Auction Draft: Nominating players

[rib217]

When you are nominating players up for bid that you actually do want do you find it more effective to start at the minimum and see where the bidding takes you hoping for a deal or do you think its more effective to start with a solid competitive bid to weed out some managers?

[wrveres]

start low

[Matthias]

Depends.

Early on it doesn't matter. If you're putting up Miguel Cabrera, you may as well put him up for $25 and save everyone else some time.

Later in the draft if you think that you have someone who is an unknown you may as well start at $1 and get as cheap as possible. If you have someone you've been saving and just hasn't been nominated yet, though, a statement bid can win you the player before everyone else has time to digest whether or not they have that kind of cash. One guy in our league got Ryan Howard for $17 his rookie year that way.

[kimchi_chigae]

When you are nominating players up for bid that you actually do want do you find it more effective to start at the minimum and see where the bidding takes you hoping for a deal or do you think its more effective to start with a solid competitive bid to weed out some managers?

In first year leagues, I'd start out nominating players who I don't really want, but that will likely sell for $25+, like David Wright this year or top closers. People get excited in auctions and will likely overpay for the players they want early on when they have a lot of money to spend.

For leagues not in their first year, I'd say try to be aggressive early on, and don't be afraid to nominate players you want and make a reasonable bid on them. Owners in these types of leagues are more cautions early on because they already had a year or two of auction experience under their belts and will try not to overpay like they did in their first year. They will be looking for "steals" when everyone runs out of money. The problem is, of course, if everyone is thinking the same way, the bargains will be in the beginning of the auction.

There is a lot of strategy involved in auctions and you can plan the whole off season for it, but you have to also feel how the auction is going and adapt accordingly. If everyone is on a spending spree, then be careful with your money and don't nominate the players you want to own. If everyone is holding back, then be aggressive. Be sure to always track what other owners are doing.

[kab21]

Early on I tend to nominate high dollar players that I probably don't want so that other owners spend their money and leave values for you later. Sometimes the values fall to you, sometimes they don't so you have to watch the players you probably don't want for values. For example I wasn't planning on bidding on Tex but he was at a reasonable price and I got him for the 12 highest winning bid (and tied with Holliday, Lince and rollins) in a 4th yr league.

I would say that in most cases start out low with bids. the more interesting strategy is when you should nominate your favorite sleepers. Sometimes if you nominate them early people bid them way up so I find it's usually better to wait until after the midpoint of the draft when teams might not have the money or the roster space to go after a particular player. But if you wait too long you might get people bidding just to spend the rest of their money or everyone might be broke and you can get some real bargains.

Auctions are my favorite type draft if you can call it that.

[kellythemick]

I think the only caveat I would add to what has already been said is to take into account the size of the league. While I haven't seen the numbers about the avg. cost for players versus league size my guess is that league size can skew the values which may require a change in strategy.