Auction Draft resources? Options

[Hawkwin]

I did a search and did not find a sticky on such. Is there a good internal or external resource on how to prepare for this topic? I am in my first auction draft made up of nothing but league winners from last year so I have my work cut out for me.

FYI, It is a 12 team, standard yahoo scoring.

I just read that Emil stated that something is available on the front page for subscibers? That includes me that I can't seem to locate it.

[Phish Brigade]

How much is the salary cap? There are lots of ranking available on the interwebz, but they can be pretty subjective. Worse than your typical cheatsheet. You really have to put your own tiers together if you ask me. If it's a $200 salary cap, there's lots out there. If not, you just have to adjust.

[Hawkwin]

Oh, well, no help so far so I went out to try and create my own strategy (beyond the basic bidding strategy).

There are a number of sites out there that give you estimates on pricing. All those sites work really went right up until the point of bidding starting and then individual pricing would seem to me to almost be a distraction to effectively managing a budget on the next 180 players.

My thought on this is to set an average price per position to get a sense of how much would be reasonable to spent per position/player so that I know if I get some stud RBs and over spend there, I know by exactly how much I should cut back in other areas. This would also give me a better perspective, based on my scoring method, as to how much I should spend a particular player beyond simply what everyone else spends on them. I have trusted this site for years and it has not failed yet in helping me win at least one league a year so I value FSV calculations much more than ADP.

(All based on a $200 budget)
Again, I have never done this before so this method might be well known, but I can't find anything like it out there. The first assumption I made was that bench players were worth <$1. I then used the cheatsheet from this site to total up the the starting FSV for all positions and by position, and then created an average. For example, the average FSV for QBs is 248. For RBs it is 224. I then totalled all starting positions to get a total of 1508. I divided that by the total money in the auction per owner ($200) by the total points likely for all starters to get a multiplier of .1326. With that I can get an average cost of starting QB (248 x .1326 = $32.80). The average cost of a starting RB is $29.70. I can also take individual player FSV to get an estimated value. For example, while many sites have Chris Johnson selling for $60 to $70, this formula would suggest that you are overpaying if you spend more than $45. Conversely, someone like Ryan Grant that is ranked 8th on the cheat sheet and who normally sells for about $20, his value with this method states that you could pay $30 for him and still come out ahead.

I also took the calculations for the average cost per player from some of the sites and plugged them into my system. In all cases, the average cost per player in a starting position (e.g. top 36 WRs drafted, top 24 RBs drafted), was less than my average cost (i.e. allowing for spending more than $1 on bench players). All this suggests to me that the top players are seriously over priced. To make this point even more clear, my calculation above for QBs is $32. CBS has their average cost of a starting QB to be $23. That means that someone that pays $36 for Manning (average cost per CBS) is only getting 7 FSV points per dollar where as they could get Romo for $24 and get 10 FSV points per $1.


I am not sure how best to use this yet but I hope to have it figured out by this weekend. I might have to flex my excel muscles a bit.

So, am I completely off base or are those of you out there that have done auction leagues before and my ramblings have some basis in reality?

How much is the salary cap? There are lots of ranking available on the interwebz, but they can be pretty subjective. Worse than your typical cheatsheet. You really have to put your own tiers together if you ask me. If it's a $200 salary cap, there's lots out there. If not, you just have to adjust.

Thanks, much like you state, I have found it to be very subjective. The best I can come up with so far is the formula I have listed above.

[Wrathman]

I think you are off to a great start with your research.

[Hawkwin]

Woo hoo! 90 minutes until my auction league drafts. I am so excited! Nothing but winners from last year in this league and a new format to boot!

I have my DDTool on my laptop, my draft ready to go on my desktop, and my excel cheet sheets (ADP, estimated value of player, and a calculator to tell me how much each owner has left spend to know when they are likely bluffing and when I can run them up in price) pulled up in the background.

Wish me luck!

[Hawkwin]

Holy crap auction is hard!!!

It was so much more challenging to do the auction today. I certainly learned a lot in the process. This method is so dynamic and fluid that you need to prepare about twice as much as a normal draft. I went in very prepared from my perspective but I quickly realized (as did everyone else in the draft) that more preparation was needed. Not only was it difficult, it was also fast. So fast that I had to completely abandon my DDTool. In the future, I will have to actually use pen and paper to mark off who has been selected and who is left. Much of my technology prep failed me because I simply could not keep up!

My observations:

The top half of the starters (top 5 qbs in a 10 team league, top 10 RBs, etc.) went for a premium, for the most part. Kickers and Ds went for a premium for the first 2-4 teams.

There was good reason to over pay in some cases. In particular for RBs. Lots of value to be found at the bottom half of the starting QBs - sometimes they went for half of what they were projected.

It paid to be patient. I kicked myself a few times when mid round studs went for cheap because I had already spent a reasonable amount for my starters.

My method above only really works well for the starters. The drop off in price paid compared to projected value was huge once you got outside of the starters - as would make sense since these are bench players. I was a bit too smart for my own good in some cases by paying more than the ave price but still well below the projected for some bench players. If I had waited a bit, I could have gotten better players (higher up on the bench) for cheaper.

My revised idea going forward is to not try and buy a top-half starter (again, top 5 qb, top 10 rb) for more than the total average price for all starters. That will be pretty hard for RBs and even WRs but every other position had some players that met that criteria - thereby giving more to spend on the RBs and WRs. The value seemed to be in QBs ranked 6-10, WRs ranked 24-36 (still starters), def ranked outside of the top 4, and TEs ranked about of the top 5.

As much as I even mentioned above about the apparent value of some players, I did not follow my own advice. I spent $39 on Aaron Rodgers at pick 32 (a decent price) but then Tony Romo went at pick 43 for $20.

If you have yet to try an auction draft, I recommend it especially if you don't feel as challenged from the normal draft process.


The results of my labored efforts (in draft order):

Ben Tate $3
Pierre Thomas $25
Vernon Davis $17
Pittsburg $10 - could have gotten Baltimore for $3 later in the draft
Vince Young $2 - didnt really want him, I was just bidding up the price and got stuck. Not bad but Carson Palmer went for $3 late in the draft.
Aaron Rodgers $39
Brandon Jacobs $13
Calvin Johnson $29 - way over paid but I slept on oher reasonably priced WRs for too long and had to scramble.
Ryan Grant - $33 - similiar story here but I figure I only overpaid by $3 and he is still a top 10 RB - so this might not be that bad.
Ochocinco - $12
Meachem $12 - I basically had no money left after this.
Prater $1
Austin Collie - $1
Steve Breaston - $1
Clinton Portis $2

We gave one guy a real hard time for spending $75 on AP, $35 on PManning, $28 on Fitzgerald, and $18 on Gates. He basically was out of money after his seventh pick. That being said, when I look at forcasted points for the first week, that owner currently has the most so if his players produce, all that overpayment will be well worth it, even if he had to spend $1 on nearly everything else.

[Harris]

Good stuff Hawk!