SubscribeRon Shandler suggests bringing two sets of dollar values to your fantasy draft — projected values (what you think players are worth) and market values (what your league thinks they are worth):
The variance between projected value and market value is where you will find the greatest strategic advantage. If a player’s market value is far greater than projected, you can immediately cross the player off your target list and employ tactics to inflate his purchase price. If projected is greater than market, these are opportunities for you to try to build some profit into your roster.
Sounds like good advice to me. However, market value can be a hard thing to predict. Average Draft Position is a good place to start, and from there you can throw in a little bias for the hometown team. Maybe you tack on a little bit for guys who are dominating spring training.
But by and large you can still expect to be wrong on a lot of market values. There are always players drafted at prices that catch me completely by surprise. I find owners running up the price on a sleeper that I thought would go for single digits. I throw out a name that I think people are going to jump on and get nothing but crickets.
So don’t expect the market values to be something you can strictly depend on while drafting. But, with a little common sense and a bit of flexibility, having two sets of prices can still prove helpful.
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I don’t see the point of having a set of what you think market value will be. How is that helpful? All I care about is what the player is worth based on my projected stats. I’ll find out his market value once bidding for that player ends!
And like you said, I always seem to be wrong about how much a player will go for, which means these speculative market values have even less value.
So really I’m curious, how is having market value with you going to help? I guess I could see knowing that you should be able to get a guy cheaply is helpful because you will have more confidence to get a more expensive player early on with your later savings on that discounted player. But again, I’m never right on market value anyway so it’s all just a guess!
I agree with Mike.
My question is this – assuming you have perfect projections and you are not targeting any one player over any other player, what percentage of the player’s worth do you bid?
For example, suppose Alex Rodriguez perfect projection makes him a $40 value. Do I bid up to $40? I don’t think I would. The goal of the auction is to buy all the large bargains and to prevent the other teams from getting any large bargains. So you need to dole out your cash in such a way that you can bid on almost every player.
Don’t you want to bid only 90% or 95% of a player’s value? How do you calculate the right percentage to bid?
I always include ADP and AAP when making my rankings. For keeper auction leagues, I adjust AAP by the inflation rate.
For a snake draft, this gives you an idea on who you can wait on and who you can’t. If you think player A and player B will be about the same in production, but player B is taken on average 2 rounds later than player A, you would draft player A now and wait on player B until next round or the round after.
It’s the same idea for auctions, just more extreme. In an auction, there’s no reason to buy player A if you’d have to pay $12 for a $10 player. You’re better off buying a $10 player for $8 and then target another $10 player instead of an $8 player. If you know before hand who the big deals are likely to be, you can heavily target those guys and then figure you’ll have some extra money to improve the rest of your roster when determining who you want to target for your team.
Like Ichiro this year. I like Ichiro, but no way am I going to pay $20 for him (ESPN AAP). I’d much rather target someone like Aramis Ramirez or Bobby Abreu, and realize I’m saving $5 or so there in value so I can get spend that money and get Miguel Cabrera instead of Ryan Howard if I’m trying to determine who else I’m going to spend my money on.
In an auction you need some sense of who you’ll buy for what price later on or else you’ll wind up with 4-5 star player “bargains” where you pay less than your projected value and then a bunch of $2-$3 scrubs.
“In an auction you need some sense of who you’ll buy for what price later on or else you’ll wind up with 4-5 star player “bargains” where you pay less than your projected value and then a bunch of $2-$3 scrubs.”
This is the exact strategy that I try to employ in my auction. The last thing I want is a bunch of $10-$25 players that are difficult to improve and impossible to cut.
@Jooky Junk-I’ll bid up to about 135% on the elite talent, 100% on above average talent, 80% on average talent, and no more than $1 for below average talent, no matter how much “value” they supposedly provide. From experience, that is the most efficent way to get the money spent.
Stars and scrubs is a valid strategy, but I’m usually disappointed with my team when I use it.
Plus, if you do a stars & scrubs you’re much more susceptible to injuries than you are if you have a more rounded team.
“I don’t see the point of having a set of what you think market value will be. How is that helpful? All I care about is what the player is worth based on my projected stats. I’ll find out his market value once bidding for that player ends!”
Would you rather buy a car that you think is worth $25K for $25K or $20K. I would imagine you would of course prefer to pay $20K. Now you have a car that’s worth $25K and an extra $5K to buy yourself a sweet home entertainment center. In what situation are you better off.
You should be doing the same with your players. If you think both Loney and C. Jackson are worth $18 but you think you can get C. Jackson for $8 less, then you should be aware that if Loney is offered up first then even though he’s worth $18 if he goes above ~$12-13 you may want ot hold back on him, realizing that you might get a better bargain later. Ideally C. Jackson is offered up first and you’ve already got him in the bag for $10. Now you have an extra $8 to spend on others even though you have the same value at 1B.