Bidding for this year AND next year

A while back, Mike Fenger addressed the idea of adjusting your bid prices for next year:

I do find more frequent examples of guys I have at $5 going for a dollar (or not getting bought), just because I do tend to have a list of pitchers that I'm willing to bid up in the endgame, and lots of times those pitchers are selected for their futures, more than their potential value this year.

Which of course, is another issue I hope we can address. On Alex's site, I mentioned that some of my bids are geared towards both this year and next year. I'm very interested to hear your thoughts on this point . . .

To the best of my knowledge, this is an area that is never addressed by any Roto publications or expert web sites. This is a significant disservice to fantasy players everywhere. We all know that Francisco Liriano isn't going to be available in the reserve round of our auctions. So how much should we pay for Mr. Liriano?

First, though, I'm going to back up and discuss the types of players whose bids might need to be adjusted based on next year considerations:

• Disabled players. I'm not talking about guys who will be out for a week or two at the beginning of the season. I'm talking about players like Liriano, who will be out for the year but will clearly be undervalued if purchased and players like Juan Rivera, who will miss about half the season but will be at full value in 2008, assuming health.
• Young players. This is a selective and subjective category. You're not going to want to bid up every rookie; in fact, you want to be careful not to have a team full of rookies and second year players with a lot of risk (unless you're playing for next year). But you are going to want to make sure that your rivals don't grab onto some great rookie for too low a price. You might think that Alex Gordon is only going to earn $11 this year. But you don't want to see him earn $16 this year and, worse, $23 next year for your opponent.

The most significant conundrum is that there's no great rule of thumb here to determine how much you should budget for these types of players. Toz and I were having a conversation about Francisco Liriano and how much we think he'll go for. Our guess was between $8-10. I e-mailed Mike Fenger this morning, and he guessed about the same amount for Liriano.

But why? Why not less? Why not more?

Establishing bids on young players is a little easier. We're trying to establish a low bid where if we get the rookie we'll feel comfortable taking a small loss. We're also trying to prevent another owner from profiting in a dump deal. I'd rather push Howie Kendrick to $18 (the LABR and Sports Weekly bids are too high, btw) than let someone else get him, but I can't go too far past that. I'll suck too much value out of my team.

The same applies for injured players. Guys like Kris Benson and Matt Clement are pretty easy. The nature of their injuries makes me think I won't say more than $1. In fact, Benson and Clement have more value as placeholders on my roster on Opening Day than they do next year; I can wait a week or two and see if there was an undrafted starter I like.

Liriano, Rivera and Bartolo Colon are tougher cases. I don't want to see Juan Rivera go for $4-6, but I don't want to pay $15 because that makes him a bargain next year. I'd rather go to $10 and take my chances at $10 that I take a small loss.

A final consideration in setting these prices is value on your roster and how many players you have to dump. Toz, for example, has Grady Sizemore, Huston Street and Jon Papelbon on the cheap. He might bid up Rivera, but he won't go crazy for him because he already has plenty to swap in this year/next year deals. I, on the other hand, have only Mark Teahen cheap. Drafting Rivera or Liriano might be a good play for me.