I would presume that inflation (or deflation) can change from pick to pick as the room loses money -- then as teams slow buying, etc.The basic question being posed here is does inflation fluctuate as the auction goes along?
There are two answers to this question.
While you are participating in an auction, inflation does fluctuate from a purely mathematical standpoint. Every player purchased drains both money and value out of the auction. Unless every player purchased is purchased at inflation par, the amount of money left to spend divided by the amount of talent left to buy (the inflation rate) will change in that moment in time.
Over the course of an entire auction, though, the inflation rate remains fixed. At the end of your auction, the inflation rate will be what it was at the beginning: the amount of money that was available to spend divided by the amount of value on the table.
I presented this chart in an earlier post. Here, I'll add the wrinkle of what happens if you factor inflation in every time a player is purchased. This league had $1,878 to spend on $1,579 worth of players, for an 18.9% inflation rate.
| Round | Player | "Raw" | +/- | Inflation by Round | "New" Inflation Rate | ||
| 1 | $362 | $289 | -73 | 25.3% | 17.5% | ||
| 2 | $372 | $308 | -64 | 20.8% | 16.5% | ||
| 3 | $266 | $216 | -50 | 23.1% | 14.6% | ||
| 4 | $224 | $172 | -52 | 30.2% | 10.1% | ||
| 5 | $185 | $145 | -40 | 27.6% | 4.5% | ||
| 6 | $124 | $88 | -36 | 40.9% | -4.6% | ||
| 7 | $116 | $95 | -21 | 22.1% | -16.2% | ||
| 8 | $76 | $71 | -5 | 7.0% | -27.5% | ||
| 9 | $59 | $56 | -3 | 5.4% | -47.9% | ||
| 10 | $22 | $36 | +14 | -63.6% | -43.1% | ||
| 11 | $33 | $40 | +7 | -21.2% | -61.5% | ||
| 12 | $21 | $34 | +13 | -61.9% | -61.1% | ||
| 13 | $12 | $22 | +10 | -83.3% | -16.7% | ||
| 14* | $6 | $7 | +1 | 16.7% | 0% |
Teams are overspending on players in the first seven rounds when you factor in the 18.9% inflation rate. As a result, the inflation tracking numbers keeps dropping down and down, until you've actually reached a negative inflation rate in Round 6.
But if the inflation rate in the room is dropping, shouldn't the prices be dropping as well?
They're not, though. Teams have to spend their money, and they spend $1,533 of it, or 82%, in the first six rounds. The inflation rate for the room is dropping, but the players are getting more and more expensive. Why the apparent paradox?
As we see in the chart, the inflation rate eventually has to drop to zero. The room will spend all of its money on all of the value available in the auction. There's no rule, though, saying that the bargains have to come in the first round, the third round, or the sixth.
And they don't. They come much later, when most of the money has been drained out of the room but so has most of the talent. Getting Mike Lowell for $8 in Round 9 is a Pyhrric victory if you didn't spend your money in the first few rounds.
Rotisserie teams, whether they know inflation or not, know this. So they spend their money. Matching the league-wide inflation rate allows them to spend their money. Saying that the inflation rate in the moment is lower won't change this.
And, as I said above, the inflation rate for the entire auction remains fixed. This is important because the reality is that Mike Lowell was a bargain whether he was purchased in the first round or the ninth. My raw bid price for him was $13 last year and he went for $8. His inflation price was $17. In theory, if all players had earned their prices to the dollar, Mike Lowell would have been a $5 bargain regardless of when he was purchased.
1 comment:
Toz covers this briefly in the link to the 'issue' you provided, but I'd like to go a little more in depth.
Pre-draft I give every player a dollar value (after inflation due to freezes) And like Taz, as soon as a player is taken, I have a plus/minus notation at the top of my draft page. For example, if I have Reyes price at $52, w/inflation, and he goes for $55, I put a +3 at the top of the page.
Obviously, if your draft gets up to +60 or more, (most of our guys haven't reached stage three yet) you can wait on values later in the draft, and if it's even or minus, you might have to start buying.
The beauty of this, for me, isn't just in the simple math, but the subtlety it allows when deciding whether to purchase a player.
Let's say I have Jeff Kent valued at $19, and I like him OK at the price. The bidding stalls at $17 and I have to decide whether to go $18 or not.
If the draft is way overbid at that time, I'll probably let him go, not because he isn't a value, but because there are BETTER values out there later.
If the draft is about even, I will decide whether or not to take him based on my personal preference, etc.
If the draft is underbid at that time, I'll probably snatch him up because bargains will be harder to find later.
So, for me, knowing whether a draft is overbid or underbid EVERY time a player comes up, gives me an advantage of not only knowing my exact price for the player, but also the range I'm willing to go more or less based on the timing of his being brought up.
I know it sounds simple and elementary, but I've been playing for 20 years, with guys with almost as much experience, and I've never played with ANYONE else who's done this during a draft that I've been in. Never.
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