Monday, February 07, 2011

Deriving Auction Totals for Your League

The CBSSports.com N.L.-only Analysts League auction ended late this afternoon, but the results aren't posted yet. Instead of throwing those up, I thought I'd take a look back at some reader feedback I haven't had a chance to address.

Mike Fenger correctly points out that, if you like, you can figure out how much players are worth specific to your league.
One alternate way to get the population, which is more tailored to an individual league, is to see if your stat service can give you your league's "hypothetical" totals, that is, the stat totals for the teams as drafted, with no changes during the season. Those stats will let you derive the average totals of your purchased-on-draft-day player.
This is how I used to calculate values in the days before multiple expert leagues and the Internet. I would take the 168 hitters and 108 pitchers from my league, plug them into the formula, and that would be that.

You can do this as well. Just remember that every league is different, and that you shouldn't get bent out of shape if Alex Patton's formulas or my formulas are slightly "off".

Mike also notes:
there's not unanimity in that method -- others would say the top 168 (or however many players you buy at auction) players from the auction pool would be the population from which you derive the averages. That might boost those averages a little . . . 
I've seen this principle in action. However, keep in mind that if you use this method, you're not calculating how much money your draft pool earned but rather how much a hypothetical auction pool of the best 276 players in your league earned.

In an A.L. or N.L.-only league, though, this won't make too much of a difference. It will have more of an impact on the pitching side, where jettisoning an A.J. Burnett in favor of a Brian Duensing will provide better stats to your formula.

If you want your auction population to be worth $3,120, you will not want to substitute the best available players into your population. If this isn’t important to you, then feel free to make this substitution. In all likelihood, flipping in better players won’t have any impact on your bid limits, which is where your leagues are won or lost anyway.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mike, it's difficult to find deep mixed leagues, like ours plus there is a lot of local bias in auction leagues. Both knowing your competition and planning are helpful.

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but that planning is essential."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

And yet with a single owner team it's difficult in a long auction to stay focused on the here and now- your team, the player pool, and still read your competitors' strategies in real time. Any practical solutions?