Ok, love this site and the interesting articles on auction-drafting motivated me to join an auction league. Draft is Monday night so I don’t have much time to get my **** together. Any general advice will be much appreciated.
I’d like to say I could be of help here but to be honest I don’t have near the expertise in auction drafts that I have in re-draft leagues. To give you an idea I’m in 20 leagues this year to date and only one was auction. And that auction will in no way be like yours. that being said, I trust that if you do your research you’ll come out with a great team since most other teams probably won’t bother to research much. I’ve never been in a IDP auction draft so I have no idea where those players will go and I’m used to $200 or $250 auction leagues. All I can say is good luck!
For a little info I can at least say that the defensive players will have more value than traditional IDP. Don’t pay too much attention to the bonus points since they will rarely come into play. An auction draft normally proceeds with the manager with the 1st position “nominating” a player. This player is then bid on. I wish I could give you an idea of who to nominate and when but it usually doesn’t matter too much. I’d say avoid nominating players who are your sleepers until later in the draft when nobody has money left and you can get them cheap. To be honest there are tons of schools of thought on how to choose which player to nominate. I think it’s all overcomplicated uselessness. If in doubt just nominate the next best player.
I’d say plug your custom scoring into fftoolbox and see what it shoots out. Then compare that to a site with auction values. Try to normalize the auction values of offensive players to about a $320 system since that’s likely how much you should be spending on your offensive players (including kicker and team defense). You’ll be lucky to find a site with particularly good IDP auction values but if you do normalize that to about $180. To normalize just divide the total team values (cap) of the site you’re on (say $200) and divide your team cap (say $320 for offense) by that number. You will end up with a number like 1.6. Multiply each player’s value (on the reference site) by this number to get a solid estimate of what price each player is worth. It’s okay to pay more for a guy if you like him but don’t go way over. Make sure you have a plan going in. You should have a ballpark estimate on how much you want to spend on every position and how much you want to spend on the bench spots. Later in drafts, a lot of players can be had for only $1 because most team’s rosters are full.
You really need to go into auction drafts with a plan and you should have an idea of what portion of the auction cap you will be spending at each position. This will put you head and shoulders above the rest of the competition in a public league.
Oh and here’s an example of how to normalize:
The site you are looking on has a listed auction value of DeSean Jackson of $26. You find out that this site is basing it’s values on a $200 cap. Since yours is $320 or so, you need to normalize the value. By dividing 320 by 200 you end up with a value of 1.6. By then multiplying this value (1.6) by Jackson’s listed value on the site ($26), you end up with $41.6. This value is the auction value that Jackson should go at in your league. Now this isn’t perfect. Since you league’s is different from the site’s scoring system you may need to adjust more. Since Jackson is likely going to be a punt returner and your league awards for that, you should bump his value up a bit. Your league only awards a point for every 40 yards though so you shouldn’t bump the value too much. I’d suggest pricing him between $43 and $47. I would never pay more than $50 for him and under $40 will be a great price.
I hope that’s not too complicated! In truth auction drafts are a crapshoot and I usually do these types calculations during the draft rather than making my own customized list. Since a player will be up for a round of betting, you’ll have lenty of time to do some quick estimation of a player’s worth. In almost all auction drafts, some players go for way more than they are projected to and others go for way less. This makes auction drafts unpredictable.
Be ready to make some snap calculations and such on draft day. Prepare to be surprised. Some dumb guy will probably fork over $100 for an elite RB or WR when most of them aren’t even worth $80. That’s how auction works, you reach for a few and you grab some late. It’s all about who you like, not who is the best on the board. Anyway, get a preliminary idea of what the various tiers of guys at each position are going for before the draft. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot of prep work you can do. It will be a crapshoot one way or the other. Auction drafts are like war, you’re going to come out scarred, confused and maimed, but you might come back with some nice treasures
Great stuff as always Squish…and much appreciated. I noticed that yahoo normalizes the default player rankings/values for me pretty close to the formula you described. For instance the projected default value for Chris Johnson is $60 and the suggested value for my league is $80. I’ll check out toolbox today and start going through the list editing etc. I’ll also try out a couple of auction drafts later. Lot’s of work ahead…and hopefully lots of fun.
My roster. Twelve team auction draft. Feedback? Bruno Boys?
QB Peyton Manning
QB Drew Brees
WR Steve Smith
WR Mario Manningham
WR Davone Bess
RB Chris Johnson
RB DeAngelo Williams
TE Jermichael Finley
W/T Nate Burleson
W/T Mike Wallace
W/R Reggie Bush
K Jay Feely
DEF New Orleans
DB Louis Delmas
DL Justin Tuck
LB James Laurinaitis
LB London Fletcher
LB Jerod Mayo
DT Brandon Mebane
DE Mathias Kiwanuka
CB Leodis McKelvin
S Roman Harper
Bench: Mike Thomas, M. Stafford, Maroney, McGahee, Gilyard, Danieal Manning
It’s not too shabby at all! I just hope you have Maroney as your “bubble boy!” You have some strong defensive and offensive players. Was this a first time auction draft for the entire league?
It’s not too shabby at all! I just hope you have Maroney as your “bubble boy!” You have some strong defensive and offensive players. Was this a first time auction draft for the entire league?
Yes, first time auction. I’d love to replace Maroney but not much left out there :(
