Fantasy Valuation 101

A basic point an anonymous reader made is that there are certain basic Rotisserie baseball facts that are immutable.

There is only a certain amount of money to be spent. For instance if you have a ten team league at 260 a team you have 2600. You subtract who is kept and all the available players should equal the amount left. That is how you value a player. All the players can't go higher than the amount available.

Also you can predict the positions. If you use nine pitchers you can see that 90 pitchers will be bought. No more will be bought so why list more?

Both points are obviously true.

The first point is extremely important, as I've always said. In fact, if you see a valuation system or a price guide where the prices don't add up to standard league values, you should stay away.

However, there are nuances to the idea that you only have so much money to spend. You should wind up at $2600 in the example above, but you want to know:

• What the raw inflation rate
• How category scarcity might impact your prices beyond the raw inflation rate
• How your league values or de-values certain categories

I like to figure out the raw inflation rate first at then make tweaks based on the second two factors. Some owners will take the full chunk of money left to spend and start assigning it to players first, but I don't recommend this unless you have an excellent handle on inflation dynamics. Start with a raw inflated value, make sure those add up to the amount of money your league has to spend, and then make your adjustments.

The second point is also true, but I like to list more than the minimum number of players there are to buy for three reasons.

1) It gives me an idea of how my opponents are doing.
If I see an owner buying players that I have listed at less than $1, it tells me that these teams are probably a little weaker. This gives me an opportunity to either identify teams that might be dumping early or - at the very least - teams that might be trying to trade into their holes sooner rather than later.

2) It keeps track of available free agents
In the first week or two, my auction values are usually still a pretty good guideline for which free agents I'm going to pick up. Having a pecking order - even among the players I probably won't buy - helps me if I have an early injury, particularly if I buy an injured player at auction.

3) It gives me the prerogative of changing my mind during the auction
If I've bought a power heavy/speed light team and I have every available OF listed, I might buy Willie Bloomquist over another scrub OF in the endgame. But if I only had listed 168 players (frozen and unfrozen total), I might omit Bloomquist from my sheet entirely. Bloomquist and his non-SB counterpart are probably both going to be listed at $1, but it pays to have them both listed.

Anonymous' points are important and worth remembering. But dig deeper when you're preparing for your auction. Your opponents are all going to be doing this, and you don't want to get caught napping while they're out turning stones over for every edge they can find.