Auction tips

[danidrag4]

I am doing my first ever auction league this year and am looking fo tips. Either links to sites with tips, your own personal tips, basiclly anything. Thanks in advance for any help you may offer

[Matthias]

Try the search function. There's plenty of threads, like this one, if you look.

[stumpak]

The biggest mistake that you can make in an auction is to be hesitant to pay a premium for top players. There are always guys who just will not pull the trigger for a Pujols, ARod, or what have you and wind up holding money at the end of the auction and a deficient roster devoid of top 25 players.

The other common mistake is people who get too excited about hgh-risk "sleepers" and young players. All you need is one other person to also believe in a sleeper and the price will get bid up to point that eliminates a risk discount. I have never seen a team succeed by stocking up on "sleepers" and other mid-tier players with risk attributes.

A final common mistake is to get sucked into paying to much for single category contributors (this assumes roto). When closers and SB guys get thin, people often panic and overpay. This is stupid - there are such things as trades, and unforeseeen S and SB contributors emerge on the WW over the course of a season, even in deep leagues.

The fact is that there is significant roster churn in leagues with unliited transactions during the season and that many (if not most) of the stongest contributors are not rostered to start the season or are cut once or more times. Based on this, the acution strategy that I have had the most success with is to spend fast and hard on premium players, fill out the auction day roster with the best players available for a buck or two and utilize the WW throughout the season to get the best complementary players to your stars.

[BillyHallDisciple]

To illustrate Stumpak's point, here is a list of players who were picked up on waivers last year in my 12-team 5x5 league:

Ryan Braun
Corey Hart
Carlos Pena
Hunter Pence
Jose Guillen
Mike Lowell
Placido Polanco
Shane Victorino
Aaron Hill
J.J. Hardy

Fausto Carmona
Tim Lincecum
Yovani Gallardo
Brad Penny
John Maine
Jeremy Guthrie
Jose Valverde

[Ender]

To illustrate Stumpak's point, here is a list of players who were picked up on waivers last year in my 12-team 5x5 league:

Ryan Braun
Corey Hart
Carlos Pena
Hunter Pence
Jose Guillen
Mike Lowell
Placido Polanco
Shane Victorino
Aaron Hill
J.J. Hardy

Fausto Carmona
Tim Lincecum
Yovani Gallardo
Brad Penny
John Maine
Jeremy Guthrie
Jose Valverde

of course if you are in a deeper league like my 14 team league with deeper rosters the only guys on that list that were not drafted are the guys that were not in yahoo's database at draft time, Pena who was a nice FA picup for someone and well Guthrie who was just a fluke. In shallow leagues its extremely easy to find talent and whatever stats you need, in deeper leagues it is a LOT harder. Heck it is even hard to pick up saves mid season in my league because every team carries at least 1 MR waiting for them to earn the closer role.

[bobbing_headz]

Heck it is even hard to pick up saves mid season in my league because every team carries at least 1 MR waiting for them to earn the closer role.

Wouldn't exactly say that's true. Every year there's at least several guys that nobody has who take on closer roles, probably because they suck as MRs. Guys off the top of my head last year like Embree, CJ Wilson, probably Hennessy. There's always at least 3 or 4.

[Freebird27]

While it is true that you dont want to hesitate to pull the stick with the bidding in top players...you have to make sure you dont overpay too much. Make sure you budget your cap to allow you to leave the auction with a balanced roster and not a few high priced studs and a bunch of cheap scrubs.

Typically an auction will start with owners bidding hot and heavy. Keep an eye on what players are still left (so you dont miss out on a winning a couple blue chippers) and try not to get sucked into paying too much. Once owners blow a good chuck of cap space, the bidding will even out, that is when you want to have plenty of money to get the value's. Almost always there are plenty of steals to be had at the end of the auction when most owners are stuck only being able to make $1 bids...this is when you can get douyble digit worthy players for a couple bucks...

Good luck!

Also, FantasyAuctioneer.com usually has good articles on auctions.

[Joe Mauer]

Also, do not "hone in" on players.

Sure, have your targets and players you want.

But what I am saying it I really wanted Reyes. He went for $51 in my league. I dropped out at $50. Then, AROD was put up shortly thereafter and I won him for $47. I sucked in steals (dead last) in that 5x5 roto league but early in the draft I went from trying to win steals (with Reyes and other guys) to not caring about them at all and went after non-steals talent when I landed AROD.

I never plan on paying high dollar on corner infielders (in general) but I ended up with AROD ($47...great value!), Ortiz ($38) and Texiera ($30....great value!).

I also was fortunate to get Griffey Jr. for $1, Hill (SP) for $5 and Tulowitzki for ($1)

I won my league after entering the auction focusing on steals (and Reyes) and not planning to spend a ton on corners (we need 4 corners) and changed my auction philosophy post-Reyes. I got lucky with some cheap players and Tulo was the list middle infielder won at auction and I chose him over Vidro. Good choice. Probably won me the league.

Hope this helped!

[bloul11]

try this for a kwik read. Its old but the rules haven't changed

http://www.baseballnotebook.com/e_031601.asp?linkid=

I think i might try his style this year