2020 Sample Auction Strategy

(Photograph by Julian Avram/Icon Sportswire)

by Doug Gruber

For auctions, BABS says we do not need to obsess over individual dollars or overbidding. From the BABS Project 3.0, Book 1, Chapter 1: “There is only a 65% chance that a player projected for a certain dollar value will finish the season within plus-or-minus $5 of that projection…” Unlike snake drafts, in auctions you can nominate and bid on any player, which fits perfectly with BABS. Her strength is to identify players with the best combination of skills and liabilities who are undervalued, to help us with our roster construction plan.

Let’s take a step-by-step approach to a sample auction strategy. But before we start our planning, we need to assemble our tools. Here is what we need:

  • The BABS Master Spreadsheet.
  • A blank roster worksheet, including the asset and liability targets for a 15-team mixed league.
  • The accounting Overview of the BABS pool, by Pat Cloghessy in Game Plan Part 1.
  • A review of the other BABS articles… positional analyses, asset group analyses, the BABS tutorial, and strategy articles.

The auction process starts by setting a budget and identifying our anchor players. Enter BABS. What if she told you that our auction anchors could be Mike Trout, Ronald Acuna, Mookie Betts, Trea Turner and Aaron Judge?!

Your answer would likely be (expletives deleted), “That would be great, but there is no way that we could ever afford all those players.” Looking at the average auction values (AAV), you would be correct as we would need to spend at least $200 of our $260 budget for those five, leaving an average of $3-4 for each of the remaining 18 positions.

But with BABS, you can buy other players who have roughly equivalent skill sets and pay about half the cost.

Let’s look closer at the Master Spreadsheet. Trout is in the (P+,AV) asset group which also includes both JD Martinez and Yordan Alvarez. Starling Marte is the classmate with Turner in (S+,AV). Bo Bichette (p,SB,AV) has nearly identical skills to Acuna. JT Realmuto is not only the best catcher available, but he brings the same triple asset rating as Betts. Matt Olson and Judge are both (P+,a).

If we target Alvarez, Marte, Bichette, Realmuto and Olson as our anchors, we should be able to acquire these players for around $110 rather than $200. Equivalent skills, same number of total assets, and a savings of $90.

On the pitching side, the Top 3 arms are Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom and Justin Verlander. Each of these studs could cost $40 each. The virtually analogous arms all have injury risks… Scherzer, Clevinger, Snell and Sale are not what we want for our pitcher anchors. Instead, we could target very reliable arms from the (ER,KK) asset group, a slight reduction in total assets but pitchers who possess significant skills in both pitching categories, for half the price. Any two from the group including Patrick Corbin, Luis Castillo, Clayton Kershaw and Charlie Morton could become our SP1 and SP2 staff anchors.

We now have our team anchor targets. Five hitters and two starting pitchers as our foundation. Total spending of approximately $160 for seven players, while collecting 19 assets and very little risk. We have $100 remaining for 16 players, about $6-7 each.

One additional note…to allow our budget plan to have enough money to acquire our targets, we assumed that AAVs might need to be bumped up. For any player $30 and above, we budgeted an additional $3 above the AAV; for $15-$29 players we added $2; and, for all other players, we added at least $1. Then we fudged a few prices that still looked off.

Now let’s review the player pool and set our targets.

For hitters, there are 178 full-timers, of which 88 possess two or more assets. Our goal is to roster at least 13 of our 14 hitting positions with full-time players while also acquiring a minimum of 35 assets… 14 power, 7 speed and 14 batting effectiveness. Our five batting anchors would provide 15 assets, meaning we need at least another 20 assets from our remaining nine players (more than two per player), while remaining below our risk targets.

For the pitchers, the BABS database currently has 37 starting pitchers projected for 180-plus  innings, but only 20 possess assets in both Er and strikeouts. Moving to the mid-timers, only 21 of the 92 arms available come with dual Er/K assets. Double-asset pitchers are scarce, even moreso if we subtract the 23 who have marks on the liability side. Our target is to roster at least two full-time and five mid-time starting pitchers, while also accumulating a minimum of 12 assets, and not rostering too much risk.

For closers, BABS lists 16 arms rated SV (30-plus saves) and another 15 rated as sv- (between 10 and 29 saves) who own dual skill assets. Our target is to obtain at least two saves assets, preferably both with an SV classification.

We also cannot forget about the number of liabilities, which can do huge damage to our rosters. Also, skills liabilities (such as -P) are deducted from our asset totals. It therefore goes without saying that rostering multiple asset players who have a clean sheet on the liability side should be our top priority for our auction plan.

We can now use a blank BABS roster grid to put together our total auction plan. Here is an example that includes our seven anchors. Note that the budget R$ amounts include the juiced up AAV discussed earlier.

R$ BATTERS Pos Tm PT Pw Sp Av Pk Rg Av Inj Ex Nw Pk Ag Rg
21 Realmuto,J.T. C PHI F p s AV inj-
1 Allen,Austin C OAK P PW AV EX Nw
19 Olson,Matt 1 OAK F P+ a inj-
8 Turner,Justin 3 LAD F PW AV
4 Cron,C.J. CI DET F p a inj- Nw
10 Edman,Tommy 2 STL F p SB a EX
18 Bichette,Bo S TOR F p SB AV EX
1 Schoop,Jonathan MI DET F p a – Nw
25 Marte,Starling O ARZ F S+ AV
12 Castellanos,Nick O CIN F PW AV Pk+ Nw
6 Eaton,Adam O WAS F SB AV *
5 Anderson,Brian O MIA F p a inj-
3 Myers,Wil O SDP F p s
24 Alvarez,Yordan UT SDP F P+ AV * EX
157 Total   13 14 7 13 0 4 4
Target   15 Mixed 13 14 7 14 0 4 4
R$ PITCHERS Pos Tm PT Er K Sv Pk Rg Er Inj Ex Nw Pk Ag Rg
23 Castillo,Luis SP CIN F ER KK
20 Morton,Charlie SP TBR M ER KK Ag
11 Lynn,Lance SP TEX F ER KK
8 Ray,Robbie SP ARZ M e K+ Rg+
8 Price,David SP LAD M e KK Rg+ inj- Nw
7 Maeda,Kenta SP MIN M e KK Nw
2 James,Josh rp HOU P e K+ Rg+ inj- e
11 Giles,Ken rp TOR E+ K+ SV Rg-
13 Neris,Hector rp PHI ER K+ SV
103 Total    7/2 7 10 2 0 2 1
260 Target   15 Mixed  7/2 6 6 2 0 2 2

This plan allows us to accumulate 53 total assets, well surpassing the 47 minimum asset targets. The total spending is reasonably balanced between hitting ($157) and pitching ($103). Important, we have remained below the total liability targets for injury and experience. BABS is proud!Obviously, the bidding in your league might vary.

In many cases we have selected players from asset groups who the market may be undervaluing. For instance, in the (PW,AV) asset group we have targeted Nick Castellanos and Justin Turner, who are more affordable options than group members Nolan Arenado and Anthony Rendon. Similar in the (p,a) class, we are aimed at Brian Anderson, CJ Cron and Jonathan Schoop, who share comparable skill sets to bigger name players like Gleyber Torres, Manny Machado and Kris Bryant, for a fraction of the cost.

On the pitching side, in addition to our two anchors, we are pursuing reasonably priced but highly capable, reliable arms to round out our starting pitching staff. For closers, both Ken Giles (E+,K+) and Hector Neris (ER,K+) are the lowest priced of their respective asset classes, while owning extreme skills.

You will need to highlight other options at all positions because we know that auctions rarely go as planned. For the reserve rounds, treat this as an opportunity to stockpile additional BABS assets to give you more roster flexibility, depth and upside.

Remember…this is just an example. You might have other BABS players that you prefer. Grab your BABS spreadsheet and build the roster that you want. Once completed, all that is left to do is to head to your auction and go get your players!