Toppers and Inflation

jem1776 has such a long question that I'm going to have to break it down into two (and possibly three) parts.

Here is my major issue in 6 X 6 (std 4 X 4 + K, IP, R, PA)...The huge front runner has only one topper- Joey Votto. We have 17.26% inflation. I'll have to push Votto to a price that would also buy Abreu, Pedroia, Panda Bear, Youk, Longoria, Derrick & Carlos Lee, Span, Brandon Phillips, & David Wright. After I push him to that price I estimate that there is a 35% or better chance his natural conservatism may keep the front-runner from pulling the trigger on his topper. The odds are greater he won't if I wait past my first nomination in the third one in the first round, so if I do this it will shape my Draft too. All the others are available also, some with and without toppers attached by other teams....Should I take the risk on Votto to keep his toppers team from running away from the rest of us by the All Star Game?

There is a lot wrapped up in this very long question. I honestly don't know a) where to begin or b) if I'll be successful in answering the entire question or not.

I'll summarize my interpretation of the first part of the question (listed above). jem is worried that if he lets his opponent get Joey Votto with his topper at too low of a price that his opponent will get enough of a bargain or par player to walk away with the league. Jem feels like he has two choices:

a) call out Votto at an inflation par price right away, or
b) simply bid up Votto incrementally and hope for the best.

For those of you who don't play with Toppers, the short explanation is that they're the Rotisserie equivalent of restricted free agents. Bidding proceeds as normal until the bidding is closed. The owner with the topper can then either take the player at $1 over the high bid price or let the player go at the high bid price.

Since this is a mixed league, it doesn't seem to me that Votto is quite the make-or-break player that jem believes he is in this format. I don't play mixed leagues (this isn't entirely true; I'm doing a mixed league for the first time in my 24 years this year), but looking at the Patton & Company mixed-league prices I see:

Votto $16, Abreu $19, Pedroia $25, Youkilis $8, Longoria $39, D. Lee $15, C. Lee $22, Span $14, Phillips $25, Wright $31.

Looking at these prices, it doesn't seem like Votto is a be all and end all player in mixed league compared to someone like Longoria or Wright. However, I'm not sure I understand why Longoria's bid is nearly 5x higher than Youkilis' when they earned within $1 of each other in 4x4 last year. I know mixed leagues make a difference, but they surely don't make this much of a difference.

I can address from a valuation standpoint, though. The answer is that if jem has enough value on his team to push Votto to inflation par and get bargains elsewhere, then he should push Votto to par if he believes Votto is that important to his strategy. If, on the other hand, jem has a middle-of-the-road team, it's probably better to either just let the bidding on Votto run its course or enforce the price to within $2-3 of Votto's par price and hope that the rest of the room does right and is price enforcing as well.

Pushing certain teams on players can be a good idea at times, but you have to make sure your own house is in order first. If you push Votto to a price where it messes up your own auction, then what's the point? If you auction well and follow solid value principles, you should catch up to your opponent to some degree. How much you catch up depends on how wide the gap is and what your league is like, but I'll get to that in my next post.