One of my longtime “home” leagues has been a 15 to 18 team, mixed league auction, based in Los Angeles. Like many other leagues, the annual live auction was a victim of social distancing, courtesy of COVID-19.
Our commissioner for over 30 years, while hoping he can eventually get the league together for the live draft once MLB has a firm start date, floated the idea of doing an online auction on Sunday, April 5. While the question met with tepid responses from some, many of us, confined to quarters and jonesing for baseball quickly signed up and eventually we had 15 teams ready to draft from home and enjoy a rare day with fellow fantasy baseball players.
It was a win all the way around. We enjoyed the auction and banter even if we couldn’t see each other and the commissioner got his first experience running an auction online, something he hopes doesn’t have to do for the elder mixed league and an NL only league he also runs. If we can’t draft in person for an abbreviated MLB season, we are all hoping for, he now knows how to conduct the draft and many of his leaguemates have at least one online auction under their belt.
So last Sunday started with a practice round, every team getting one nomination and everyone learning to navigate the site. Then the bell rang and the surprise nomination of J.T. Realmuto went for $20 before we got to the usual suspects. Remember that auction prices for every league are unique. Much like ADP if you use AAV you really don’t know how close the many leagues that make up the figures are to the specific league you are ready to draft, or how old some of those figures are. In this league the top hitters, Ronald Acuna Jr. and Mike Trout both went for $48. Christian Yelich was just a few dollars back at $45 while Trea Turner was the only other player in the 40s at $41. The top pitchers were Jacob deGrom at $36 followed by Gerritt Cole at $38. That doesn’t mean that the prices in this league were lower than in other leagues, the next wave of both hitters and pitchers went at prices above Todd’s projected earnings. The total for the first round was $510, an average of $34 per player despite two catchers nominated, while the second round saw $424 spent, an average just above $28 despite someone sneaking Anthony Santander through for a dollar.
Suffice it to say that after the first two rounds of nominations I had no players on my roster and a few picks into the third round I was the only team that still had $260 to spend. I can’t give you the prices on every single player in this article, but I am more than glad to answer with the prices paid on specific players in the Subscriber Forum.
And I know you are all dying to see my team but let’s first extract some auction pointers, both general and from this draft and my prep for it.
- Know Your League Parameters (yeah, I know you have seen that here in countless articles over the years but if you don’t look at things through that lens you won’t have your best auction). You must know what the positions you will draft are and who qualifies at which positions. Are you just buying your 23 man roster or do you get reserve picks to fix your lineup heading into Week 1 or your first FAAB run? In other words, how deep does your list have to be so you are fully prepared.
- Let’s take that last point and apply it to our color coded Ranking Tiers spreadsheet. Go ahead and pull that up and let’s format it for a 15 team mixed league draft. First to get your pages to fit horizontally (landscape view) and not need a magnifying glass (yes, my eyes are much older than yours), you want to cut the OF, SP, and RP to just one column. Count the number of (say) outfielders in the right hand column, insert that number of rows into that specific tier and then type the players on the right into the empty cells on the left (sure you can cut and paste but you will have weird borders – your choice). Then you want to do the same for the starting pitchers and relief pitchers (it may be easier for you to see which position in each tier has the highest number of players to move and then you only have to insert rows once. (IF you already do this step and the next two, congrats but humor me and read them and make sure so the latter steps will be easy).
- IF you want the names to be a little larger, you can also remove the DH column – there are really only six names you want in that column anyway and I find it easier to just move Yordan Alvarez, Nelson Cruz, Kris Davis, Nick Solak, Miguel Andujar, and Shohei Ohtani into the OF column to the right in the same tier or into the C column to the far left and just put a thick, black border around them (or you could just select a different fill color for their cells). I actually just remove all fill colors before I start working with the sheet – just personal preference there.
- Now File > Print (or Control P). Make sure you select Landscape and then click on Last Custom Setting and set all the margins at 0. You will now have three or four pages BUT see who the last name on the first page is and then click the < arrow at the top of the LH (dark green) column where you select instruction which will take you back to the first page. We want to alter the last tier on page one (where you see the dotted lines indicating the last row to be printed). You want to either have a full tier there for better viewing (but you can continue one on the next page BUT first insert an extra row just below that dotted print line. This will give you the room to copy the first line on the top of page one which will have Tier and then all the position initials. When you copy that in to the top line of the second page, you can then type in the value of a tier you are continuing or you will have the one there for the next tier. Repeat that process for page three and if necessary, page four.
- Print your three or four pages and let’s really make this the best document for YOUR draft. First as I stated earlier, we are fixing this draft sheet for a fifteen team mixed league auction – IF yours is different or you are making one for an AL or NL only auction, you can adjust accordingly. Now let’s go position by position to make a line below the last player needed So with a pen or sharpie make a line below the 30th Next make a line below the 15th ranked 1B and the 15th ranked 3B. (In all the positions you can either cross out a player from additional positions leaving the one where you want to draft him OR add an additional player below the 15th so you can leave the player on all the lists he qualifies for. Take Max Muncy for example – he is on the list at first base, second base, and third base. While I know he qualifies at all three I prefer to leave him there and add the extra name because you don’t know where someone else will put him. The exception is catchers – take Grandal and d’Arnaud and any other catchers OUT of the 1b pool. Next count the next fifteen 1B and 3B in order of value and draw a line – those are the players who should be corner infielders in your league (if they aren’t placed at 1B or 3B). Remember to add extra players for each one with multiple position eligibility. Some of those will end up at UT on some teams. Now you are going to do the same for the 2B and SS lists. For the outfielders you start with 75 plus extra to replace those like Bellinger or Ketel Marte who are eligible and likely to be placed at another position. You should also add the next seven OF as some will end up at UT. In the draft I just did the players in the UT slots for all team were 4 DH (Alvarez, Cruz, Davis, and Solak); two 1B; two 2B; and seven OF. It is much harder to tell you how many SP and RP to have on your lists. IF you are not drafting any reserves then the number is 135, but how many starters will each team draft? And some relievers aside from closers have more positive value than a bad starting pitcher but this goes to preference on roster construction. I would like my lists to be 125 SP and say 40 RP just so I have enough to adjust. Add another 30-40 of each if you are drafting six or seven reserves. You won’t need that many but better to have them handy than not have the names to remind you.
- The next question is how many minor leaguers you want to have on your draft list. This is part league dependent and part personal preference. In this draft here were the minor leaguers who were bought in the auction: Mackenzie Gore, Jo Adell, Aaron Civale, Nick Madrigal, Nate Pearson, Dylan Carlson, and Tyler Rogers. Minor Leaguers drafted as reserves were Kyle Lewis, Alex Reyes, Jake Fraley, Brusdar Graterol, Brendan McKay, Forrest Whitley, Nate Lowe, Spencer Howard, Tyler O’Neill, Michael Kopech, and Monte Harrison. (also rostered but presumed to be on Major League rosters were Mitch Keller, Yoshi Tsutsugo, Kwang-Hyun Kim, Gavin Lux, Luis Robert, Evan White, and Hunter Harvey). I wouldn’t draft all of those but don’t have a problem with any of them save for the value of the six reserve roster spots. On the other hand, the later the start date for MLB this year the more likely we are to see several of those players start the season on the major league rosters which will likely be expanded by at least another two players.
- Other observations from the draft itself. I was more surprised that neither Acuna or Trout went for $50 or more than I was by the inflated prices of the next level of top players. But that is not necessarily a bad thing – no two fantasy players are going to have the same draft values or budget sheets for their auction.
- There were a number of different approaches. I like the team that drafted Acuna for $48 and deGrom for $36 – arguably they have the best hitter and best pitcher and they did a good job of filling out the rest of the rosters. But there were several teams that did not spend enough on pitching. Sure, you can find a lot of starting pitching on the free agent list but you will have a lot of competition if they have a good start. Trolling for new closers is an easier road. Doing both will be tough.
- Perhaps some of those teams were as surprised as I was by the high prices of the second, third, and even fourth tiers of stating pitchers. But you have to fight for your share even if you drop to a lower tier to do it. I started with a 160/100 budget and actually took three dollars from the hitting side for pitching in the end game as you will see later.
- I was surprised that the team that bought Jo Adell for their last dollar did not add Brian Goodwin in the reserve round to capture the Angel RF output. Alternatively, they could have tried for Adell in the reserve round but they did not have a top pick for that.
I mentioned the hitting/pitching split I was using. This was in conjunction with an approach to my tiered ranking sheet that I did not mention above. Once you have the sheets set up and have your lines below the presumed players who will be drafted at each position it Is imperative that you go through the hitters below that line by position to see if there are players you would be comfortable taking in the end game for a dollar so that you can have spent more on key players earlier in the draft. Here are some of the players that I had in that group:
C – James McCann & Tony Wolters
1B – Miguel Cabrera & Yandy Diaz
3B – Diaz & Maikel Franco
2B – Robinson Cano & Freddy Galvis
SS – Galvis & Willy Adames
Only Miggy ended up on my roster for a dollar and I backed him up with a higher ranked corner in the reserves. Most of the others were rostered in the reserve rounds.
Back to the auction. My first purchase was Keston Hiura for $23 in the third round. Second base is a tough position this year and I was glad to get one of the top tier for a reasonable price. Plus, I think Hiura will exceed Todd’s projections.
I was now going to go on a buying spree adding fourteen players for $223 over the next eight rounds. Part of the reason was that prices had dropped to match or be less than projected values The other thing to remember is that is you wait for several rounds to buy your first player and have the most buying power, you need to use it while you have it lest you are back to competing with other teams who have the same amount or more which incites bidding wars on players not worth the higher prices.
When the eleventh round of the auction ended, I had $14 left for eight players – four hitters and four pitchers. That puts one in a tough position to get to the end game. Nominate a player you would be okay rostering for a dollar and hoping you don’t have to react for a player you really need or want. Sometimes to do that you have to nominate players you would love to have but realize you don’t have to dollars left to get them so force your opponents to spend their dollars. It seemed like forever to get through rounds 12-13-14-15-16 without spending. Probably just an hour but felt longer. At that point there was one starter I hoped to land, the Dodgers Alex Wood. There were also two minor leaguers I had my eye on for both their positions and skills – White Sox 2B Nick Madrigal and Blue Jays SP Nate Pearson. It was unlikely I could get either of them or other top prospects in the reserve draft as I would have the last pick in the first round. Neither player would likely have been on Opening Days roster in March … but in late May or June? Both are possible. So how would this play out? And I still needed a CI, OF, and UT besides the MI and four more pitchers.
Now how to get through the final seven rounds.
At 17.15 I nominated Dodger Pitcher Dustin May for a dollar – after all this is mostly an LA crowd.
Crickets
A friend of mine says “Nice one Perry” in the chat box.
I said Thanks but that wasn’t my plan.
Don’t get me wrong – I like May and have him on a couple of other teams. But I wanted some teams to bid on him and leave me the dollar and the roster spot.
But fortunes change quickly – late in the 18th round a friend of mine put up Nate Pearson for $2 his max bid and my quick $3 won the bid and shortly thereafter early in the 19th Madrigal was nominated for a dollar and my $2 was quick and a winner. At my turn at the end of the round I decided now was the time to make my play for Alex Wood. With $7 for four players, my max was $4 and I put it all on Wood and won again. Now I could finish out the team with three one dollar players (Miguel Cabrera, Trent Grisham, and Tony Watson) and almost everyone was down to a dollar per player.
So here is the team I bought in the auction, and the reserves I drafted.
C – Yadier Molina ($5) and Sean Murphy ($5)
1B – Carlos Santana ($11)
3B – Anthony Rendon ($32)
CI – Miguel Cabrera ($1)
2B – Keston Hiura ($23)
SS – Corey Seager ($12)
MI – Nick Madrigal $2)
OF – Luis Robert ($19)
OF – Tommy Pham ($19)
OF – Jeff McNeil ($15)
OF – Michael Brantley ($10)
OF – Trent Grisham ($1)
UT – Nick Solak ($1)
P – Trevor Bauer ($17)
P – Aaron Nola ($23)
P – Nick Anderson ($13)
P – Brandon Woodruff ($22)
P – Mike Soroka ($19)
P – Dustin May ($1)
P – Nate Pearson ($3)
P - Alex Wood ($4)
P – Tony Watson ($1)
Reserves Rounds
24-15 Austin Riley, OF
25-01 Tony Gonsolin, P
26-15 Adam Frazier, 2B
27-01 Eric Thames, 1B
28-15 Blake Treinen, P
29-01 Brusdar Graterol, P
Perhaps the one player who stands out from the more moderately priced is Anthony Rendon. While I had budgeted to buy one top hitter (low 30s), I didn’t find the right opportunity in the first three rounds. At the end of the 4th round one nomination presented that challenge. With Nolan Arenado off the board at $35 and Jose Ramirez gone at $33 should I go for Anthony Rendon or hope that Alex Bregman or Rafael Devers would offer a discount later? (they didn’t) As I actually think Rendon is under projected hitting 3rd behind the Angels leadoff hitter and Trout or 4th behind leadoff, Trout and Ohtani, I decided to get him for low 30s and ultimately won at $32. Rendon is a strong four category hitter and I expect 30+HR, 100+R and RBI, and a batting average over .300 thus my paying up for him (slightly).
Again, always glad to answer question about this draft or the players in the Subscriber Forum. Now we just need to flatten the curve of the virus and get the players back on the fields so we can have some live drafts.