Dealing with Category Scarcity in your auction (and later)

As we were gearing up for our auctions this winter, NSH noticed a problem that I also have observed at times in my keeper leagues.

in the abstract, C(arlos) Gomez is not worth $20 but where there are almost no SBs available at auction (I have Jacoby [Ellsbury]), even without inflation is a bid price I might go to if in the open market.

There are quite a few issues at play here when it comes to deciding how much to overpay for Gomez.

1) How strong was your freeze list?
You have to put together a chart like this before your auction specific to your own league's freezes and value. If your team was in the top three or four on this chart, then overpaying for speed might not necessarily have been a bad idea if you were strong in other categories. If you had a more balanced team, or inflation had left your team a little thin, then you probably would have wanted to stay away from Gomez past his inflation price.

2) Do fair trades happen in your league?
You might be in a keeper league where owners are always making straight trades or are willing to address a deficiency early by trading excess early. In the expert league I participate in, I've decided to attempt a modified no-power strategy. One of my readers pointed out that I didn't get a second closer, but I was helped out by a trading culture this year where a lot of owners were looking for hitting and was able to swap out Victor Martinez this week for Joe Nathan, solving that deficiency.

My non-expert A.L. is a different animal, though. Teams typically wait for the dump deals to take place and are reluctant to make non-dump deals unless the deal is extremely favorable for them.

3) Does category value shift in your league in-season?
Due to a scarce amount of contributors in each category, sometimes the gap between the top and the bottom of the standings in steals and saves can widen in a hurry. A team that bought Carlos Gomez and has no other speed might decide not to compete in steals and parlay Gomez into something else.

The problem with this is in most leagues owners will be aware that the Gomez owner is doing this and will offer him 75 cents on the dollar. The Gomez owner knows he's being cheated, but he also knows that every week he waits presents an additional opportunity cost to improve in other categories. In my regular A.L., it isn't uncommon to see trades where a closer gets dealt for less than full market value because his owner recognizes that he'd only lose a point in saves but gain 5-8 points elsewhere and deals the closer for the first decent offer he gets.

I've been in leagues that work the other way, though. I've seen owners stubbornly hold on to a closer for dear life unless they get either an elite hitter or a solid hitter and a solid #3 starter in a deal. I've even seen owners enter the year with 3-4 closers and go into the auction with the same 3-4 closers because those closers are "worth" a certain something.

Conclusions
All of this information varies depending on your league, your rules, and the philosophies of different owners in your league. You should have a good feel for all of these factors before your auction and price players accordingly. If owners in your league refuse to dump categories and you have no speed going into your auction, that doesn't mean that you should pay whatever it takes to get Carlos Gomez or Jason Bartlett. But you should know that you might wind up dumping steals if you don't go to a certain price, whether or not going to that price makes sense for your team based on how strong or weak your freezes are, and how easy or difficult it would be to get a comparable speed guy in a trade if you can't buy one for a competitive price in the auction.