By incorporating my team's needs into my bid prices, I may have overvalued certain players who satisfied those needs and undervalued others who didn't.There is definitely a balance between trying to buy players at or under value versus making sure that you put together the best possible team you can at the auction. We all try not to pay for position scarcity, but if the alternative is walking out of the auction with holes, sometimes we might go $1 or $2 higher on certain players to make sure that we don't walk out of the auction with two or three dead spots at a position.
In my non-expert American League this year, corner infield was surprisingly weak heading into the auction. As a result, a number of owners ticked their prices up on the few corners who were available. These were the results:
Corner Infielders, Billy Almon Brown Graduate League 2009
| NOM | # | Player | Cost | Proj. | +/- | Buyer | LB |
| JSC | 1:2 | Alex Rodriguez | $30 | $34 | +4 | QUI | TOW |
| COP | 1:5 | Kevin Youkilis | $31 | $31 | 0 | TOW | JSC |
| JIH | 1:7 | Mark Teixeira | $41 | $39 | -2 | GUE | BEN |
| DOZ | 2:15 | Scott Rolen | $13 | $10 | -3 | JSC | GLA |
| JAB | 2:18 | Carlos Guillen | $25 | $20 | -5 | JSC | JAB |
| TOW | 2:23 | Hank Blalock | $20 | $18 | -2 | JAB | JIH |
| COP | 3:29 | Chone Figgins | $29 | $27 | -2 | DOZ | JAB |
| DOZ | 5:51 | Lyle Overbay | $14 | $12 | -2 | JIH | JSC |
| COP | 5:53 | Nick Swisher | $13 | $7 | -6 | COP | DEW |
| DOZ | 6:63 | Mike Jacobs | $16 | $20 | +4 | TOW | JIH |
| COP | 6:65 | Paul Konerko | $30 | $20 | -10 | COP | DOZ |
| TOW | 6:71 | Russ Branyan | $10 | $6 | -4 | DOZ | BAT |
| GLA | 8:85 | Marco Scutaro | $3 | $7 | +4 | COP | JAB |
| TOW | 8:95 | Eric Chavez | $5 | $3 | +2 | BAT | JAB |
| DOZ | 9:99 | Daric Barton* | $2 | $3 | -1 | DOZ | JAB |
| TOW | 10:119 | Brandon Wood* | $5 | $2 | +3 | TOW | |
| JAB | 11:126 | Kevin Millar | $1 | $1 | 0 | JAB | |
| JAB | 12:142 | Jose Bautista | $2 | $1 | +1 | JAB | |
| GLA | 13:146 | Cody Ransom | $1 | $1 | 0 | GLA | |
| BEN | 13:149 | Willy Aybar | $2 | $1 | +1 | BEN | |
| Average (P/M Total) | $15 | $13 | -30 |
The "#" is the "round the player was bought and where the player was called out; for example, Russ Branyan was the 71st player called out. The projection includes inflation and spins off of my bid limits. I included players who were slotted in at 1B, 3B, or CO by their teams. Thus Marco Scutaro is included here while Ty Wigginton and Mark DeRosa are not.
Immediately, you can see the impact of the soft corner auction. After A-Rod (who was only a "bargain" in the context of a freeze league), the next bargain was Mike Jacobs at $16. The room should have noticed and didn't notice that after Jacobs and Paul Konerko the corners were essentially gone but didn't notice until Konerko's name was called out...by the owner who plunked down $30 for him, or $1 less than what Kevin Youkilis went for.
Looking only at the corners purchased doesn't give a full picture of the auction. BEN, for example, pushed heavy on Teixeira early and wound up with Carl Crawford ($43) two players later and Curtis Granderson ($35) in Round 2. He "settled" on Aybar, but given that he spent his money and probably needed the speed more than he needed the power I can't blame him for not spending more on the names that were out there at CO later on.
The teams that are more interesting to look at are the ones that needed two or three corners and what they did on offense.
DOZ. Speed was light in the auction, so I can't really question his $29 price on Figgins too much. But he was one of the owners who had the money and the slots for Jacobs and bought Luke Scott at $17 five players later. Given some of the OF that went later, I would have rather had Jacobs at $17 - or pushed him higher - than Branyan at $10. He's the guy who said $29 on Konerko.
JSC - Decided to preemptively buy Rolen at $13 and Guillen at $25 rather than get caught overpaying for lesser options later. He was one of the owners biting his lip when it looked like the bidding on Jacobs might stop at $13.
JAB - Needed all three corner spots. In context, the Blalock buy wasn't bad, but he wound up spending his money early and was down to a $10 max bid when he got Robinson Cano at the end of the third round at $25. I might have pushed the envelope one more dollar on Scutaro or Chavez; Millar and Bautista makes for a very thin corner infield.
TOW - Probably did the best job managing the corner infield. Youkilis at $31 was at par on my sheet, which looked great compared to all of the other prices in the room and then he comparatively stole Jacobs.
COP - By contrast, did the worst job managing his corners. Swisher at $13 looks good now, but at the time of the auction he looked like a 4th OF/trade candidate. Konerko at $30 was one of those prices where the bidding kept going up and up and up very slowly, as the two owners bidding knew that they were going to be stuck with the worst overpay of the day.
If you're light at a position, adjusting your bids isn't just a matter of moving your price up by a couple of dollars if you want to make sure that you actually get stats from the position. It's also a matter of making sure that you have a contingency plan if you don't get the players/stats you want at that position. There's nothing wrong with Bautista and Millar if the rest of your offense is strong. But this owner is always committed to cheap catching...and cheap catching is what he bought with Gregg Zaun and Jose Morales. With Josh Anderson also on his team, he started the year with five potential weak spots. Even in a deep 4x4, that could put you in a big hole early.
The bid limits are designed not only to ensure that you get value, but make sure that you field a competitive team. I'm guessing that the owner who bought Guillen/Rolen wanted to make sure he did that. I don't like those prices, but he was better off buying those guys than getting stuck in a bidding war on Paul Konerko or the dregs later on.
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