Fantasy Baseball Auction Draft Strategy: A BSL Case Study

I have always found fantasy baseball, and the strategies used for drafting a team to be really interesting. My goal in this post is to walk through a recent draft and highlight the differing draft strategies people used and how they viewed the draft as it progressed. I think there are a lot of lessons, insights, etc. to be learned from the following paragraphs, and I hope that those of you who play fantasy find this to be helpful. On to the analysis…

For background, I should give you some information on the specific draft I’ll be referencing throughout this post. I have invited some Orioles bloggers from various blogs and websites to join Tucker, Lance, Kevin, and myself in an Ottoneu fantasy baseball league. For those of you not familiar with Ottoneu, it’s a fantasy format run through fangraphs that is one of the more robust options out there. 40-man rosters, $400 budgets, dynasty (you could technically keep your full roster each year) league complete with arbitration, salary trading, etc.

The stats for this league are:

• On the offensive side: OBP, SLG, R, HR
• On the pitching side: ERA, WHIP, HR/9, K

Some other necessary notes:

• Lineups consist of: C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, OF, OF, MI, UTIL, SP, SP, SP, SP, SP, RP, RP, RP, RP, RP
• The league is a 4×4 roto (based on the stats above) but ottoneu does offer traditional 5×5 roto and points options.
• There is an innings limit of 1500 IP for the pitchers on a team, and a 162 game limit per position.

For a better idea of what Ottoneu entails, click here.

 

We’ll start with Tucker who, as we all know, is BSL’s resident prospect expert. With his scouting experience I kind of expected Tucker to load up on prospects and build a young core around them for a team that would compete in 2013, but really come into its own in the coming years. You can see an excerpt of Tucker’s team below, and check out his full roster here.

Tucker on his team (note: I altered some of the quotes in this piece for space):

I originally had the intention of getting a couple superstar players and then building a young core. Not ALL prospects, but my initial goal was to bevy up on prospects…you know…since that’s what I do and all.

I started out getting a few stars in Albert Pujols ($49), Adrian Gonzalez ($34) and CC Sabathia ($34). I was happy with all three selections, as Pujols is Pujols, Gonzalez can actually play OF in ottoneu, and CC is my ace and a pitcher I trust a ton.

Surprisingly, I found that everyone was overpaying for prospects. This was happening early and often. I found myself holding back from this, and ended up with only four true prospects. Those were:

Mike Zunino ($8)

Travis D’Arnaud ($6)

Wily Peralta ($2)

Oswaldo Arcia ($1)

Truth be told, I bid on practically every prospect, but I was not about to overpay for anyone.

I think Tucker did a pretty good job given the unique nature of the draft, which we’ll get into later. Personally, I’m not crazy high on most of Tucker’s top 6, but I love the rest of his roster. I think he got a ton of value in the low-dollar guys, and those are the types of guys who can win in fantasy for you. Tucker has, in my opinion, one of the higher risk/reward teams, which is a good way to find value. In fantasy, just like Major League Baseball, consistency pays. Teams like Oakland have gone for risk/reward type guys for years because of the potential for huge value.

 

The next team I want to look at is Jeremy Strain’s. Jeremy writes for Camden Depot and is better known as AllStar1579 on the BSL forums. Jeremy, much like Tucker, is a prospect guru. With his knowledge of scouting and the Orioles minor league system (as well as the minors in general) I expected Jeremy to employ a similar strategy to Tucker. Highlights of Jeremy’s roster can be seen below, and you can see his full team here.

Jeremy on his team and his strategy:

I really didn’t have a strategy going into things. This being my first auction draft and only having a loose idea of how they work, I was winging it from the start. My thought was I could have 3 $40 players or 4 $30 players and I would be better off with the latter. After a couple rounds, a plan started to form. Get in on any players I felt were undervalued under $30. I ended up with J. Upton ($31), and Jered Weaver ($27) which I thought were both good value for upper level players. From there I decided to see how many value guys I could get around the $20 threshold, so I scored J. Shields ($21), BJ Upton ($23), M. Bumgarner ($20), and Wainwright ($18) in this area.

I thought I could scare guys off of prospects if I spent real high on one earlier just to show that I wasn’t going to get beat out. So I threw D. Bundy EARLY in the draft, and spent all the way up to $18 for him. I knew this was overpaying, but I do own him for the long haul so hopefully he’ll earn his money one day. For now, it was a misdirection to allow me to go big after prospects later. I got T. Walker ($7) and F. Lindor ($7), Gyorko ($6), N. Franklin ($5), Castellanos ($5), Rendon ($4), Correa ($3), Lavernaway ($3) and J. Bradley Jr. ($3).

Aside from that, I just wanted to make sure that I had 4-5 really good SP, and just shop for value after that. If this team doesn’t compete well the first year, I’ll trade off pieces and build for the future next year, if it does, it’s a bonus, but I’m in to build a franchise, not just a one year fantasy team.

During the draft I definitely felt like Jeremy had one of the weaker teams when it came to competing in 2013. After the draft, I looked through his team and realized that he pulled in some of the best value when it comes to MLB talent. The one concern I’d have is that the team isn’t particularly deep in MLB talent, but Jeremy has a wealth of prospects, and quality ones at that. Prospects are currency in Ottoneu, just as in real life, so he could package them in a deal if he is in contention throughout the year.

Jeremy’s strategy when it came to prospects seemed to pay off, but more on that later. Ultimately, I think as a collective unit, Jeremy’s team has the most talent for a 2015-2016 timeframe. Like the Orioles however, I wouldn’t be surprised if he manages to compete and have significant success earlier than the youth of his roster might initially suggest.

 

The next three draft strategies we’ll look at are Kevin’s, Lance’s and my own. We’ve heard it a few times already, but the word ‘value’ will be brought up more than a few times in these next few segments. We’ll start by looking at Kevin’s team, with his full roster viewable here.

Kevin’s take:

Considering that we’re playing in a 4×4 Ottoneu league with OBP and SLG as categories, my strategy on offense was to focus on getting players who performed well in these two categories. That may sound simple, but I think some people in the league were still focused on the traditional 5×5 stats. That’s how I ended up with players such as Dexter Fowler ($17) and David Murphy ($13). This format really increases the value of players like them who put up good rate stats, but the counting stats like HR and SB aren’t as prevalent. I can’t think of another format where Dexter Fowler’s value would be greater. In Ottoneu, we also have deep enough benches that I could play Fowler only in Colorado if I choose to. The setup is perfect for a player like Adam Dunn ($9), where batting average isn’t a category but he will get credit for all of his walks due to his OBP.

With a number of bloggers in the league, people were too focused on showing off their prospect knowledge causing the dollar values of prospects to skyrocket. I love Dylan Bundy ($18) and Jurickson Profar ($15) as much as anyone, but those prices are out of control. That led to me only getting a few prospects because I thought they were overvalued and focusing on underpriced veterans. I was really happy that I was able to secure a strong middle infield for only $24 with Aaron Hill ($9), Derek Jeter ($9) and Rickie Weeks ($6).

 On the pitching side of things, I focused on one thing – strikeouts. In an Ottoneu league where there is an innings cap, it basically turns into a K/9 contest. So I tried to get as many high strikeout guys as I could. That’s how I ended up with guys likeJeff Samardzija ($10), Lance Lynn ($8), Andrew Cashner ($8) and Marco Estrada ($5). All of them strike out over a batter per inning. For relievers, I completely ignored closers since saves aren’t a category. I focused on getting high strikeout guys who throw hard and have good stuff. I think that worked out well, with guys like Kenley Jansen ($9) and Trevor Rosenthal ($5).

There’s a couple of things to address here that I think are really interesting. Kevin’s team, maybe more so than any other in the league, has a lot of guys that were on my own watch list. I had targeted Votto ($49), Beltre ($29), Ortiz ($22), Medlen ($19), Hill ($9) etc. but ultimately lost out on all of them to Kevin for a variety of reasons.

I do think that it’s difficult to shift your mindset to a 4×4 roto league compared to the traditional 5×5 counting stats that most leagues use. This definitely led to some over and underpaying, but those able to capitalize on that had the most successful drafts in my opinion.

Kevin’s point about the prospects is interesting to me considering what Jeremy said earlier in this piece. To be honest, I felt the same way initially, but after reading Jeremy’s strategy, it became clear to me that it was effective. Jeremy, despite admittedly overpaying for Bundy, managed to snag some great prospects at some very good prices. It seems to me that his strategy worked, as guys like Kevin and I generally avoided getting into bidding wars on prospects.

 

Lance’s draft strategy seemed similar to my own throughout the draft, so it’s no surprise that we’ve each exchanged several trade proposals in the week and a half since the draft ended. As usual, a highlight of his team is below, and the full roster is available here.

Lance on his strategy & how his team came together:

This, was the very first auction league I have ever been a part of so coming up with a strategy for something I have never participated in before was a bit, shall I say, a pain in the [butt].

Because I had no experience in auction drafts before I decided to focus on sleepers that I could target cheaply and keep an eye out for players that others may not value in our particular format, while also exploiting the “household name” factor. What I mean by the “household name” factor is that I would routinely nominate players that I knew wouldn’t help a great deal in our scoring format but were very well known and thus somewhat overvalued. I would wait for others to spend their money on those players so I had greater flexibility, and the will, to win mini-bidding wars for the players I actually wanted.

For example, I was able to win Miguel Cabrera ($51), Clayton Kershaw ($48), and Robinson Cano ($43). Even though those three players ate up nearly 36% of my budget I was still satisfied at having them on my team. At that point I had to really pick and choose which players I was willing to go for and that worked out pretty good for me also. I managed to get, what I think is a steal, Jordan Zimmerman ($28), Martin Prado ($19), and Tim Lincecum ($19).

Despite being an auction-draft novice, Lance put together a really solid team that is balanced with top end talent as well as depth. My biggest concerns with his roster, if I were the team owner, would be that he seems to lack quality depth in two areas: SP and OF. When your 3rd best SP was used as a reliever in the playoffs (Lincecum, $19) and your fourth best pitcher might not get called up until July (Wheeler, $11) there are some concerns there. His OF has plenty of young talent, but the Royals can tell you that young talent doesn’t always make for winning teams.

I’m just giving Lance a hard time here of course, his team has a bevy of young and cheap talent, much of it with MLB experience. This has the makings of a great value team, which allowed him to allocate so much of his budget on stars at the top of the draft. For what it’s worth, I think he got good prices on some of his top end talent, especially Miguel Cabrera ($51) and Cano ($43) compared to other top-end talent.

 

Finally we’ll take a look at my team, which I obviously have more insight into than those of my fellow bloggers above. I discussed many aspects of the draft with other writers, experts, friends, etc. Ultimately, my draft strategy was this:

Find value wherever you can.

That’s it. I don’t care what it looks like, but if a guy can bring me back a positive ROI, then I was in it to win it. As soon as I thought we’d be at their breakeven price, I would jump out. Sometimes I regretted it when the player went for $1 more than I wanted to pay, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Anyway, my team can be found here.

What do I think of my own team and my draft strategy? Well it wasn’t sexy, but I think I pulled a ton of value out of the draft. Some of my favorite picks include Dan Uggla ($9), Asdrubal Cabrera ($9), Josh Willingham ($13) who I think will be particularly good in this format, and Matt Harvey ($6).

I’d like to think that the one thing I’m particularly good at is evaluating pitchers, so I decided to trust myself when it came to spending pretty high on Yu Darvish ($33) and Matt Moore ($26) as the anchors to my staff. If nothing else, I should be ok when it comes to strikeouts. Then I decided to complement them with underrated guys like Jarrod Parker ($8) and Ryan Vogelsong ($7) who aren’t the sexiest pitchers in the world, but pitch in good parks and can put up decent numbers.

I went the same route with my infield and outfield… having a few top-end guys, supported by underrated cheaper guys later on. For example, my 5th outfielder Norichiki Aoki ($7) put up the following stats in 151 games in 2012: .3546 OBP, .4327 SLG, 81 R, 10 HR. As a sleeper last year, I felt I struck gold with this pick. This season, I was shocked he came so cheaply, and is a tremendous 5th OFer.

When it came to prospects, I primarily focused on guys who were farther away from the majors but with huge upside. For example I picked up Lucas Giolito ($3), Max Fried ($5), and Christian Yelich ($5) all of whom could be top 10-15 prospects 18 months from now. These, and other prospects, gave me some tradeable assets should I need to help my team down the road, but also won’t cost me much if they don’t pan out as players. I decided I would rather pay $5 for Yelich than $14 for Taveras, so we’ll see how that worked out as a general strategy.

 

So how can you use this for your draft? There are three key takeaways I think, that are valuable over any type of draft or fantasy league.

• Leverage what you know

If you feel like you’re pretty good at evaluating pitchers, it might make sense to save some of those bullets for guys that will cost less but could provide a lot of value. If you have a knack for picking out the best prospects, leverage that. Whatever it is you do well, lean on that.

• Pick your battles

You can’t win every player, and getting into a bidding war for one guy can really kill your draft later. Didn’t get Trout? Try picking up Matt Kemp for a bit cheaper. Missed out on CC Sabathia? Pick up Cliff Lee for a few bucks less. Whatever it is, you can almost always make up a good chunk of a player’s production later, at a cheaper cost. That in turn allows you to allocate those dollars elsewhere on your roster.

• Find value wherever you can.

It may not be sexy to pick up someone like Josh Willingham, but if you think that he can post good numbers, then he could be a great value. To that point, I’ll leave you with a simple comparison from our league to consider.

OBP               SLG             HR               R                  $$$

Carlos Gonzalez                    .371                .510              22               89                 $33

Josh Willingham                   .366                 .524             35                85                 $13

Even if Willingham is unable to produce at the level he did last season, he would need to take a pretty severe step back to not provide a positive return on the $13 investment. These are the types of moves that help you win a fantasy league, so take advantage whenever possible.

Good luck in your drafts, and try to extract as much value from them as you possibly can.