Plus/minus

I spent a significant amount of time this winter discussing category optimization or, if you prefer, category dumping. Tonight, before I leave for my auction in 10 hours, I'll briefly discuss a common method of keeping track of your bids and how you're doing in your auction.

Every year, Toz and I both keep a round-by-round record of our auction. This includes a list of the team that called out the player, the price projected for the player, the inflation price, who bought the player and the last bid. Alex Patton used to do this in his books, and we both liked the idea so much that we both started doing it a few years ago.

A wrinkle I added to the round-by-round is the plus/minus.

Plus/minus records for every player how much above or below the inflation price he went. This method was originally in one of the Peter Goldenbock "How to Win at Rotisserie Baseball" books, but I've refined the method for myself over the years.

It's pretty easy to understand how it works. If your inflation price for Jose Reyes is $50 and he goes for $55, a -5 goes on your sheet. If the next player called is Albert Pujols who you have at $52 and he goes for $48, move that back down to -1.

I like the plus/minus method because it allows me to see when to pounce and start filling up my roster. There isn't an automatic sweet spot. I've seen it happen in the first round and I've seen it happen in the 5th or 6th round.

If the "pluses" start going up early, buy, buy, buy. I've seen first rounds where +15 or +20 isn't uncommon. You should be buying, not waiting for even better bargains later. In experienced leagues, another opportunity won't come.

Once in a while, the first round and the second round will see a minus and then the late second or early third round will see a lull, as the superstars are gone and owners don't want to pay market value for the Alexis Rios' or Josh Barfield's of the world. Again, buy. Paying $20 for Rios is a lot more pleasant than paying $19 for Garret Anderson later.

The one place you need to be careful with this method is if you see nothing but minuses throughout the auction and you're at -100 or so by the 8th or 9th round. My experience tells me that if you reach this point and you haven't spent at least half your money, it's too late. You're going to overpay for at least 2 players and up to 5 just to spend your cash. The room will come back to or close to zero (if you've calculated inflation correctly), but spending $3 on a $7 projected Jamie Shields isn't going to win you the league. It's also not going to empty out your $260 budget.

In this difficult situation, try not to focus on the plus/minus but on how much talent is left at each position in the auction that corresponds with what you have to buy. If the top eight players left will cost a combined $120 and you have $80 left, you're still OK. But as that gap closes, you'll have to start buying players, even if one or two of those players is at par or a little above inflation value. In this example, where nothing but minuses go up on the board for 8-9 rounds, all the bargains will come very late, and they will all be very cheap. Grabbing 4-6 $3 players projected to earn $8 will give you a lot of profit in the endgame. But it does you no good if you leave $20+ on the table.