Most fantasy baseball leagues feature typical snake drafts where you take turns drafting a player one pick at a time in turn. However, the original and best way to play is the fantasy baseball auction or salary cap format.
- Fantasy Baseball Draft Rankings
- Fantasy Baseball Research & Advice
- Fantasy Baseball Average Draft Position (ADP)
- Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft Simulator
Fantasy Baseball Auction Leagues Primer
The auction format is the best way to play fantasy because it allows you to build your team with any construction you want. Do you want to build a team of a bunch of top-tier players and sleepers? You can do that. Do you want to spread the risk and have no lower-end players on your roster? You can do that, too.
In an auction draft, everyone has an equal shot at every player, which means, unlike a snake draft, you will never get sniped on a player, but you have to be willing to pay up for the ones you truly want. It is the truest test of fantasy skill.
However, because the format is so equal for every player, it makes having a strategy that much more important. In this article, I will cover everything you need to know about how to win your auction league.
Before the Auction
There are two types of auction players. The prepared and the unprepared. Don’t be the latter. You should enter your auction with a few things. First of which is auction values. Every player has a value of what they are worth to each player. Knowing what each player is worth to you will allow you to not overspend on a given player. Some people enter saying, “I am leaving the auction with player X, no matter what.”
That is a dangerous strategy because players could go for what they are worth or way over what they are worth. Having a set price of what you think a player is worth gives you the ability to maximize the most amount of value for your budget. If your budget is $260 for 23 players, your goal should be to leave the auction with as much value over $260 as possible while building a team that fits well together.
The next most important thing is to have a plan of attack. You should know how much of your budget you want to spend on hitting versus pitching. The traditional split is between 65-70% on hitting and the rest on pitching, depending on league formats. Some formats dictate you use a different hitter/pitcher split, so check the previous year’s auctions and how they went before you determine your plan. If you have a league that values particular stat categories or positions more or less, then you may have to build that into your values.
When you have your hitter/pitcher split figured out, you should determine if you want to build a balanced team or a stars and scrubs team. A stars and scrubs team is when you buy up a bunch of expensive players and then leave yourself with no money and fill out your roster with a bunch of $1 players. This allows you to have the best talent in the league and then hope to get lucky with some breakouts from your cheaper players.
This strategy is often better in a shallower format where there is more depth available on the waiver wire. A balanced approach is the opposite. You tend to miss out on the stars, but you also have very few weak points because the vast majority of your roster are $10-$20 players. If you lose out on a high-priced player in a stars and scrubs approach, you could be pretty screwed.
However, with a balanced approach, you have the risk spread out among all of your players, which is often better for a deeper mixed league or a mono-league. You can also split the difference by creating a stars and scrubs pitching staff and a balanced offense or vice versa.
During the Auction
Once you have a plan worked out, you need to start putting it into action. It’s important to be flexible. You may have planned for a stars and scrubs approach, but if a lot of people are doing that, it may benefit you to pivot to a balanced approach. The most important thing is to build the most cohesive roster possible while extracting as much value as possible. If the value is to wait on players because drafters are overspending early, then be patient. If the value is to spend your auction funds early, then pounce early.
Another place where you can extract value from players or from your competition is in your nominating strategy. The most common nomination strategy is to throw out the players you don’t want early. This is common because it seems obvious. However, it is not always the best way to set up your team or extract the most value. For example, let’s say you really want one of the top tier third basemen and you think that they are Jose Ramirez, Junior Caminero, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Manny Machado. Most would say, “Hey, I am going to nominate Machado first and soak up other people’s money.”
The smarter play may be to nominate Machado or Chisholm before Ramirez because there will be people who don’t bid on them because they are saving their money for Ramirez. You should use your nominations to not just take other people’s money out of the pool, but to gain information. Often, one of the first types of players I like to throw out is whoever is the hyped up young guy or the popular sleeper.
This allows me to see who has been reading the popular articles and who hasn’t. As the auction goes on, you should be looking to use your nominations to fill other people’s positions. If you have a sleeper at third base, then as the draft goes on, you may want to nominate players at third base to fill other people’s third base position to block them from bidding on the player you want later.
This means you should be tracking what each of your competitors is doing. This is easy to do when you are online, but if you are in a live draft, then have a spreadsheet or notepad to track what positions each team has filled and how much money they have left. This helps when you are looking to grab your sleepers or fill out your roster. I try to keep a little more money than just $1 per player, so I can make sure I get at least a few of the players I want.
Auctions are the most fun you can have in a fantasy draft because of the strategy involved. They take more time and effort to put together and prepare for. However, if you do it right, they are the most rewarding leagues to play in.
Subscribe: YouTube |Spotify | Apple Podcasts | iHeart | Castbox | Amazon Music | Podcast Addict | SoundCloud |TuneIn