Keepers causing inflated player prices

[redsoxsucker]

I am in a 10 team mixed 5x5 auction league and am wondering just how far to stretch my non-keeper purchases based on my league's history. In all likelihood, about 7 of the "top 10" and 13 of "top 20" players will be kept by teams for affordable rates. My team has none of these guys (I have good keeper values but not of the top players) so the need to "reach" for guys and overpay seems urgent to me.

A new owner to our league last year took overpaying to new heights, paying $57 for cabrera and $59 for braun. I think these numbers will be on owner's minds this year and I will be forced to pay such prices if I want any of the top players,and early in the draft at that even before inflation really kicks in. Can you ever justify paying $160-$180 for 3 Top Tier players just to try and be competitive?

I have never done this and it seems so outrageous, yet I see myself getting shut out of such players if I don't.

Any thoughts?

[Brainstorm]

You could certainly go stars and scrubs, but you need to know your player pool in and out. The other problem potentially is that you're in this same spot next season, where you don't have any elite players at good price points to keep.

What I would do is go into the draft with an open mind. If the elite players come off the board first and the prices seam reasonable, jump. If not, then just find the values later on.

[MadDog36]

I'll take an entire balanced team of tier 2 players against a team that has 2-3 overpriced studs and a bunch of nothing. Just my two cents.

[redsoxsucker]

Thanks for the input so far. I guess my point is that the most competitive teams already have 1-2 of the studs at around $25-ish, so they can likely still grab 1-2 of the non-keepers at high prices and then be pretty hard to beat.

if money is being saved, wouldn't there be inflation on the middle tier players as well?

[MrT]

In response to your post:

The fact that one idiot spent in the $50s should not effect the auction. Everyone is not going to be ridiculous just because of one person. In my 12 tean roto mixed $260 league last year there were 54 players going for over $20, which averaged out to 4.5 players per team. In a 10 team league the average would be about 5.5 per team. The point is that there will be plenty of good players. I never bid outside of the $30s (never get into the $40 plus bidding -just not worth it). In my league, most keep cheap keepers -my 5 this year will total $29.00 (Scherzer, Heyward, Prado, Lucroy and Trumbo). I will have plenty of money to get whomever I want. Just don't panic. Who are your keepers?