The thought of a fantasy baseball auction draft is not a pleasant one for most inexperienced fantasy baseball owners. Participating in a snake draft is one thing; there are only so many players in the pool that owners need to worry about, at least early on. Owners drafting from the second slot in re-draft leagues do not need to concern themselves with making a decision on guys like Carlos Gonzalez, Chris Davis, Clayton Kershaw, or Ryan Braun. While they are necessarily excluded from talents that could be top-10 fantasy options, as the saying goes, boo-effing-hoo.
Snake drafts, by and large, will dictate what your roster looks like, at least through the first 100 or so picks. With auction drafts though, owners are responsible for the make-up of their own team. Every player in the pool is available to every owner and that enables the owner to design the team that he or she wishes. As another saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.
There are two characteristics of every auction draft that occur and that owners must prepare for: Tilting and Inflation.
Embrace Chaos
The common poker term “going on tilt” is essentially when a player expects a certain outcome that favors them and then the outcome does not materialize. Anyone who has played poker and had their pocket aces cracked can sympathize.
Basically, the majority of people who do anything sports-related for money – poker, fantasy sports, sports handicapping – are likely to go on tilt to some degree. Once the players are on tilt, they are susceptible to making bad decisions. The worst decisions in both poker and fantasy are the emotional kind, and these are the exact kinds of decisions fantasy owners want their opponents making. Fantasy owners should want their league mates making decisions based on adrenaline and not math. There’s a lot of literature behind the neuroscience that occurs when people are tilting, here’s a good read from Poker News Editor Josh Cahlik. The study by Jussi Palomaki that is cited in that article can be read here.
In the course of a year-long fantasy sports season, there aren’t many times fantasy owners can put each other on tilt. The auction draft is certainly among one of these times. Here is a strategy that I’ve seen work in the past (and work on me, truth be told):
Offer up mid-level players early in the draft that you are personally targeting. Sure, it might make sense to nominate Adam Jones if you’re not personally a fan of his fantasy prospects and want to get money off the table. But typically, the fantasy owner that buys players early on wants those players early on. Fantasy auction participants might overpay for players early in the draft, but it’s on players they want. Owners getting players they want does not induce tilting.
The savvy player that wants to introduce a little chaos should try to get their fellow league mates to buy players they don’t want. Round 1, Nomination 6: Brandon Belt for $10. Either someone overpays for him, in which case their whole draft could be put on tilt, or the owner that nominates him (and wants him) gets him at a price commensurate with what his average price is. It’s shocking the number of times I hear “I can’t believe I paid $12 for [enter replacement player’s name here]!” It’s automatic. Again, it’s a win/win: either the owner that nominates gets the player he wants for a reasonable price or the owner that overpays gets a player they did not want at an inflated price and will likely be frustrated because of it.
Inflation and Applications
The basics of inflation is this: [amount of money left to spend] [value of players remaining] = inflation rate. So if there are 12-teams with $260 budgets each, it’s a total of $3120. Before the draft, this gives us an inflation rate of zero.
Inflation occurs in auction drafts of almost every single fantasy league known. Rare are the instances when all the players are drafted according to their exact dollar expectations. Sure, Mike Trout will probably only earn $40-$45 this year. Good luck getting him for less than $50 in most leagues, though.
There are two specific instances of inflation most fantasy baseball owners should be aware of:
- Keeper League Inflation: With most keeper leagues, there will be a natural inflation. Suppose there are three keepers per team and due to some good fortune (Jose Fernandez as $5 pitcher, Chris Davis drafted for $2 three years ago), there are a lot of values. There might only be about $50 per team removed in a three-keeper league (12 teams), or $600 out of $3120. That’s despite the fact that the actual value of the keepers might be $75 per team. There will be inflation (it will vary based on number of starting slots, but 50-percent is a good place to start), and everyone has to deal with that going into the draft.
- Stars/Scrubs Inflation: A popular strategy among fantasy baseball owners is stars and scrubs. That’s where a team loads with stars (five players for $160 for example) and the rest of the roster is loaded with mid-and-low tier option (18 players with the remaining $100). What this can do though is put pressure on owners that don’t employ this strategy.
If there are five owners in a league using Stars and Scrubs, it’s likely that the top third base quartet of Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Beltre, Evan Longoria, and David Wright are all gone. The scarcity of the remaining talent will have an upward pressure on the price of that remaining talent. At this point, Ryan Zimmerman likely goes for $25 instead of $20. This forces the rest of the fantasy owners into a decision: Am I willing to pay the premium for one of the best talents remaining, or do I take a discount for a lesser player and hope they greatly exceed what I paid for them? Value is important, but a team of $11 players performing like $12 players won’twin leagues. On the flip side, overpaying too much negates any value that is built-in with cheaper options.
There’s no easy answer to the premium question. It’s all about how much the fantasy owner is willing to pay. What I will say is that inflation in a re-draft auction league has to balance itself out. It’s mathematically impossible for inflation to remain at 50-percent throughout the draft. It might not be obvious – Clayton Kershaw for $60 instead of $40 might not mean Anibal Sanchez goes for $10 instead of $20, but more likely Marco Estrada goes for $3 instead of $6, Corey Kluber goes for $2 instead of $4 etc. – but it will work itself out. The prepared owner knows which players are going at value, which players are going below-value, and which players are going at an acceptable inflation rate.
Readers may notice that the concept of tilting and inflation are fairly intertwined. Getting other owners to spend extra money on players they aren’t necessarily targeting can build inflation and put them on tilt. It’s also important to understand when inflation is happening to avoid tilting yourself.
