Auction draft help (1 Viewer)

Question for the SP. I've been in charge of our league for 6 years now and we are in our third as an auction. We've always had a rule that you must fill your entire roster at the draft. This year, some people want to get rid of the max bid rule meaning you could use your last dollar to land a player and then have to wait and finish filling your roster from the waivers. Anybody come across this before? What are the arguments as to why this is a bad for the league? I'm not looking for why it's a bad stategy for an individual team, but what problems it creates for the draft as a whole. Sorry if this is the wrong place for this question. If so, let me know appropriate spot.

Thanks

It increases the max bid, it makes it impossible to strategize at the end.

Not an issue for my auction league, we close standard waivers until all teams have a full team, some owners want to leave the draft early and all pickups are $1 which allows people to get there $1 flyer picks after the draft

chad in Indy said:

Question for the SP. I've been in charge of our league for 6 years now and we are in our third as an auction. We've always had a rule that you must fill your entire roster at the draft. This year, some people want to get rid of the max bid rule meaning you could use your last dollar to land a player and then have to wait and finish filling your roster from the waivers. Anybody come across this before? What are the arguments as to why this is a bad for the league? I'm not looking for why it's a bad stategy for an individual team, but what problems it creates for the draft as a whole. Sorry if this is the wrong place for this question. If so, let me know appropriate spot.

Thanks

Click to expand...

I have been in an auction with no minimum in terms of roster spots filled at the end of the auction. It didn't cause any problems. Was a 25 man roster dynasty league. I think 1 or 2 teams ended up with about 15 guys and had to fill in a lot of spots with waiver guys using up blind bid dollars. Some teams filled the full 25 spots during the auction and got some nice bargains at the end. Most of the teams ended up with 20-23 guys and filled in the last couple spots in waivers. I thought it was fine and added a bit more strategy to team construction decisions.

I think a good solution is maybe a 1 year trial with a minimum number of spots that must be filled in the auction but make that number less than the roster max. For example, if you have 22 man rosters, make the rule that you have to have at least 18 guys at the end of the auction. Gives owners some options towards the end of the auction if there is a guy they really want and adds some extra strategy, but also avoids anything crazy like someone spending all their money on 7 players.

chad in Indy said:

Question for the SP. I've been in charge of our league for 6 years now and we are in our third as an auction. We've always had a rule that you must fill your entire roster at the draft. This year, some people want to get rid of the max bid rule meaning you could use your last dollar to land a player and then have to wait and finish filling your roster from the waivers. Anybody come across this before? What are the arguments as to why this is a bad for the league? I'm not looking for why it's a bad stategy for an individual team, but what problems it creates for the draft as a whole. Sorry if this is the wrong place for this question. If so, let me know appropriate spot.

Thanks

Click to expand...

It could imbalance the league. For every roster slot that's not filled at auction, there will be a player on the waiver wire who would have been on a roster, so the waiver wire will be better than usual. Teams could spend all their money on their starters, not fill any bench spots, and still find decent value on the waiver wire.

If you really want fewer players auctioned, reduce the number of roster spots.

We have had a keeper league auction where you don't have to fill your roster. It has worked for us for years. Some people fill it with cheap players at the end, some spend their money and go home, then have to use free agent pickups to add players later. Since most teams keep 10-20 players (individual defense included) there isn't much besides average defense and flyers left. People still find guys to roster though.

I think in the long run it really doesn't matter.

Let's compare. In a normal league with a $1 minimum bid, you have the choice of spending everything on starters and filling with $1 bench players. Other teams may choose to save enough for $2 bench players. Does it imbalance the league if teams can choose one or the other, or somewhere in between? Would it imbalance the league if we change it from a $1 minimum bid to a $2 minimum bid? And then from $2 to $3 minimum bid? I'd say no to all the above.

What you're talking about doing is almost exactly the same as saying the minimum bid is $0. The only difference would be that those teams would have to expend some other resource (waiver bidding pool) to get the players later on. And those teams who use this method actually have a worse chance at those players because of the method. That is... if I chose to go with $1 players I could wait until everyone's roster is full and then get uncontested with my $1 any of those same players we're talking about additionally being available on waivers. Now my attempt to acquire them from waivers can be contested by any team who decides that player is better than someone they already took, where they couldn't do that in the auction once their roster is full.

I don't think it matters in the long run. Just comes down to personal preference. Yes it would allow those teams to have better starters, but no the players on waivers being "better" doesn't mean they filled their bench spots with better players than they would have had if they spent $1. They'd be choosing the exact same players from waivers that they'd have taken in the auction. So all you're really doing is changing the valuation from being "is a $2 bench player worth it over a $1 bench player" to "is a $1 bench player worth it over a waiver bench player".