending plan while identifying targets
3. Buy a balanced team while getting the most value for your dollar

That’s all. YOU ARE PRACTICALLY AN EXPERT AT AUCTION LEAGUES ALREADY. But let’s break down the ins and outs of each component a bit more in depth:

Create reliable auction values

What does leaving your auction with more value than anyone else mean? Well, in most leagues, everyone starts with $260 in auction dollars. If everyone acts as a rational consumer, they will all spend their full $260 (and, outside of keeper leagues, you always should). Your goal is to spend your $260, but walk away with significantly more in value. $300. $320. $360. Whatever it is, your goal is to get a ton more value than $260 and, if possible, more value than anyone else.

Ok, that all sounds good, but how do you measure that value? And that’s where the first step comes in – creating reliable auction values. This is the key, guys. Remember me grabbing a random magazine and adhering religiously to those values? That’s insane.

You need to have values you can trust – otherwise, even executing the rest of your auction strategy perfectly won’t mean much.

In a perfect world, you’d come up with your values by creating your own player projections, combing through your league history to calculate standard gain points (that means how much any single statistic – run, RBI, strikeout, etc. – is worth in the standings in your league based on the league’s history), run a replacement value for each position, and then hibernate like a bear for six months to recover from that massive undertaking.

I will be honest with you and tell you that I create my own player projections and go through that entire process. I will also be honest with you and tell you that unless you work from home and have a flexible schedule or hate your friends and family or dislike The Karate Kid (because that means that you’re insane), you should not be doing this. It’s an incredible amount of work and, given the alternatives I discuss below, is not worth it.

These alternatives to creating your own dollar values based on projections are called auction calculators. Nearly every website that offers fantasy baseball services has its own calculator, into which you can input your budget, how many teams are in your league, the type of league, etc. The calculators then spit out auction values tailored to your league’s parameters. So, for the most part, it does a lot of your work for you.

But never forget the “Dan Harris grabs random magazine and follows values closely” story. Auction values are derived almost entirely from player stat projections. Every single run, home run, RBI, earned run allowed, win, and steal that you project for a player influences that player’s value. And so whatever auction calculator you choose, you must, absolutely must, feel comfortable with the projections that go into that calculator.

If you have a site where you feel comfortable with the player projections and the model that created them, then great. You should feel comfortable relying on that site’s auction calculator values.

You are reading a FantasyPros article written by the Editor-in-Chief of the company, so if you want to discount what I’m about to say, you can certainly do so. But my personal recommendation is to use the FantasyPros auction calculator, and it’s for a pretty simple reason – I know you can trust the player projections.

The FantasyPros player projections are based on aggregated projections from several major sites and projection systems. While one projection system may feel that this is the year Brandon Belt smacks 30 home runs, you don’t really need to worry about outliers like that when you’re dealing with aggregated projections. As with the expert consensus rankings, why would you rely on just one expert opinion when you can rely on the average of several reputable sources?

In other words, unless you want to be a hero, this is the easiest step in your auction prep. Find an auction calculator with projections that you know you’re comfortable with (and I’ve extolled the virtues of the FantasyPros auction calculator enough because I know what goes into it and trust its methodology- but just make sure you’re comfortable with the projections of whatever you use), put in your settings, and boom. On your journey to walk away from your auction with way more than $260 in value, you now know how you’re measuring that value.

Seriously, that was easy, right? We’re a third of the way there and we’ve barely broken a sweat. Nothing to it.

One final point on values
Whether you use the auction calculator or do it all yourself, you’re going to need to come up with a “split” of your budget – the percentage allocated toward hitters vs. pitchers. The general standard is anywhere between 65%/35% and 70%/30% for a hitting/pitching breakdown. Play around with the split, see which values strike you as right. Personally, I tend to go with a 68%/32% split, which seems to be how my leagues play out, but I’ll vary the split by year depending on how the values strike me knowing what I do about my leagues.

Build a spending plan and identify targets

Ok, we’ve got some reliable auction values! Now what? Well, now we need to craft a rough plan as to how we are going to be able to buy way more value than the money we spend. And that leads us to step two; build a spending plan and identify targets. They go hand-in-hand a bit, but I’ll separate them out to make them easier to understand.

Building a spending plan
What does a spending plan not mean? It does not mean “I’m buying Mike Trout for $60 and Jacob deGrom for $42 and Nelson Cruz for $23.” Negative, ghostrider. You can latch onto specific players with a strong grip in other sports where there aren’t as many roster spots, but you need major flexibility with baseball.

What does a spending plan actually mean? It means to, in advance of your auction, build an outline for how you think you’ll be breaking down your purchases during the auction. Again, this does not mean allocating your purchases by player or even by position in advance. If you do either of those things, you are unnecessarily limiting yourself and setting yourself up for failure if even the slightest thing goes wrong.

Here is an example of what I mean. In one of my leagues, we play with 13 hitters and nine pitchers (there’s no second catcher – I DON’T KNOW WHY!). In preparing for my auction last year, I used my usual 68%/32% split, meaning I was planning to spend $177 on hitters and $83 on pitchers. Here is what my hitting plan looked like:

 
I had a similar breakdown for pitching, but with nine slots totaling $83. But this is it – my spending plan for the auction. As I purchased a player for the money allocated (or closest to that slot), I wrote his name in the “player purchased” column. Easy-peasy.

Not surprisingly, I did not purchase every one of my hitters for the exact price listed in the spending plan. So, to the extent the player cost more or less than the money allocated in the nearest row, I would make the change, and then make sure I changed another row(s) in the opposite amount so that my total always stayed at $177. That allows you to adjust your budget on the fly.

As we’ll talk about in a second, by the time you get to the auction room, you should have a general sense of the group of players who are likely to be populating your chart. But truly, having a spending plan is all about feeling comfortable, even when you need to adjust it during the auction. Because if you do wind up spending $42 rather than $35 on your biggest purchase, you can EASILY just take $7 away from your other planned offensive purchases quickly.

In other words, your spending plan not only allows you to go into your auction with a strategy, it lets you to easily adjust without panicking even if your strategy changes during the auction. I also highly recommend using Excel to build your spending plan and using a formula – that way, when you change the 35 to a 42 after that purchase we just discussed, your $177 will automatically change to a $184. Then you can easily just tweak the rest of your planned purchases to get that number back down to a $177.

One final point on your spending plan
That chart above was just a plan that fits my league, because there are a ton of players that go for super cheap at the end of the auction. Your plan can be whatever you want it to be. Though I would personally recommend against the old $165 for the big purchase and then 12 one-dollar purchases. Just an analyst tip.

Identifying targets
You remember a minute ago when I said that by the time you get to your auction room, you have a general sense of the players most likely to fill in your spending plan chart? That brings us to our next talking point – identifying targets.

Like almost everything else regarding your auction prep, this is pretty much about one thing: value. Before your auction, you need to spend time looking at your values and determining who you think you value more than your league-mates do.

Last year, Joey Gallo came out extremely high in my auction values in one of my leagues and I knew there was no way that anyone in the league would pay close to that price. I included him on a list of targets and, sure enough, got him for a $10 discount when he came up in the middle of the auction when most of my league-mates felt comfortable with their power.

In essence, that is your goal. To purchase players for much less than their value, and to do it consistently throughout your auction. Your target list is there to have a general sense of who is most likely to be able to meet that criterion.

Most often, your targets are going to be obvious to you after looking at your values. For example, when a player has a value much higher than you would have thought he would have (like Gallo for me last year), he’ll probably be a target.

But, you should also check values from other websites and publications, because people in your league are probably getting their values from those same sources. If a few magazines are saying a player is worth $7, but you have him valued at $18, he will probably be one of your targets.

So, of course, creating reliable values is the biggest key, but identifying targets in advance is critical. Having a list of players who you are confident can be purchased at a discount is really what allows you to walk out of the auction room with far more value on your team than anyone else.

Three final points about identifying targets

1. Elite players – say the guys that go in the first round and maybe the second – are not going to come at huge discounts. That’s ok. You can’t just ignore those players, so be prepared to pay full price if necessary. Your best bet is to try to target the top-tier players that you think you can get at or around your value, because many of them will go for more than that number.
2. Your goal is to get more value than everyone else, yes, but do not be a slave to your values at all costs. I’ve shot past my values at various points in auctions when I felt it’s been necessary in light of the players available. It feels dirty, but it happens. You’ll get plenty of discounts if you’re generally disciplined and don’t make it a habit.
3. Finally, your target list is there as a guide, but you almost certainly will (and should) end up with plenty of players not on your target list. Discounts come at random times and with random players, so don’t be locked into the guys you’ve identified pre-auction. Be ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.

Buy a balanced and discounted team

At this point, all that’s left is your auction. You’ve got your values, your spending plan, and your targets. So now, let’s nail the auction process itself.

We know we’re looking for discounts, of course, but even the most discounted team won’t do us much good if we’re projected to have 485 steals but just 25 home runs, or 300 saves with only 20 wins. We need to make sure we’re building a competitive team, too.

So, in advance of your auction, take a look at your league history, or at least the standings from the previous year, and note what it took to get a 12 (assuming you’re in a 12-team league, etc.) in each category. Your goal should be to, at the end of the auction, have a team that is projected to be close to (or surpass) those numbers in every category.

Note that this is a lofty goal, one that is rarely attainable. It’s fine to shoot for an excellent, but not a top, score in every category: i.e., shooting for at least a 10 in every category, rather than a 12. I personally like to shoot for the stars because it keeps me acutely aware of my weak spots during the auction, even if I rarely reach the goal.

As with the spending plan, I’d advise you to make a chart in advance. Here’s a sample for hitters in the league I mentioned above from a few years ago:

 
As you purchase a player, input his name and his projected stats into the appropriate category. This will allow you to see, as the auction progresses, how your team is looking and what stats you might need to be focusing on going forward (i.e., if you’re looking great in steals but horrible in home runs, maybe pass on that Adalberto Mondesi buy even if it’s a bargain).

I will again recommend using Excel here and putting in the appropriate formulas because that will automatically update your total stats, what you need from your remaining players, and what the average remaining player needs to look like.

Again, chances are, you aren’t going to hit all your targeted stats, but rare is the league where anyone actually sweeps all the categories. This is much more about giving you a goal and allowing you to have a good sense of where your weaknesses are as the auction is going on.

Two final points about building a balanced and discounted team

1. There are times when you want to nominate players you aren’t interested in, just to get some money off the table. But, more often than not, I nominate players that I do want, ESPECIALLY early in the auction. As I mentioned, you’ll often be left with one or two elite players who you feel are targets at or slightly below their values. You’ll be able to more effectively execute your strategy when you know if you’ll be able to purchase them or not.
2. The most difficult part about building your team will be knowing when to let a discounted buy pass and when to pounce because there are going to be a lot of discounts available. So, you know, sometimes you think Ozzie Albies is such a huge bargain that you can’t pass him up even though you don’t really want him, and then later you realize that better second basemen will go for even less. You don’t need to jump on every bargain. Feel your way through it.

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And there you have it. Do you want to have a successful fantasy baseball auction? Create values you can trust, build a spending plan, take some time identifying players you expect to be undervalued, and get as many discounts as you can at the auction while building a balanced team. No, I can’t guarantee that you’ll have a successful fantasy season in your auction league if you follow these steps. But I can guarantee that your days of walking away from your auction thinking that you failed to give yourself a shot to win will be over.

Dan Harris is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Dan, check out his archive or follow him on Twitter at @danharris80.