More on Auction Drafting

I’m going to go on another rant here about the importance of using an auction draft, and the importance of spending money on high priced players. For starters, only through an auction draft does everybody in the league have a free shot at every player in the league. The playing field is narrowed in the sense that the guys drafting 1 and 2 don’t have an unnecessary and undeserved advantage over the guys drafting 13 and 14. Imagine, 14 team league running a snake draft. You can now use hindsight to see that the team with picks 1, 28, 29 have a huge advantage over the one with 14,15, 42. In names, this is Chris Paul, Paul Pierce and Gerald Wallace vs. maybe Chauncey Billups, Andre Iguodala, and Andrew Bynum. The players themselves aren’t so important, it’s that we already know Chris Paul and the very last guy you take in the draft will outplay Billups and Iguodala combined. Then you’re left with Pierce and Wallace both vs. the number 42 pick. It’s like this in every sport. I’d be willing to bet that barring a totally inactive manager, those of you who played in snake drafts will confirm that the owners of both CP3 and LBJ are either at the top or very close to the top (particularly if they owned them all year).

Auction draft. But how much do I pay for these guys? Sure, there’s definitely a limit. There is a point where it just doesn’t make sense to get that top tier player. For me, that amount is between 40% and 50% of my total purse. So if you start with $200, I’d be willing to go all the way to between 80 and 100 for that top tier player. If my purse is $260, I’d be willing to go up to $130 for my guy. In football this year, we started with a purse of $200. I was prepared to pay up to $100 for Adrian Peterson, but I snagged him all the way down at $62. He wasn’t even the highest player taken. You see, in an auction draft, a guy like Peterson, or Chris Paul or Hanley Ramirez is going to be placed up for bidding pretty early. Chances are your counterparts in the draft aren’t going to want to ‘blow all their dough’ right off the bat. It’s a completely stupid approach that most everyone takes.

In fact, they are going to take the exact opposite approach of the one you should take. They’re going to say ‘I’m just going to hold off, and try to build a well balanced team of one or two Tier Two players, some Tier Three’s and a bunch of Tier Fours. That’s awesomely stupid. But only now can you see how awesomely stupid it is! Instead, I like to shoot for 1 Tier One player, then as many Tier 2 and Tier 3’s I can get at a reasonable price (i.e. not more than the Tier One went for certainly). If I have a $200 purse, and I toss 70 on it on CP3, then spend the next 110 of it on say 5 more studs, I’m in a solid position (assuming a 10 man starting roster). I’ll pick up a few scraps toward the end like rookies or whatever. Then I hit the WW immediately.

It’s KEY to come out of the draft with at least two guys you are totally comfortable dropping tomorrow for someone new. Think of those early WW gems that you could’ve filled those last 4 starting holes on your team (assuming you didn’t score any real nice late round steals). Guys like Marc Gasol, Channing Frye, Tyreke Evans, Danilo Gallinari, and even Carl Landry. These guys were all likely available early on, and only the team’s comfortable dropping a player were in the hunt to score them. You see where I’m coming from. Now, only at this point of the season, can you clearly see how many great WW guys there are available in the first month of the season, and how quickly they all disappear at this point of the year.

Startnig your year off on the right foot is one of the biggest keys to success.