How to spend your entire $260 budget.

I participated in my first ever mock auction draft yesterday at Fantasy Auctioneer and something happened that reminded me of such an important principle. I set up the mock as a mixed league with 12 teams, 5×5 categories, and 23 active players. It was late in the draft, with everyone having around $50 or less to spend, and other than Brett Myers, the only good pitcher not nominated yet was Felix Hernandez. Knowing this, I had planned on exactly which players I wanted (assuming no unexpected bargains emerged), and Felix was one of them. Finally, he was nominated and I got into a bidding war with another owner, who ended up “winning” him for $25. I dropped out because I knew I could still spend all my money elsewhere without leaving money on the table. Apparently that was not the case with this other owner. As a point of reference, earlier in the draft I managed to win Dan Haren for $12.

The reason for this outrageous bidding was because the other owner simply had too much money left with not enough value to spend it on. So the best strategy for him was to go all out on the best pitcher left, no matter what it took, since clearly he could afford it. This scenario is very similar to simply not spending all your money at the auction. In keeper leagues, this might not be such a problem, but in re-draft leagues, you are putting yourself at a distinct disadvantage.

It’s ironic that I’m writing this article because I’m notorious in my league for leaving money on the table. What usually happens is towards the end of the auction, I’ll end up drafting a player at a bargain price, way below my own dollar value. All this savings would be nice if it occurred in the beginning of the draft, but at this point, the savings do me no good since there just isn’t enough value left at the other positions to use the extra cash on. Since this bargain comes as a surprise that I hadn’t planned for, I end up spending my remaining $24 on Jacque Jones (who I believed was the best remaining OFer), which is exactly what happened to me last year! In my 13-team mixed league, this was spending like $15 more than what I valued him at.

Conventional wisdom and common strategy is to throw out the high priced players early and players you don’t want, in order to get the other owners to spend, hopefully leaving you with bargains later. The problem is the potential for the above situation to occur. You might have your eyes set on a sleeper you expect to nab cheaply in the end game, but this is no guarantee. Similarly, you might have never expected to draft a player, but felt compelled to bid after bidding on him suddenly stopped way below your value, because you did not want to let another team scoop up a bargain. This is called price-enforcing and this is exactly what happened in my mock auction when I ended up with a $4 Dan Uggla. I never expected to draft him, and in fact figured he’d be overvalued this year, but I wasn’t about to let him go for $3. So what it comes down to in auctions is you just never know. Auctions can be crazy!

So what can you do to prevent this from happening and to spend all your money? Try nominating your sleepers, or any player you feel might be undervalued, in the beginning. That way, if you do end up succeeding and getting your player for cheap, you can plan the rest of the draft knowing you can pay value for the top players and even overbid by $1 or $2 if need be. The early savings will simply allow you to use that extra money on better players that are still available, instead of not being able to use the savings and being laughed at when you end up with a $24 Jacque Jones. If, however, the sleeper you throw out early actually does get bid up, well then at least you know early on that it’s time to change gears. Sure it’s possible you could have gotten him cheaper closer to the end, but you just don’t know, and it could have just as easily turned out like the Felix situation above.

To sum it up, zig when your opponents zag and zag when they zig, as the saying goes. Everyone throws out the studs early and players they don’t want, so slipping in a cheaper player could throw them for a loop. An additional benefit is that many owners will be saving their money for one of the top players at the position, not wanting to fill a slot with a 3rd or 4th tier player so early in the draft. If this happens, you have a good chance of nabbing your sleeper on the cheap like you wanted. With that said, hopefully I will take my own advice and actually use it for my own league’s auction this year! (Ed. Note–here is a post on this topic)

Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.