Auction Drafts w/ Keepers - How to Adjust Value (1 Viewer)

[wilked]

Doing my first auction draft this weekend (and first of our league). Keep 5, we came up with a system to assign values to players. 10 team league. I calculated 330ish points in 'value' out there, ie the difference between FBG's Draft Dominator assigned values for our league rules, and for what the keepers will cost an owner. For instance, I am keeping Vick at $5, FBG assigns him $36, so that is $31 of 'value'.

$200 league, deep league (start 2 QBs, 1 non QB flex). Roster 18.

My first thought is that with $330 in value taken by keepers, it essentially gives everyone ~$33 extra to spend on remaining players, and thus I should adjust values of remaining players up by 33/200 = 16.5%. Michael Turner (FBG value of $26) might now be expected to command $30, and so on. Anyone agree with this?

Also, how will this affect top players left? Of the Top 10 RBs, only Peterson, Charles, and Jackson remain. Should I be more aggressive on them, or laugh silently as owners blow their budget on them?

Just looking for thoughts from others who might have been through this.

Thanks

 

[Pigskin Fanatic]

Some observations from my experience:

1. The last two or three of the top 10 QB & RB positions will be overpaid. Don't get caught with your pants down and go after top guys earlier than later. People realize there aren't much super talent left and also see the big loot in their pot and get desperate.

2. Prepare to pay top dollars for the top 3 QB & top 3 RB if you decide to go after them. 1/4 total is generally the cap I give myself for anyone I consider top 3 overall. If your strategy includes going after these top guys, don't be afraid to spend in two or three guys, but be a shark when you get to the middle tier guys.

3. Plenty of value out there for WR's, spend as little as possible there. People will overpay for top 5 WR.

4. Top 3 TE is worth the dough.

5. Kickers and Defense are basically lottery for most scoring formats, don't bother spending any real money on those.

6. Spend 90% of the pot on your starting roster. More if you need. Not worth paying any real money for backups.

7. FBG or any other salary guide out there is pretty good for the start of the draft, but that gets thrown out the door after about 20 players for reason #1 and #3. Stick to your game plan like any other draft. You won't be able to stick to the strategy of assigned value in an auction for reason #1.

8. If this is the first auction for your league, more people will have money left over at the end than not. Think about how much more you can buy with $2 more with each bid. I'd say budget by position and stick to it. In future years people get smarter and with keepers the dynamics change.

 

[HALtheCOW]

Use the Keeper Feature in The Draft Dominator. As you put in all the value the Dyn Value will increase for each player.

That will give you a better idea of what you should use as a baseline.

However, the first auction will likely be crazy.

You already have solid talent (as does everyone if they kept 5). Buy as many studs as you can that are left (while other owners are worried about sticking to a budget). Then fill your roster with $1 players. I think you will like the way you look. JMHO

 

[GregR]

Use the Keeper Feature in The Draft Dominator. As you put in all the value the Dyn Value will increase for each player. That will give you a better idea of what you should use as a baseline. However, the first auction will likely be crazy. You already have solid talent (as does everyone if they kept 5). Buy as many studs as you can that are left (while other owners are worried about sticking to a budget). Then fill your roster with $1 players. I think you will like the way you look. JMHO

Agree with letting Draft Dominator calculate the values.But I would save $2 for each of the backup and such roster spots if you're planning to blow most of your cap on studs. Reason being that it's a first time auction for your league. There are probably a lot of owners who won't understand the power of $2 at the end of the auction... which should let you get your pick of a lot of the guys near the end.

 

[wilked]

Thanks guys

 

[SelenaCat]

Anyone agree with this?

That's essentially what I do as well. We've been running one keeper league for 10 years now, and the average "keeper" value has been pretty consistently around 18-20% every year (it's a keep 5, so usually only better bargains are kept).

Should I be more aggressive on them, or laugh silently as owners blow their budget on them?

It depends on what you need. If your value for AP is $75, adjusted up to $87-88 after the keeper inflation, then that's about where you should stop. That said, sometimes you have to reach just a little once in a while, so don't take those values as gospel. Something that might also be helpful is to know the typical auction values for your league. For instance, if the most expensive RB last year was $80, you'll know that's about what you can expect to pay for the consensus RB1.

 

[wilked]

Is there an article explaining DynAuction and how it is calculated? It is telling me that Ray Rice (best avail player) is worth over $80

 

[CalBear]

Is there an article explaining DynAuction and how it is calculated? It is telling me that Ray Rice (best avail player) is worth over $80

There's a lot of tweaking you have to do with auction values in DD. First, make sure you're using a reasonable baseline; Maurile's Auction Method is OK for typical leagues, but you may need to tweak it if your rosters or scoring is unusual. Second, there's a file, auction.csv, in the DD folder which contains multipliers for the top players at each position. I almost always tweak these downwards, as I think they overstate the value of the top players. Third, there's a "Calc starts" stat, which tries to compute the number of starts each player will have based on their overall ranking, and adjusts the costs accordingly. And "fudge factor", whatever that means.Then, DynAuction is just the calculated auction value, modified by the fact that there's a different amount of money in the pool based on the existing keepers and purchased players. When you have cheap keepers, DynAuction should be a good bit higher than Auction. Consider a $100 auction in a 12-team dynasty league with 10 keepers, where every team keeps players with $80 in Auction value, but pays just $40 for them on average. That means that there's still $800 left for all the players ranked #121 and below; a player who would be backup-level, worth $5-$10 might be worth $20 or more because there are people with a bunch of money and nothing better to spend it on.Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the way the DD calculates auction values, so I wind up overriding a lot of its calculations, but the difference between Auction and DynAuction is valuable.

 

[GregR]

Is there an article explaining DynAuction and how it is calculated? It is telling me that Ray Rice (best avail player) is worth over $80

In Draft Dominator, click on Help and then on "Auction Pricing" for MT's article on how the prices are being calculated.The Auction value is the price that everyone should be based on the projections you're using. The DynAuction essentially recalculates that based on what is actually paid for each player. So if players have been going for cheaper than their true worth, there is a surplus of money left that will be spent on the remaining players, which means the remaining players should go for more than their normal price.The simplest explanation of how the price is calculated, is you add up all the discretionary money (money beyond the price to fill a roster with minimum price players), and you divide it by the total value of all the players that will be auctioned. That gives you a number of how much 1 point of value is worth. Which is then multiplied by each player's VBD score to get at what his price should be.That's the short version. MT's process does more than that, like it takes into account that the RB1 is likely to start most of the games while the RB20 is likely to be benched during bad matchups, so it discounts the price of the RB20 further.

 

[GregR]

... Second, there's a file, auction.csv, in the DD folder which contains multipliers for the top players at each position. I almost always tweak these downwards, as I think they overstate the value of the top players. ...

I agree, I normally set all the values to 1, even.

 

[bucs4life_99]

Remember also that there is a difference between what a player "should" go for according to the DD and what they actually go for. If all the top RBs are kept in your league for $70, it is unlikely that Ray Rice will get bid up much over that price.

Especially if this is the first year after the initial auction draft, people might not realize they have a ton more money to spend relative to the players that are out there. In my dynasty auction leagues, this has led to top guys being drafted at a bargain, but as the auction moves on and it dawns on teams that there just aren't that many good guys out there, the last of the good players and many average players will become pretty overvalued.

One aspect of adjusting for keeper values that I haven't worked out is the how to account for auction prices over multiple years. Sure, you should pay $80 for Ray Rice THIS year, but he would be incredibly overvalued as a keeper next year and you would end up throwing him back. Maybe that's fine, but part of me still thinks that there's something backwards about paying that much for someone who, even if he finishes as the top RB, probably wouldn't be worth keeping due to his crazy salary.

 

[CalBear]

One aspect of adjusting for keeper values that I haven't worked out is the how to account for auction prices over multiple years. Sure, you should pay $80 for Ray Rice THIS year, but he would be incredibly overvalued as a keeper next year and you would end up throwing him back. Maybe that's fine, but part of me still thinks that there's something backwards about paying that much for someone who, even if he finishes as the top RB, probably wouldn't be worth keeping due to his crazy salary.

It depends how many keepers you have. If you only have two or three, it doesn't really matter; you'll always be able to find two or three players who are worth keeping at their current salaries. If it's a dynasty league, you might want to think about this; probably, just like an NFL team, you'll want a combo of win-now players who you're expecting to get rid of after the year, and development players you'll keep for several years to come.