SubscribeThe Price Guide only accounts for draft inflation and deflation from one source: keepers. With keepers, it’s assumed that the players being kept will be paid prices below what they are worth (deflation). With owners having extra money, the prices of the remaining players at the draft go up (inflation).
While that may be the most obvious example of inflation at a fantasy auction (and the easiest to quantify), I think there are other real factors that will cause prices to vary from what the Price Guide projects.
I can come up with at least these reasons:
Varying Projections
Each owner comes to the draft with their own set of dollar values in mind. The values for the top tier should be pretty consistent from owner to owner. Everyone should have Hanley Ramirez valued near the same spot. There won’t be much difference of opinion about what to pay for Grady Sizemore.
But what about Victor Martinez? Some owners will be scared by the lack of power last year. Others will disregard 2008 as a season lost to injury, and bid based on his performance in 2007 and before. There could easily be a wide range of opinions that vary by $10-20 in value.
Since people are less likely to agree on which players should make up the lower tiers, the bidding will typically stop below the projected values. A player you have valued at $10 might not be valued higher than $5 by anyone else, which means you should win his services at $6 with a $4 “savings.”
Keep repeating that scenario of saving a few bucks on every player in the latter part of a draft and you will see that there’s systemic deflation on these players.
The Sleeper Mentality
Everyone loves sleepers. For some reason, there are certain players who captivate the attention of fantasy owners each year.
The result of this infatuation is that we become so absorbed with these players that we will pass up higher valued players in favor of our favorite sleeper picks. “Why should I pay $10 for that guy when I can pay $1 for my sleeper — and potentially be rewarded with a $25 player?”
Now, the $25 outcome might not be the most likely, but the high-upside sleeper is still more appealing to us than a safe $10 player. And, in the end, the $10 player will probably go for less than $10, as people are banking on grabbing a breakout player later.
So there are a couple of major factors that play a role in deflating the value of players, especially lower-tier players. Just like with keepers, though, this deflation must be balanced by an equal amount of inflation elsewhere. A fantasy auction is a closed system with a set amount of money and a set amount of goods (i.e. baseball players). If less money is spent in one area, it must be spent somewhere else.
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