Round by Round Analysis

In addition to shoresie's suggestion that I compare keeper leagues to expert leagues, he also wondered if I could lay out the order in which the players were nominated in LABR.

That being recognized - a more helpful tool, perhaps, would be to get someone to list the order in which players were nominated. This would give us the texture of the auction, help explain anomalous prices (Alexi Casilla - $14) and prepare us with a layout of what to expect at our own auctions.

I don't have access to the LABR round-by-round results, and Sports Weekly likely didn't publish them in today's issue. But I do agree that round-by-round analysis is a useful tool for analyzing your auctions.

However, while it is a useful tool, I'm think that the same challenge that shoresie initially laid out applies. Comparing a 276 or 299 player round-by-round re-auction has its uses, but it's not going to help you out all that much in a freeze league.

Billy Almon Brown Graduate, 2010 Round 1

#	Player	Cost	Proj. (Inf.)	Earned	+/-	LABR	TW
1	Mike Cameron	$19	$12 ($16)	$3	-16	$15	$14
2	Ian Kinsler	$37	$30 ($39)	$17	-20	$27	$28
3	CC Sabathia	$41	$32 ($38)	$30	-11	$28	$28
4	Rafael Soriano	$28	$20 ($24)	$43	+15	$19	$20
5	Cliff Lee	$26	$20 ($24)	$29	+3	$22	$16
6	Paul Konerko	$25	$15 ($19)	$36	+11	$15	$15
7	Zack Greinke	$37	$33 ($39)	$9	-28	$30	$27
8	Lyle Overbay	$12	$10 ($13)	$13	+1	$13	$11
9	Grady Sizemore	$40	$28 ($36)	$1	-39	$29	$29
10	Jon Papelbon	$35	$30 ($36)	$28	-7	$21	$25
11	Brian Fuentes	$24	$19 ($23)	$23	-1	$14	$19
12	Jose Valverde	$28	$25 ($28)	$22	-6	$16	$20
		$29	$23 ($28)	$21	-8	$25	$24

Is this information useful?

It certainly is to me. But the reason this information is useful to me is because this is from my A.L. home league. I have 15 years worth of data and experience to rely upon, and have battled against more than half of the owners in my league since 2001.

Round-by-round analysis in keeper leagues is helpful, but without contextual information, it's nearly worthless. This is particularly true not for the 12 players listed above, but for the players purchased toward the middle and back end of the auction. I hated Maggilo Ordonez's $23 price last year, but the owner who bought him had money to spend and desperately needed an outfielder. Mark Ellis for $5 was a very good price in my opinion, but there was actually a glut of middle infielders and by the time Ellis came up not too many teams that had money and MI openings could bid.

I recommend doing what I do for my A.L. auctions if you have the time. Plug your auction into a spreadsheet and check out where the bargains fall. Some of it will ultimately be contextual. Understanding the context of your auctions will give you much more to go on than analyzing LABR, CBS, or Tout Wars, which of course was shoresie's point to begin with.