could (you) address the issue of anticipated money left on the table after the auction relative to inflation? My keeper leagues often have $50 or so unspent at the end of the auction, I assume such an amount should be taken into account when calculating inflation. In fact, it acts to increase the inflation amount, I believe.If other owners are leaving money on the table in your auction, that's not your problem. In fact, it should be to your benefit. Even if another owner spends his money judiciously but leaves $5 on the table, that's $5 that he could have - and should have - spent to buy a better player or players.
You, however, do not want to leave money on the table if you can avoid doing so. The idea is to spend your $260 auction dollars to maximize your value. If you get $1 or $2 bargains across the board but leave $10 on the table, you would have been better off paying par on some or most or those "bargains".
How can you make sure that you don't leave that money on the table?
1) Make sure that the projected salaries of the players in your auction equals the money your league has to spend.
I've talked about this over the last few years in several places, but you want to make sure that the amount of money left to spend by your league (minus freezes) equals the amount of money you have distributed across the pool of available players. This article from 2008 goes into more detail, but the bottom line is that you have to make sure that if there is $1500 left to spend in your league, that you have $1500 distributed across the pool of available players.
2) Try to have a general idea of how many bargains you can get.
Just because you have inflation calculated properly, this doesn't mean that you want to spend par on every player in your auction. Unless you have the best team going into the auction by a good margin, paying par for player after player across the board will leave you in the same position you entered the auction in: not good enough to win your league. Your goal is to try to get bargains relative to inflation so that you can improve your team as the auction moves along.
The conundrum here is that if you get too cute and insist on bargains that are too deep, you will leave money on the table. If you push for bargains on every player you may not be able to spend all your money.
The best way to get a general idea of how much money you can spend below par is to try to figure out what your Optimal Bid is. If you don't know what Optimal Bidding is, here is a general primer. If you're in a competitive league, you won't have much margin for error; you'll probably fall in somewhere between 90-95% of inflation par.
3) Know your endgame
Depending on how your league spends your money, there may or may not be some attractive bargains left in the endgame. If your league buys players at par or close to par at the beginning of your auction, there probably won't be too many bargains at the end and you should make sure to spend your money in the middle. If, however, your league spends liberally at the beginning, you may need to push a player or two toward par at the beginning so that you do make sure to spend your money.
If you have to do this, try to concentrate on scarcer categories or positions. Spending par - or maybe even $1 or $2 more than par - on Jon Papelbon makes more sense in an auction where only four closers are available as opposed to going over par on Miguel Cabrera when eight of the top 10 projected power hitters are out there. This principle obviously depends on your roster as well. If you're going into your auction with a lot of speed, you can probably let Carl Crawford go. If you have two closers already, pushing Paps to inflation par won't make sense.
The idea, though, is that if everyone is spending their money early you don't want to find yourself with money on the table at the end. Getting bargains but leaving money on the table means that you're not getting bargains.
These are only general guidelines; there are plenty of other ways to make sure to spend your money. The important thing is to try to find the perfect balance between spending your money, maximizing your auction value, and maximizing your categories at your auction. I would actually rank your priorities during the auction in this order. I've always been a strong advocate for getting bargains in auction, but if you don't spend all your money, you're doing your team a grave disservice.
2 comments:
Thanks for addressing this issue, Mike. I also was asking how the anticipated money to be left on the table after the auction factors into ones calculations of inflation prior to the auction. Be well, thanks a lot.
Mike, as always love the Tank. I haven't seen this discussed before, but as always if I missed it, feel free to ignore. I have (to me anyway) an interesting problem. My keeper list (10 team AL only 5x5), is solid in that it includes fairly priced players and a few pricing bargains. But does not, at least to my eye, include the type of bargains that would allow me to go after a key star player or two. Q is, have I outsmarted myself with this roster? VMart 27, Napoli 7, Swisher 2, Scutaro 4, Zobrist 10, Cano 19, M. Young (who you I think left off your AL 3b article) 18, Choo 20, N. Cruz 25, Borbon 2. Pitchers Masterson 2, Blackburn 1, Slowey 7. Also have but am likely to deal or cut, Delmon Young 12, Matsui 13, Cust 7, Aviles 14, Danks 22, Duchscherer 1. i get to keep on reserve Flowers 5.
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