There are a number of outlets providing fantasy baseball analysis, advice, pricing, and so on (and Mike and I thank all of you for continuing to come here and read us). We, of course, read what other writers are putting out on the market.
Someone that I have participated in several analyst auctions with is Mike Kuchera over at The Fantasy Man. A couple of days ago, I read some material that caught my eye and I thought we should discuss it here. Here is an excerpt of the larger article:
4. Bidding - It's okay to overpay! Overpay here, go cheap over there. You can always compensate for a bad move or an expensive move. In a typical bidding war, if it's only you and another manager and the two of you just bid $5 straight on top of each other with no other bidders, you've started to drastically over pay and is an indicator as a good time to drop out. Jay Bruce is typically a $20-$25 player. If you bid that $25 for market value, another guy bids $1, you top it at $27, he bids another $1, then you topping at $29 is where you should stop. Once you hit that $30 mark, you better start praying Bruce has a monster break out year. That's just an example. With 1st round type players.... Hanley, Reyes, Pujols, Wright, etc.... No one should ever pay more than $55 in a $270/23 roster league, and even $55 is too high. My personal cutoff is $54 for a guy like Jose Reyes or Albert Pujols and even that for me is stretching it.
5. Be Realistic - Some of you may look at paying $54 for a player and crucify me. First of all, I have won doing that and second, it's really what you are paying for the top players. Let's be realistic here. ALL fantasy baseball magazines at the local Farnes and Zoble have ridiculously low auction values. These magazines have auction values based on stat crunching and numbers and NOT what people are actually paying in real auctions whether live or online. For example, one magazine, let's call it PhotoWorld has Grady Sizemore at $32 for a 5x5 league. Now who can seriously tell me that they've paid anywhere close to $32 in an auction draft for Sizemore? Another mag has it a little closer, let's call this one BLAHOO? has Sizemore at $37 in a mixed league, but still way off. It also has Ryan Braun at $36, ugh. Typical for Sizemore in 2009 as he is one of the most hyped players in drafts this year is anywhere between $45-$52 depending on homerism in your league in mixed leagues. I have seen it over and over in mocks and my own real league auctions this year. It's the same for pretty much all the top players. I'd say the magazines are dead wrong for maybe the top 100 players in a draft. I am sure the numbers they use to pump out these values can be justified, but they just don't have a clue when it comes to "real" value, which is the real value real people are paying in auctions.
We talk a lot here about values. This post, designed to offer advice to the "newer" fantasy player, undermines the entire theory behind auction dollar allocation in a $260/23 environment. In the finite environment, the rules of mathematics still apply. Let's use $52 as our example, since that is the price Ryan Braun went for in the 2009 CBS NL Analyst Auction. My price for Braun was $36, meaning that, right off the bat, there is a -$16 in the room. In fact, the round with Braun went to -$58, when combined with the first round, created a $-120 hole. What does math tell us...bargains have to fall somewhere. The bargains should come early enough to buy plenty of stats to outpace the overpriced superstar.
Let's take a look at the following example, taken from my CBS team and the team that bought Braun.
Braun: 37HR 106RBI 14SB .285 <-----> Hawpe 25HR 85RBI 2SB .283
Jenkins: 9HR 29RBI 1SB .246 <-----> Winn 10HR 64RBI 25SB .306
Blanco: 1HR 38RBI 13SB .251 <-----> Upton 15HR 42RBI 1SB .250
Braun's team has $54 in salary, my team has $51 in salary. In terms of quantitative stats, the star and accompanying scrubs do not outpace the "bargains." The extra couple of dollars in salary also allowed me to spend for Chris Snyder and Chase Headley in the end game, rather than Jenkins, Blanco, Kearns, et al. for the Braun team, again far outpacing this team in overall stats purchased on offense.
Advice only makes sense if it withstands the mathematical analysis. Mike and I have talked about this ad infinitum, and do not need to go back over it here. Suffice it to say that the mere fact that advice is geared for "newcomers" does not make it right. Moreover, asking a newcomer to play stars and scrubs, where the newcomer might have less effective grasp of how to buy the bargains, is a recipe to lose.
3 comments:
This guy sounds pretty clueless. Roto is kind of unique in that the market does NOT set the value for players. If every league in the world pays $52 for Grady Sizemore, he's still not worth $52.
Your example comparing the sets of 3 players is a good one - if I can sum the stats of 2 sets of players and get the same total, but the sum of their dollar values don't match up nearly identically, then your valuation system is broken.
The one thing to consider though, is that you do have to spend your money. I guess it's possible that all of the top 100 (?) players could go for more than, and even though you're getting great bargains on what's left, you still can't spend all your money. Knowing when to overpay (slightly) is the mark of an experienced player. Mike talks about this all the time.
But still, if guys like Braun or Sizemore are going in the $50s (without inflation), that's just insane. The bargains are going to be on $25-30 players, and you'll have no trouble filling out your roster.
I listened to the FM podcast last season when he was doing a live auction. His advice and selections were so bad and so counter to basic fantasy tenants that I thought he was joking. Alas, he was not. I haven't listened since.
Overpaying studs a buck or 2 is ok, overpaying by 10 puts you in a hole because, absent trade, you've stuck yourself with a negative 10 value that you can't get rid of through the waiver process, and have only limited dollars to compensate with to purchase bargains. Example. Say for the sake of argument that the winner is the team that gets 325 in value for 260 in salary, or an average return of 125 percent on investment. The team that pays 50 for a Sizemore who only returns 40 now needs to get 285 in value for 210, or a return on investment of 137 percent of its remaining dollars. He can't waive Sizemore to bring the required return number down, as no one in the free agent pool will come anywhere close to Sizemore's production.
In contrast, say I spend 12 (ie, the average amount spent on players) on a player who returns 2 in value. Even assuming the guy remains in the majors and isn't sent down, at some point I am going to tire of this underperforming asset, and waive him for someone on the free agent list. I won't go overboard and assume the guy will earn the 12 I originally spent on this particular roster spot, but let's say he's good enough to bring the value I obtain from the spot up to 4. So even though I overpaid for my original player by the same amount the Sizemore owner overpaid, I can mitigate my loss in a way the Sizemore owner can't. Moreover, the average return I have to make up elsewhere to counteract my mistake is significantly less. All I have to do is earn 321 in value on my remaining 248, or a return on investment of 129 percent. This is why I will pay par or near par for a star, I won’t chase them.
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