Why you might be given an opportunity to acquire Hafner at a bargain price.
A similar idea to my previous article about nominating sleepers and potentially undervalued players early, is throwing out a DH-only eligible player during the first few rounds. This year, Travis Hafner is a perfect player to use this strategy with. Not only is he only eligible at DH in most leagues (with 20-game eligibility), he is also coming off a tremendously disappointing season.
If you’re like me, and I’m sure most owners are (whether doing an auction or snake draft), you’re deathly afraid of filling your Util slot early. This concern is certainly warranted since it not only limits your flexibility during the draft, but also during the season when injuries strike and you need to move players around. However, this fear from your opponents is something to take advantage of.
Imagine the look on your opponents’ faces when you nominate Hafner in the first round of your auction draft. Some of them will be afraid to draft him after such a disappointing season, not expecting much of a bounce back, while others might have expected to pick him up cheap later on with the hope of a rebound. Regardless of each owners’ 2008 projection, they will be extremely reluctant to fill their Util slot so quickly, which will cause bidding to be sluggish and give you the opportunity to swoop in and grab Hafner at a bargain price.
Sure, it sucks that now you have filled your Util slot early, but it’s absolutely worth it if you’re acquiring Hafner at such a value and actually using that savings to purchase some top players. Keep in mind that this strategy could work for any DH-only eligible player such as David Ortiz and Jim Thome. Both of those players could work just as well as Hafner, as Ortiz seems to be slipping in drafts due to his disappointing HR output, while Thome’s injury-prone tag remains and he’s also 37.
If any of you decide to try this out in your auction draft, let me know how it goes! As logical as it sounds on paper, I’d love to hear if it really does work in practice.
Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Patrick DiCaprio // Feb 23, 2008 at 9:51 pm
What might be even better is if an opponent has his heart set on Hafner and has to spend full value!
2 BTGeo // Feb 23, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I’ve seen this type of strategy go both ways, especially with DH only players. I like it however. If you get a guy like Hafner early at good value it jump starts your auction. If he goes higher than you had hoped, thats ok too; another bargain will present itself.
Nice read.
3 rob // Mar 17, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I think this strategy only works if you are dealing with a league filled with a couple of less experienced fantasy players.
Nobody would go cheap in my well-seasoned money league for a DH only like Hafner, Ortiz, Thome or Sheffield (not mentioned in your article, which I think is interesting because he was forgotten in my draft, as well).
I got Sheffield for $5 in the end game of an 11-hour, 10 team auction draft yesterday… and, I had to pay THAT much because the guy I was competing with (the only guy with a DH spot available) could only bid a max of $4 due to the $260 salary cap.
My suggestion is to do exactly the opposite of what you are proposing.
Wait.
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