Actively Bidding Against Your Opponents

Yesterday, I addressed the first part of jem1776's dilemma in his mixed league. He was wondering if he should specifically make his opponent - the projected best team in his league - pay inflation par for Joey Votto or let him go. Then jem moved from the specific to the general.

I've never tried to gain the advantage in a big way by my auction behavior. Of course, the danger in making it consistently confusing for everyone is that there are all those teams to make me one by one pay more later for those I obviously want. Have you used bidding mechanisms in auctions, I mean beyond walls, etc.

I generally try to avoid targeting a specific owner in an auction with my bids. It messes up your own auction enough that the benefit of weakening your opponent is not worth the risk. However, I do rank how strong I perceive all 12 teams in my auction to be and will bid more or less aggressively on a player depending on how much I think a player will help a stronger opponent.

For example, let's say that Zack Greinke is the first player called out in my auction. I have a raw bid of $34 on him, and inflation is 20% in my league. His inflation price (rounded up) is $41.

The bidding progresses swiftly and stops at $38 before the inevitable pause comes. I can say $39 or I can let Greinke go.

If the high bid is held by a weaker opponent, I might just decide to let Greinke go. A +3 profit on Greinke will help him, but it won't do enough to make up for his weaker freeze list. Chances are good that this owner will ultimately wind up dumping, and maybe I'll wind up owning Greinke come June anyway.

On the other hand, if a stronger opponent has that bid, I'll almost definitely say $39. I don't want to give this stronger team a $3 inflation profit. If that owner says $40, maybe I'll say $41 and maybe I won't, depending on other factors. Giving that stronger owner a +1 profit isn't ideal, but I may not want to buy Greinke at inflation par either, depending on my team's relative strength, the other pitchers in the auction, the relative strength of my freezes, etc.

The only time I'll definitely target another owner is if my team is so weak that I have no chance at all unless I do so and if that team is incredibly strong in one area and incredibly weak in another.

I found myself in exactly this position in my first year in my current A.L.-only league. I had taken over a team with almost zero freezes. I had one pretty good pitching freeze, two slightly undervalued pitching freezes, and a top SB guy who was somewhat undervalued. The best projected team had a lot of offense but almost no pitching. I figured if I could block him from getting any good starters or relievers in the auction I could give myself a fighting chance. We had no AB rule at the time, which made my decision easy. I would go with The Sweeney Plan.

My strategy succeeded. I drove pitching prices up for the entire room...but also drove down non-SB hitter prices, allowing everyone else to compete with this owner in power. The league turned into an ugly, bruising fight to the finish. I didn't win, but I took my ragtag team of junk in March and turned it into a season-long contender, losing by a mere 2 1/2 points.

My general advice is not to do this unless you have a very weak team and your only choices are to employ a radical strategy or start building for next year at the auction. Otherwise, I would simply follow the general principles of being more aggressive price-enforcing the stronger teams while being somewhat more lax price enforcing your league's weak sisters. You want to make the room pay, but you still want to concentrate primarily on your own auction.