The Perfect MLB Auction Draft (Fantasy Baseball)

In most leagues that use an auction draft, there are 2 or 3 coaches who feel great about what they came away with after the draft. The rest of them either didn’t fully develop a plan or completely abandoned it on a whim and will begin the season at a significant disadvantage because unlike a serpentine draft, auctions are much easier to screw up if you aren’t disciplined. If you really want to nail your auction draft, my friend, Dan Harris, has already outlined a tremendous strategy to use for preparation. My article applies that information to provide an example of a perfect auction draft.

Now, this isn’t like a straight draft where you can just assume certain players will fall to you with each of your picks because of ADPs and ECR. Rather, I punched in the standard league settings for a 12 team Yahoo league into our Auction Calculator to see the projected player values. Then, to make it a challenge, I removed 10% of my $260 budget since you can’t just assume you will get everyone you want at the auction calculator price. This left me with just $234 to spend on 25 players.

In a 12 team roto league, there are 120 possible points that can go to a winner, but almost always, the winning team finishes somewhere in the upper 80s or low 90s. Using FantasyPros’ Consensus Projections and an average of 10 graded draft results with the same league settings from Draft Simulator, I was able to build a 104 point team using just $234. I didn’t have to use trial and error or study the projections to build this perfect roster. Rather, by some miracle, these were the first 25 players I wrote down as a combination of top values and roster balance, and wouldn’t you know, they turned out to be worth exactly $234.

How did the team grade out?

Avg: 7th
HR: 2nd
RBI: 2nd
R: 3rd
SB: 3rd

ERA: 1st
WHIP: 1st
K’s: 1st
SVs: 1st
W: 5th

1st place: 104 points
Average 2nd place team: 83 points
Average 12th place team: 63 points
*The difference between this team and 2nd place is greater than the distance between 2nd and last.

What does the roster look like?

What was the strategy?

No, this isn’t a super early April Fools prank. That really is the roster, complete with zero players ranked better than #35 and even with two players you may have never heard of in Chris Devinski and David Phelps. So what exactly is going on here? First, we’ll start with the fact that prices are overinflated for star players in auction drafts, so even while Mike Trout will finish a handful of standard deviations above the replacement-level fantasy player across the five categories, his price per standard deviations above replacement is lower than your typical player. That isn’t to say that owning Mike Trout is a bad thing–certainly not! Only that there is better value to be found throughout the draft and that the goal of each auction draft is to walk away with $300 in value even though you walked in with just $260 to spend. Not only is it about value, but it is about balance. I was able to finish in the top 3 in 8 of the 10 scoring categories and no worse than 7th.

The key draft-hack I used to accomplish that was taking advantage of position eligibility to have 8 full-time strikeout machines and ratio monsters potentially pitching every day out of the bullpen. Rasiel Iglesias is the favorite to win the Reds’ closer job, yet qualifies as a starting pitcher. Likewise, Chris Devinski has been extraordinary out of the bullpen and is expected to dominate again out of the Astros’ pen this season, yet qualifies as a starting pitcher. If you need a third one, Kansas City has a reliever who crushed out of the bullpen last season named Matthew Strahm. He is a sleeper to surge onto the scene as an 80 strikeout guy with solid ratios.

 
As you can see, I spent an extra three dollars for a league average bullpen plus the equivalent in production of Noah Syndergaard, Chris Archer and about 40 saves (minus 10 wins). Am I proud of myself for making a mockery of the rules? Well yes, if it wins me a championship, you better believe I am.

Fortunately, I don’t have to worry as much about wins or K’s because my bullpen picks up so many extra on its own, so I was able to focus on grabbing four high-upside starting pitchers with a recent injury history. Their prices are depleted, but the ratio projections are excellent, fitting ideally into my balance equation. If I can get all four of those guys on every team I’ll be a happy camper as history shows us that near half of similar players are likely to end up somewhere in the Cy Young conversation while another quarter are expected to produce well at near 150 innings. The re-injury rate is high, but surprisingly only a tad higher than high-stress arms that have gobs of usage behind them like Chris Sale and Max Scherzer.

The lineup contains only one type of player: the type who has produced at an extraordinary level recently for at least a 250 PA run, but hasn’t yet put it together for a full season. As you’ll see, six of the 10 players had that hefty sample size to close out the 2016 season. These are always the types of hitters I target and again, history lends itself well to their success the following year. The chart below shows their super-sample spread out over 150 games, and boy oh boy does it make me giddy!

 
Am I suggesting that all of these results will happen? No, not even close. I’m not sure any of them will happen, but the fact that they have each showcased enough potential to put up seasons like that, especially considering their prices, is what gives them such significant value. Take Jonathan Villar, for instance, who was a top 5 fantasy player last year, but is going in the fourth round of fantasy drafts despite still being well within his prime years. As you might expect, the projections are much higher on Villar than you’d assume for a player with his ADP and when the expert consensus projections view a player much more favorably than ADP, it is wise to pay attention and that is exactly what we see with these 10 hitters.

Thanks for reading, everyone, and good luck this season!

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