Keeper Question 6x6: Follow up

Earlier today, I answered anonymous' question about his freeze list for 6x6. He followed up with this question:

Thanks for the insight on this. I'm not sure I'll need to dump a category, just because my pitchers are pretty solid right now for $30. I have Cain ($5), Rich Hill ($5), Corpas ($5), Lyon ($5), T. Pena ($5) and Broxton ($5). As I said before, my league counts holds and used W-L, instead of wins. I figure I'll go with four SPs, six MRs and two closers to start the season. I think I can get through the auction with roughly $65 spent on pitching (Maddux for $8 to $10, another SP, four MRs), which will give me much more cash for hitters in a $271 league. I can always pick up a SP after the season starts, when our budgets go up to $300.

So, with this in mind, is it still stupid to go after two top-tier players at auction?

The short answer to your question is that spending $65 on your pitchers versus the $88 I think you should spend improves your chances in hitting. However, you would still need to buy $56 worth of hitting stats for $46 worth of auction money, and you would still fall slightly short.

My slightly longer answer, though, is that I never like to lock myself into a strategy where I'm "committed" to buying two players no matter what.

This isn't to say that Ryan Howard and Chase Utley aren't each going to be worth $45 bids in your league, depending upon where the inflation sits. The problem is that the bargains could very well fall at the beginning, the middle, or the end of your auction. Since you have experience with your league and I don't, you would know the answer to this question better than I.

In my money league (A.L. only) last year, the bargains started falling in later rather than sooner. The first 87 players in my auction went a combined $104 over my inflation prices. Obviously, if my prices were correct and added up to $3120 for the entire league, the auction was going to correct itself and drop back down to zero or close to it. Indeed, the final 75 players went $87 under my inflation prices.

(The reason that the prices in the league were $17 over my inflation estimate was due to a combination of: a) players not listed on my sheet or at $1 being purchased for $2 or more, and b) players listed on my sheet at $2 or more not being purchased.)

As a parallel to your example, I could have bought Alex Rodriguez at $43 (one dollar under my inflation price) and Carl Crawford at $51 (two dollars over my inflation price) and done a fairly decent job of filling in during the endgame and turning some small profits here at there.

If this experience matches what happens in your league, then buying Howard and Utley at a combined $90 might not be a bad idea, assuming that your league's inflation rate will bring these players close to these prices anyway. High costs early mean that you will actually gain money in the endgame. Not only will you beat the inflation prices, you might very well beat the pre-inflation prices as well.

I can't answer that for you, however. You know better than I do which way your league will zig or zag in your auction.