"Inaccurate" Prices

Gypsy Soul wonders:

What is the effect of not accurately pricing players?

There are two different ways to look at this question.

The most important thing to remember is that any list of prices we put together in March or early April aren't going to be accurate in early October. Players who we expect to succeed will fail and players we think will stink up the joint will be great. It is important to recognize that our prices aren't accurate as far as predicting with any kind of certainly what a player will be worth.

What we are doing at our auctions in early April is trying to establish a market value for players based on what we think they will be worth. If you have a hunch that this is the year that Kyle Davies is going to break out and put together a $15-20 season you're still not going to pay $15-20 for Davies. Prudence tells you that there is still a lot of risk in Davies, even if your auction was this weekend and you know that you're buying at last one good outing from Davies. Six dollars should get him, and if he goes to $7 you'll sigh and move on to someone else on your list.

You certainly have every right to put a higher price on Davies if you're really, really excited about his prospects this year. Just make sure that you shift the dollars in your league so that you have $3120 budgeted (in a 12-team league) across 276 players.

If you don't do this, you are either going to overestimate or underestimate inflation and will either be overspending early or overspending late. The biggest cost of inaccurately pricing players is that you'll wind up paying too much for the top players or too little for the players at the top and in the middle, resulting in overpays in your endgame.

But accuracy is all relative. If you wind up paying $10 for Davies at your auction, you've probably overspent and will lose. But I probably would have told Cliff Lee's owners the same thing at this time in 2008.