Fantasy Baseball Today - Auction Draft Strategy with Mike Mager! (2/4 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

We're joined by back-to-back NFBC Auction Championship overall winner Mike Mager to talk auction strategy! Why play in auctions (4:03)? ... How to prep for an auction (9:54)? ... What is Mike's typical hitter/pitcher split (20:40)? ... How to balance being rigid vs. being nimble throughout the auction (24:43)? ... Do you need to track your stats throughout the draft (29:56)? ... Which is better between spreading the wealth vs. stars and scrubs (33:53)? ... Why does Mike like to invest heavily in starting pitchers (38:30)? ... Let's talk nomination strategy (44:13)! ... What about bidding within the auction (51:38)? ... How to navigate the endgame of an auction (56:05)? ... How should we react to inflation on elite players early on (1:04:35)? Subscribe to our YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Download and Follow Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://sptfy.com/QiKv⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow our FBT team on Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@FBTPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@CPTowers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@CBSScottWhite⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@Roto_Frank⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join our Facebook group at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Well, fantasy becomes reality. Now here's Frank, Scott, and Chris. Hello there, and welcome into fantasy baseball today on Wednesday, February 4th. I am Frank Stamphill, joined by Scott White and a special guest today on the show.

Strategy Week continues, and we will be breaking down all the ins and outs of auction drafts to help us do that. We are joined by back-to-back NFBC auction championship overall winner, Mike Mager. Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks for hopping on, man. Oh, my pleasure. Long-time listener, happy to talk auctions with you guys. Yeah, so back-to-back, not just an NFB auction league winner, the championship overall winner. So when I say that, we're talking last year first.

of 195 teams in 2024, first of 165 teams. So pretty impressive feat here. I would go as far as to say, Mike, you are probably one of, if not the best auction player in the world right now. Well, I've had a couple of really good years back to back, and it's been a lot of fun, love auctions. Yes, and with that success,

you will be inducted into the NFBC Hall of Fame out in Vegas on March 21st. So congrats to you on that. I know that you also write for FtN Fantasy. make sure to give Mike a follow on X at Bronx Yankees 23. My kind of guy, Yankees, Jets in the background. Here we are. It's kind of a weird mix. You don't normally see Yankees and Jets together,

but we're two of not many. Yes, I know. It's usually Jets and Mets, Yankees Giants. But I know we're the odd ones, right? We are the odd ones. Scott, you're here. What's up, man? How's it going?

I am here too. Yes, not a fan of either the Yankees are the Jets. There was the opposite. Remember Herc? Longtime listeners might remember Hercke making occasional appearances on the podcast. He was Giants Mets. So he had the opposite rare combo there. Yeah, I'll have to hit up Herc because A, I haven't talked to him in a while. B, I don't love that combination of things. See, I do love how much crap he gives you in the Scott White Dynasty. It's pretty hilarious. You probably don't like it as much, but it's pretty fun. I'm used to it. That is the relationship, Herc, and I have.

All right, let's get it to auction strategy here, and some elements of this conversation will be useful for beginners. Other elements will be useful for perhaps the most skilled players out there as well. For those who have not played in the auction format, salary cap draft, also known in a couple locations, it's exactly what it sounds like. You have a finite amount of money. The standard is usually a $260 budget.

That is used for your starting lineup. So in a roto draft, the 23 starting players that you'll be rostered. the 14 hitters, the nine pitchers, and head to head points, a little bit of a smaller format there. The standard is, then it's usually, excuse me, a seven-round snake draft for everybody's bench after that. So, Mike, for those who haven't even tried it, I guess here's your sales pitch.

Why play in the auction format? I think it's the most fun format around. You know, your draft position doesn't matter. You can build the roster the way you want to, you know, if you want to pass on a front of, first round player and get three second rounders, you can do that. You have complete freedom, you know, subject to the $260 budget of building the type of roster you want. Also, instead of kind of, you know, sitting around between picks and the snake draft, you could be in on

literally every player on the bidding. So it's a much more exciting draft. I think also it's probably a little more unpredictable than snake drafts. You know, players can be nominated in any order. and, you know, sometimes they'll go for a lot more or less than expected. So I just think it's the most fundamental challenge around. It's much longer than a snake draft, by the way, too. You should mention that. If you want to play in an auction, you're probably looking at least four hours. I mean, there are a lot of players that have to be nominated,

and the bidding takes time and things like that. But, Scott, this is my favorite way to play as well. As much as I love all drafts, really. But in the auction, I mean, you're not beholden to your draft slot or ADP or Or, you know, if you really love Aaron Judge this year, but you got pick seven, guess what? You're not kidding Aaron Judge. In the auction, you can theoretically get any player you want. You can't get every player you want, but you can get any player you want.

Yeah, I would say it's the most fun to play. I'm the most anxious. The most anxious I am playing fantasy baseball is during auctions because I'm white-knuckling it the whole time. You know, it's rarely smooth sailing. Lately it's felt like the more I plan for it, the worse it seems to go. And I've had to, you know, I've been doing it a long time. I'm sure Mike has too. But one way the game has evolved, and we talk about it a lot in so many different contexts,

is just kind of everybody having the same evaluation of players from, you know, 18 years ago when I started this. And there was a little bit more room for dissension. But now everybody's in on all the same players. Everybody has more or less the same sleeper picks. And so I'm finding, you know, even though in theory, auction should be like, oh, I can get whoever I want. I can be in on everybody. I'm finding if I want, like the players I actually want the most are the same ones

everybody wants the most. So I'm actually less likely to get my favorites in an auction than in a draft where it's a little more choreographed, everybody knows to wait for a certain point to take those players and I actually have a better shot at it. So in recent years, I've had to become more flexible with my plans. And instead of targeting specific players, targeting dollar ranges at certain positions, is generally how I go into it. And then still having like, you know, the ability to pivot if I just speculated incorrectly on on what caliber of blayer will go in that dollar range at that position. Yeah. So I have been a lot like you in the past as well, Scott, where I am planning down to the T,

a plan A, a plan B, a plan C at every single position and, you know, having backup plans and things like that. And last year, I felt like I did have a little bit more success, just kind of playing a little bit more freely. So we'll talk about that a little bit more in a little bit, but I did want to talk a little bit about the difference between a live auction versus online because people have probably watched before, you know, every year we do our Memorial Magazine, Roto, live auction here, sometime in March, we'll do it again this year. And it's a lot of fun. It's also a very long stream. But, you know, people get to see how we react and, you know, Scott kind of freaking out in the middle of the auction. Same thing with me. You know, I usually go crazy

during it too. But Mike, these leagues that you have won, they're live auctions. I mean, to me, that is like the essence of fantasy baseball. I mean, getting 12 or 15 other people in a room together to just bid on players for four hours. I mean, there is nothing like that. And it's completely different than online because you can kind of pick up on like nuances and little things that people are doing.

So on top of recommending the auction, if you can find a way to do it live with other people, that is amazing. Oh, totally agree. I mean, I think live, you know, the people's personalities come out It's much more exciting. There's a lot of banter, sometimes some trash talking.

I think there's a little more pressure to make sure you're being unpredictable because it's a lot easier to kind of read the room than it is on a computer screen. But yeah, in terms of drafting experience, I don't think anything beats a live auction at all. Before we get into the actual auction itself and kind of the ins and outs while the draft is going on, how do we prep for it? That is the first question here. Obviously, we all have our own form of player evaluation, and you can punch projections into an auction calculator. You can look at average auction values on NFBC.

Mike, it is a loaded question, but what are some of the things that you personally do when prepping for an auction? Even before you get into it, just what do you do to get yourself set up for it? Get ready for it. Sure. I mean, I think most of the work is really the same for an auction at snake, and that's really player evaluation. I do a lot of deep player dyes on the entire player pool and try to familiarize myself with, you know, all the potential targets and, you know, kind of develop very loose rankings. I don't follow them strictly because roster construction kind of trumps a lot of that, but I want to have some general order. And then, yeah, I'll take a look at the projections.

I team up with a good friend Mark Winokra on a couple of live auctions. in Vegas and he typically will aggregate some projections and get valuations and we'll discuss those. And I'll go into a draft with some valuations with the AAB data. I'll also often kind of compare how my rankings look against the projections or AAB. And then whenever there's a big difference, I'll dive in and see whether I kind of trust my own evaluation more or the projections more. and sometimes it's, you know, half and half. And then I think one of the key things is I want to make sure that I have targets at every position at different price levels.

I want to make sure I have, you know, $3 short stops as well as $30 short stops that I like. And I just want to be prepared for every stage of the auction. Got it. Scott, over to you. I mean, obviously we have our auction values on the site. I don't know if I've actually asked you this before, but how do you go, what's the secret sauce? How do you actually come up with your auction values for the site? It's actually not all that scientific. I gauge where the drop-offs are and I drop a dollar amount as I'm going through my top 300 or my top two, I guess we usually do 276 auction values for a 12-team Roto League, 252 in a 12-team head-to-head league.

and so, you know, I kind of used the previous year as a template, and then I adjust my starting point based on how high-end the current year's crop is, how much the high-end players distinguish themselves in the current year's crop compared to the last year's crop. I have a starting point there, and then I go down the list, and I mark the drop-offs with the drop in dollar value, and, you know, massage it to get it to the right total, so that the math works out that the right number of dollars are being distributed among the right number of players.

And it doesn't sound very scientific, but I found it to be a pretty good guide over the years. Otherwise, I'd be taking a different approach with it. Typically, players who go in the first round, you have an idea of how much those guys are going to go for an auction. I mean, it's usually, you know, 35 to on the high end. I mean, if there are really standout players could go as high as like $50 in an auction,

maybe even more than that. So you typically know, your first round players, 35 to 50, your second round players, maybe it's like $27, $28 to $34 and so on and so forth. I do look at other projections in an auction calculator just comparing to myself and keep myself in check and things like that. Mike, you talked about having different players

at different price points that you like for each position. So heading into an auction, how many of those players, would you say that you typically wind up with? I mean, are there a handful of guys that you just, you didn't expect to get at all that, hey, this guy was just going for too cheap. I felt like I had to jump in.

And, you know, I don't openly, you know, dislike that player this year. Maybe it's not one of my favorites. But I will kind of price and force a little bit just because someone was going for too cheap. How often does that happen for you? Yeah, I try to minimize it, actually. I kind of try to divide the player pool into three buckets,

my clear targets at the price or even a little above A.A.V. And then kind of a pool of players who I, you know, kind of like I'm willing to roster depending on the price. And then there's other players that I really don't want to be rostering virtually under any conditions or under any reasonable pricing scheme. And I try not to kind of price and forth. I've learned the hard way through mistakes that sometimes when it appears to be a good bargain, it really isn't. And it's not just, you know, kind of bidding on a player you don't really like thinking you're getting a few dollar discount.

But also by rostering that player, you're taking yourself out of rostering a player you really do want. Yeah. And so I've kind of learned over the years that I am better off kind of trying to focus on my time. targets while being flexible to also get guys I like if they're at an attractive price. So much of it depends on your own personal temperament, I guess, because I have at times gotten burned in both directions, gotten burned because, oh, I don't like the values of any of these guys. Oh, I don't like the values of any of these guys. And then before I know it, like, I have way too much money for the,

caliber of players that's left, you know? And that's mainly what I look to. That seems like the worst of the two outcomes, but the opposite end of the spectrum is what you were referring to, where if you're a little too eager to bid on players that you're less than sold on, well, roster space is finite. Just like dollars are finite, roster space is finite. And you can end up blocking yourself from better bids later on. on. So it's just, I mean, I don't know about you, but I find that at the start of every auction, I'm kind of just reading the room at first, whether that's in person or even an online draft room, just kind of seeing how the bidding pattern is going to go here, how aggressively people are

going to bid on high-end players or how aggressively they're going to bid on anybody whose name is thrown out there just because there's a lot of money around. And then I kind of tailor my approach based on that. If all the first round guys are blowing out their expected bids by five plus dollars, which sometimes happens in the CBS ones especially, it's like, okay, there's going to be a lot of values later on who are still fairly high end. And I can get more second, third round types and just kind of forego those super studs. But on the other hand, if they're all being priced reasonably, maybe even a dollar or two lower, the studs I'm saying, the first round types even maybe even a dollar or two lower than I expect, then, you know, I might grab two or three of them because I know the mid-range and the player pool is going to get inflated by those dollars, by the dollars being left on the table from the early round guys.

Yeah, I mean, we've used this term already a lot today, but there is a finite amount of money that can be spent throughout the auction. So if all the first round players are going for $5 above what they were projected to be, then there will be players that are going to have to come at a discount at some point. We don't exactly know what point that will be, but it could be, hey, the $15 hitters are going for like $10, $12, or, you know, the $8 pitchers are going for $4, $5. But there is a finite amount of money that can be spent. So notice that in your auction early on, if people are being, people are overspending on first round players, there will be discounts at some point in the draft.

You also don't want to lock yourself out of getting elite players too. So we'll talk about all that. Let's take a quick break. And when we return, we'll get more to auction strategy right after this. Welcome back in fantasy baseball today. Frank and Scott here with Mike Mager talking auction strategy for the upcoming season. Mike, do you have a typical hitter pitcher split that you, follow. Does it change from year to year? I know typically it's 60 to 70% of a budget is spent on hitting.

The rest is usually on pitching. Do you have a split that you've noticed has worked well for you in the past? Yeah, I have. I absolutely a poor streaming starting pitching. I'm not particularly good at it. I try to avoid it. And so more often than not, I tend to spend maybe $5 more. I'm pitching than kind of the average. A lot of times in NFBC drafts, the split would be something like 95 pitching, 165 hitting, and I'm usually more like 100, 100, 102, 103 pitching. Gotcha. I just, I think I think you kind of tailor to your strengths.

I follow the season very closely. I'm able to add hitters. in fab pretty easily and through active roster management and lineup setting, I can kind of make up what I might miss at the draft on the hitting side. I find it easier, and kind of gambling on fringe pitchers. So I try to be as strong in starting pitching as possible. Got it. So throughout the auction, are you just keeping track of how much you're spending on each side, the hitting side, the pitching side? And, you know, instead of having, hey, my SP1, to be a, you know, $40 pitcher or $35 pitcher.

You said that you have, you know, targets at different price points throughout the auction. Are you just, hey, I just spent $20 on my SP1, $20 on my SP2, and you're just kind of crossing that off and subtracting and keeping track of how much you're spending until you get to eventually, you know, that 100 or 105 that you want to spend on pitching. Yeah, I mean, I'll set something up. You'll say, I'll say 160 to 100 and I'll keep a running tally of it for the pitchers, I might assume 30, 25, 20, you know, kind of going all the way down to, you know, maybe a couple of $2 or $3 players.

And I'll keep track of it during the draft, not just, you know, what I'm rostering, but, you know, is my targeted split? Is that working for me? Or do I need to move money in one direction or not? Got it. So I try to actively manage it. Yeah. So that's something you're just doing throughout the draft.

I mean, it's, there is a lot, too. you pay attention to already throughout an auction, but you know, trying to, you got to know yourself as a draft or two, like whether or not you could actually keep up with that while also nominating and bidding on players and things like that. One thing I'd like to get a sense of Mike here is, you know, you've kind of, you've kind of walk through your prep, your approach going into an auction. But as the auction is playing out, how rigidly. How rigid are you in following your plan versus being nimble?

Because this is probably the area I've found I've struggled most with in recent years. I had an approach that worked for a long time, and it was very, very rigid. And it worked because, as I mentioned at the top of the podcast, there was a little less consensus over players. So if I said, I'm going to get this guy, I know I can get him for $25. Then, you know, I might get them for 26. I might get him for 23, but I could get him for about 25.

I could count on it. And I've found that's less true in recent years. And I've had to learn to be more nimble. And I've found that as I've become more nimble, as I've, honestly, I don't want to go in with no plan because that's just going to lead to panic for me. But the less of a plan I have in recent years, it seems to be better. So I wonder you, given the amount of success you have, do you see yourself as being on the more rigid end of the spectrum or on the more nimble end of the spectrum? Much more nimble.

I do not have really specific plans. I mean, if I'm targeting maybe $2.30 hitters, I might have a group of like six to eight that I'm kind of considering. But I think it's a mistake kind of to lock in on individual players as part of a plan because you just never know. know how the bidding is going to go. But I give a lot of thought to how do I want to handle closals? Do I want to pay up for closers or not? Do I want to pay up for catchers or not? You know, do I want to pay up for a scoble scheme's crochet or, you know, go down to a lower,

you know, lower level of an ace? So I think about those decisions, but it's really tough to plan. Two years ago when I won the overall for the first time, I left the draft with such a different team than what I had expected. My plan going in was get two aces and one good closer and go cheaper on the second closer. And starting pitching got really bit up in my draft. I don't think I rostered any of my top 12 starting pitchers. I wound up with like a Frank Gervaldez who was like maybe my 15th ranked pitcher for the year.

And I just reapplied the money on two top closers. got very lucky, locked down saves for the whole season. But after Framber Valdez, I think my next highest starting picture was $11. So it was just a totally different

plan than what I had going into the draft. But I think that's what happens. As you said, the proliferation of information, you know, there's like no such thing as a sleeper, you know, especially, you know, in like the higher stakes drafts,

everyone's on everyone. I also think the quality of play has gotten a lot. So it's, you have to be nimble. You just, if there's one thing about auction is it's not going to go the way you think it will. Yeah. And then the other, the other thing that makes being nimble difficult, because it's not all about price, right? It's, you still have to balance all the categories.

So how do you account for that when, okay, I'm going to get a $30 shortstop, or let's say, I don't know, let's say a $20 shortstop. You got like Jeremy Pena there, you've got Corey Seeger there, you've got, I guess C.J. Abrams is probably close to that range too. And they provide different categories. So are you thinking I need to get a shortstop in this price range who steals bases? or is it I'm going to adjust if I get Corey Seeger, for instance, and I have an idea in mind how I can compensate for that with the stolen bases? Yeah, I think you have to be flexible.

I mean, I'd be willing to roster Seeger at the right price. But if I do that, I know I'm going to look for a second basement that has speed, as well as maybe see if I can get a corner infielder or Markell Garcia or somebody like that with speed. I know I'm going to have to address speed. The other thing I do is I try to, if I'm going to plan something or at least have targets, I tend to try to work from the back of the draft forward, meaning, you know, are there three or four dollar, you know, or lower-priced second basemen or shortstop I like? And if I like a bunch of lower-priced second basement and there's only maybe one lower-priced shortstop that I like, I'm more likely to buy an expensive

shortstop and go late on second B. So I kind of try to work a little bit backwards and see what are the positions I'm comfortable, not spending high on, and that kind of opens up positions that I am more willing to go high on. But what you probably don't do is say, I'm all, like, I love Matt McLean.

Matt McLean, I feel like he's going to have a bounceback season, so I know I can count on getting him at second base. because if you do that, you are for sure going to get out bid on Matt McLean, right? Yes, no, definitely. Although I will say, you know, you might have a little more flexibility on the lower price guys because if you really believe in them and think they're highly profitable, you could probably go an extra buck or two on them, whereas you don't have that kind of profit to play with on a $35 player.

But no, that's right. not, I don't want to be going into any auction having to draft any one player or a couple of players. I think, I think you're boxing yourself in way too much. To piggyback off Scott's question from before, like balancing the categories and where if you're flexible and you change on the fly and you know, you were going to get a shortstop to Seals basis and you pivot to someone like Corey Seeger because he's going for too cheap, do you track your stats throughout the course of an auction or do you have like a draft software where you're like tracking your your stats and you have like category targets that you're trying to hit or is it just something like hey i've

been playing rhodo fantasy baseball for so long i kind of have an idea of how i need to balance this thing out yeah i i kind of have an idea i mean i i know roughly what the categories i'm trying to hit are but as i'm doing the draft i have a good feel for whether i'm light on power light on speed or you know, where I'm going to get my average from. So a lot of it, you know, I use the time during breaks or if there's, you know, a player that's being bid on that I actually have no interest in. I'll take a look at my team and, yeah, kind of monitor it as the draft is going on. But I don't do it rigidly. I don't want to spend all that time doing it.

And also, like, I'm a paper and pen drafter. I'm not a high-tech guy, so that works for me. It sounds like you're somebody who drafts. Well, I don't want to interpret this wrong, but you draft, you draft, you kind of feel your way through the draft as opposed to having a lot of formulas running through your head or on a screen, clearly not on a screen because you say you do pen and paper. But it's a lot of just instinct and experience and feel as it's playing out for you. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I've been doing it for a while. I kind of have a feel on roster construction, and I kind of trust that.

And also, I think it's good to have kind of targets in the draft for the different categories, but I think it's a mistake to try to adhere to them rigidly. Because, you know, you have, it's a 26-week season that's going to be free. agent bidding and stuff. You know, like for me, I have a, I have a tough time finding strong average on the waiver wire, but in the last couple of years, it's much easier to find speed. So, you know, when I, if I'm down to a couple dollars on a player and, you know, one might meet my categorical needs a little better, maybe make my final stats look better.

But if the other player is the better player and it's really, I think, more useful, I'm going to, I'm going to take the better player and I'll fix it during the season. That's exactly what we just spoke about yesterday on our Roto Strategy episode where building more batting average early on in drafts and just knowing that you could find speed at all points of the draft. You could find high end speed early, middle part, later part of the draft. Yes, you are sacrificing more when you draft speed, you know, after pick 200 or, you know, a one, two, three dollar player.

But it is more readily available than finding, you know, batting average that doesn't really come with anything else, you know, later on in a draft. I thought that was interesting, though. I mean, we're talking about NFBC where famously trades aren't allowed. And even knowing you can't account for weaknesses during trades, you would still take just who you think is, I'm sure not in every single circumstances, but generally speaking, you would take the player who you think is a little bit better versus the one who you think meets your needs most.

Yeah, I mean, there's 26, 27 weeks of FAB bidding, and, you know, it's very active. And I think for certain categories are easier to find on the waiver wire than others. Yeah, yeah. I kind of let that impact my strategy. Okay. Mike, is there a certain. Go ahead. I was just going to say some categories are more interrelated, you know, I mean.

Right. You get a power hitter. You're helping yourself in homers, runs, and rivies, whereas steals are kind of less related to the others. Mike, is there a certain type of team build that you've known works better for you or that you've had more success doing? Is it, you know, maybe spreading the wealth

and not spending more than $30 on it at any player or maybe the opposite of that where you go stars and scrubs? I know typically, whenever we've talked about the deeper the auction draft is, the more you kind of want to spread things out. You don't really want to go stars and scrubs. But for whatever reason, you know,

the past couple of years, I play in 15-te-Tout Wars, NL-only labor. Stars and Scrubs has been working better in that format. I think the past two winners have both gone that way. So it's a little bit more interesting to me, Mike. Have you noticed a specific type of team build that works better for you? Just to clarify, you play in 15-team Rotter League, right, Mike? 15-team mix, right?

It's been a lot of awesome. That would be on the deeper end, not the very deepest, like an AL&N-L-N-L-only, but on the deeper end of what our audience would play in as a 15-team roto. Yeah, and I think that's a very relevant distinction. I think in a 10 or 12-team league, you can probably get a decent collection of players for a dollar at the end of the gap, let's say. Whereas in a 15-team league, it used to be that you'd be able to get at least one or two fairly decent $1 players. I think it's getting increasingly tough to do that because, as Scott, you mentioned, everyone's kind of all. on the same player.

So I try to, at least on the hitting side, for the most part I'm doing spread the wealth, I try to avoid more than like one or so, $1 players. I found that I can get really good value from like the $3 to $5 range players. And I'm willing to give up the $45 players in order to have a more balanced hitting team. I will try to roster like a $30 player or two.

I think it's also important to make sure you're spending your money as the arching goes on. You want to avoid having way too much money and not being able to spend it productively. So I will dabble in the higher players. But for the most part, with exceptions, I have leaned more towards spread the wealth for hitting. On the pitching side, however, for the last couple of years, I've been very comfortable playing at the top end of the pitching market. I think the Aces just provides so much in terms of ratios and strikeouts

that in the past, you know, I don't have a problem rostering a Scoobol or paying up for two strong starting pitchers. Yeah, so for those watching on YouTube, I just pulled up your championship winning team last year and highlighted the name right there, Terrick Scoobel. So as you just mentioned, you're a little bit more likely to maybe pay up for that.

that top tier. And this year we have what looks like, you know, three pitchers that have kind of separated themselves above the rest as, you know, first round aces this season. So not that I want to give away your plan, Mike, but it sounds pretty likely that you might wind up with one of those guys. I don't know, but I will tell you I'm interested in rostering them and I will probably be in on them. You know, I think in the NFBC world, if, you know, they're $36, $37, I might be willing to do it if they're up like $40 or higher, then I'm probably out and moving down. But at this point, I'm still, I'm still prepping for that. So that's not a final.

Could you pull that roster back up, Frank? Yes. So you've got Terrick Scoobal, obviously he has a great year. You win Sasayunk again. I'm looking at your pitching staff here. Your second best starting pitcher was Blake Snell, who missed. Half the year. You know, it looks like, it looks like all your eggs were basically in the Terek Scoobool basket.

And that's, that's what always makes. Yeah, let me just, let me just interrupt. It looks like you might have pulled up my roster at the end of the season. Yeah, okay. Okay. Not what I drafted. So, yeah, I drafted Scoobel and Blake Snell for my two top starters. Snell didn't work out, obviously.

my two closers were Duran and Bednar. And some of my other starters were Iovaldi, Woodruff, Lugo, Jeffrey Springs, Rinaldo Lopez. So definitely had some misses in there along with a few hits. But getting away from the specifics of this team and just to the general approach here, part of what makes me reluctant to invest heavily in starting pitching in an auction league.

Even though I think statistically, if it works out, it would be beneficial. But a lot of times it's not going to work out. And they're just riskier investments by far. And I try to play it safer with my big dollar plays than my – and save the risks for the lower dollar plays. So is that just – is that – something you just don't worry about because you have enough entries that you know okay some some of these starting pitchers I bid on aren't going to work out and that means those teams aren't

going to work out but I have enough other teams that you know you're casting a wide net there and willing to to take some misses along the way and if so I mean I would imagine somebody who's only going to play in like a league or two might be more like me more reluctant to invest big in starting pitching. So where just where do you stand on that? Yeah, I mean, I think there are some pitchers who I will avoid. I mean, I haven't rostered Tyler Glassnow for years. And anyone kind of entering the season heard, I'm going to be reluctant to do that. Anyone, you know, kind of ending the season with a major injury who doesn't have surgery, I'm going to be reluctant to roster them. But I've learned, I think, the hard way that my ability to

predict injuries is not as good as I'd like it to be. You know, last, I don't know if you remember, like two years ago, Brian Wu had, you know, was on the IL multiple times, had four-off issues, never got it fixed. I honestly thought he was one of the riskier pitchers last year coming into drafts. And what does he do? He goes, you know, six innings every start for like his first 30 starts. So I, you know, for pitchers healthy and, you know, has a lot. a pretty good track record going into the season.

I'm willing to invest in the top talent in order for the ratios. But I do think, Scott, you make a good point. I mean, I do a bunch of drafts, including four different options that I'll be in. And so I can diversify that risk a little bit, and certainly much easier than someone doing one or two drafts. Yeah. Okay. So that's what I was getting at. Like, I'm sure you take this approach sometimes where you draft an expensive pitcher,

even though he seems like a safe choice, but just pitching in general isn't safe. And some of them end up breaking. And you just count that as a loss. Okay, that team didn't work out. But you have enough others that do work out that it's fine. You don't stress so much over the inherent risk that comes from investing. in high-end pitching. Is that, am I interpreting that correctly?

Yeah, I think that's fair. But I also think, you know, it's a long season. And even if you have a big pitcher that busts on you, you know, I'm a big grinder. I'm very active on the free agent wires. And I don't think your season ends with one big pitching injury. You know, like, for instance, my SP2 last year was Blake Stell. And I got very little from him in total. like the last couple months of the season.

And actually, my team last year, I would say that of my five biggest purchases, I'd say three or four of them were, like, turned out to be bad purchases. But I was very fortunate. I kind of nailed some cheap buys and that really helped my team. Let's take our final break. We'll get into nomination strategies, some bidding and things like that. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back in fantasy baseball today.

we're here talking auction strategy with Mike Mager. Make sure to give him a follow on X at Bronx Yankees 23. Let's talk nomination strategy. There is a lot that goes into this. It's very important, especially later on in the auction. You don't want to get stuck with a player that you don't want, so you really got to be on your toes,

especially later on. But there is a lot of strategy that goes into this mic. I mean, do you have a set strategy that you like to do? Sometimes people like to nominate players they don't want to get money off the table. Sometimes they mix in players they do. They need to know if they're going to have that player on their team. What is your nomination strategy? Yeah, I think it's important to have a purpose behind each nomination.

I think at a minimum you want to try to get information, you know, is that, you know, where starting pitch is going to go. Maybe I'll throw out a closer or a catcher early and see what those markets look like. I try very hard to mix it up. So I'm going to be nominating players I don't want to take money off the table, but at times I'm going to nominate guys I do want. I also like to kind of nominate guys out of order. I think sometimes people just nominate the highest-priced guys in the first couple of rounds,

then they move down and it goes on. You know, I like, you know, if there's a low-priced guy that I really like, I might nominate him really early. And, you know, maybe the rest of the room isn't too excited about that player because there's all these much better alternatives still on the table. So maybe I can get a good price on that player. And if not, I just I know it early and I move on. So I'm always trying to get some information.

You know, like let's say I like the idea of Ivan Herrera, who's a DH-only to start. And I think he's going to be a catcher in the first couple of weeks. Then I'll probably nominate Christian Yellich and Schwerver early. take a couple of teams out of the out of the UT bidding because you can't you know you can only roster one utility only player so you know just different strategies to try to either gain information or get you know get the players I want nominated so I can bid on them if there's a tier that's starting to run out and I want to be in on that tier I'll nominate a player from

that tier because I don't want to kind of leave myself bidding on the last player in a tier because sometimes those players get bid up more. So, you know, kind of watching all of that. So it's not really like a set strategy, but I want to have a purpose behind each nomination. Okay. Based on that, I want to know how you react to a certain scenario based on the answer you just gave because this is the sort of thing that causes me to tilt in the middle of an auction. So let's say, let's say you throw Christian Yelich out.

You have your eye on Yon Herrera. You throw Christian Yelich out. He goes for $12, let's say. However many dozens of bids go by, and finally, Herrera gets called up. His name gets nominated. And he passes Christian Yelich, goes for 13, because everybody's excited about him just as a breakout candidate at Regaining Catcher eligibility.

and you think, oh man, I passed up on Yelich at 12, thinking I could get Herrera. And now Herrera went for more and I can't go back and get Yelich now. Does that bother you? Or do you just brush it off? That's fine. And there's plenty of other ways to fill the D.H. Spot. No big deal.

Yeah, I brush it off. I mean, honestly, if I really want Herrera, I'm not going to wait too long before he comes out. Because if I don't get him, I want to have a lot. I want to have plenty of options, plenty of pivots available to me. Plus, I can fill the UT spot with any player, so it's not like I'm beholding to Ivan Herrera. But I think what the problem you describe happens all the time in auctions. I mean, you just have to make decisions based on the best information available to you.

And a player's price in an auction can be very dependent on whether they come out early, middle, or late. And there's just nothing you can do about it. I mean, every single auction I've been in, there's been points where I wish I, you know, born a player earlier, not knowing what a later player would go for. Yeah. But I think sometimes then, you know, in a way that forces you to be flexible because there may be, you know, three-third baseman that you really like and you might like one the best.

But if you really like a guy and it's a decent price, I think sometimes the best, who is to grab him because you never know what the guy you like better is going to go for. Yeah. Yeah. Scott, I like what you said there about getting back to the nomination, which maybe you're going to ask me about, Frank, having purpose behind every nomination. I think that's a good way of putting it because I think I'm similar in that I'm reading other people's bidding behavior and I'm making nominations like that.

For instance, something that seems to happen in a lot of the auctions I am is, anybody who's nominated early, their price gets pushed up just because there's a lot of money out there. And so I will spend that portion of the auction nominating fairly low dollar guys that I don't want and seeing them go for way too much. And that's just draining all the dollars that are then going to be available to those teams at the end game, which I think is the most important part of the auction. But conversely, if, you know, I want a certain. dollar range of players or I have my eye on a specific guy who's fairly high end and I just need to know if it's realistic that I'm going to get him because it's going to change it's going to change what I bid on if I don't get him. I'll go ahead and throw him out there like rip the bandaid off

so that I'm not I haven't I haven't painted myself into a corner where if I don't get that guy I'm screwed I'd just rather okay let's throw them out there let's see if I'm going to get him or not Yeah. I also like nominating hype guys that I know that I am not in on. So if I, there's a player that just there's a lot of helium on and I just know that I'm not going to bid on that player. I will put that player out a little bit earlier when I know there's more money on the table. Or I will nominate players at a position I have already filled, especially if they're within the same tier as a player that I've won already. So if I have Bryce Harper on my team, I will nominate, you know, Matt Olson or Pete Alonzo, Freddie Freeman. and just to get a player off the board

that at a position I already have, but again, similar to year. So you also kind of, you learn whether or not, okay, did I get my guy at a good price? So you will learn a little bit of information there, but it's also just to get a little bit more money off the board. You know you've already filled that position. Mike, do you nominate players at a certain dollar amount

to throw people off? Maybe you really want Terrick Scouble. You will just, instead of throwing them out at, you know, five bucks, and all right, everyone goes up, plus one, plus one, plus one. Terrick Scoobble, 35 bucks, just throw them out there. Are there any types of players that you nominate like that? Yeah, I'll mix it up. Sometimes I think it can be effective to just jump to a high number.

You know, the player's going to get somewhere close to there anyway. And just starting high, just kind of knocks the more casual bidders off right away. Other times, sometimes there's not a lot of interest in a player. I might start low, give people a chance to get their feet wet, and then I might jump up to something just to below A.V and try to win them that way. I think the key is to mix it up and be unpredictable. I mean, I don't think there's necessarily a right way or a wrong way. And you never know who else is going to be on the same player.

but I want to be unpredictable when I bid. And so sometimes I'll be plus one plus one. And other times I'll jump bid, you know, either right away or whereas it's getting close to my target price. Let's talk a little bit about bidding strategy here as well. We can, you know, jump back and forth if we need, if there's anything else on nominations that we want to talk about. But Mike, do you have a, you just talked a little bit about it, but is there a specific bidding strategy? I mean, you mentioned you like to change things up a little bit. You'll do plus one.

But is it more so with higher in names? Like, all right, let's just keep this moving along. Let me, you know, someone's 15, 16, all right, 25, 30, like just keep things moving. Because again, it's like, it could be a very long draft. Yeah, I mean, if someone's nominating a $40 player for, you know, for $10 and I don't really want the player. I mean, I'll just jump in at 30, you know, or something like that. I'm very careful. I don't want to price and force on a player that I'm not particularly interested in.

I mean, I don't want to do that. But I want to be in on a bunch of players. I don't want the rest of the room kind of knowing who I really want or not. So I'm a pretty active bidder on a lot of players, but I will pull up comfortably short on the players I don't want. Scott, is there a rhyme or reason to your bidding within an auction? Do you like to, you know, bid early? in the countdown.

Do you like to wait until it's, you know, going once, going twice, and then jump in and maybe kind of throw somebody off and put them on tilt? What do you think about the rhyme or reason to bidding? I mean, I think about it. I don't think it really matters much. One thing that I commonly do is

not wanting to seem too eager to bid on a player I really want. So I'll let the, the timer if it's online or, you know, the countdown start and kind of reluctant sound seem like I'm reluctantly bidding that extra dollar, even though I'm willing to go like three or four more, you know, but I'm not sure how effective that is, to be honest. Yeah. I'm not sure it really works. But psychologically, it seems like it should. Yeah, Mike, same question to you. I mean, do you change up, do you change up your cadence or anything? I know, look, friend of the program,

Ariel Cohen, if anyone has ever been in an auction room with him, he will purposely change the pitch of his voice to kind of throw people off. He just comes up with all these kind of crazy and interesting, unique strategies to kind of, this again, like, if you're making people laugh or something, they might, you know, forget, oh, who am I bidding on or do I want this player? Like, you know, just things to throw people off. Do you do any of that stuff, Mike? Yeah, I don't do much of it. I mean, kudos to anyone who can pull it off and not, not give away any tell. I tend to kind of be the same way, kind of monotone on every player, whether I really want them or not. And, you know, there's nothing more frustrating when there's

a player that you really, really want and you think you got them. And then at the very last second someone comes in. But I don't often do that to other people, only because I'm always afraid that someone else might want them and get in at the last second. As split, second before me and get them for the price that I want to spend. So, you know, if I know the bidding's down to just me and one other person, I might do that a little bit, but generally I don't because I just don't want to take the chance of leaving the door open for someone else. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the end game here because there is a lot of strategy that goes into this and how much money to leave yourself for the end game. You know, if someone goes out

for a dollar. You want to make sure you have enough where you can go $2 on that player, if it's someone that you really want, or even just nominating a player, an end game player that you really want for $2 so that somebody else can't bid on that player. Do you have any hard and fast rules about kind of the end game and nominating and bidding those maybe one, two or $3 players? I want to have complete knowledge of the player pool site. I know who are the players I like at the different lower level prices, but also know them like to know which is a decent whip pitcher, which is, you know, which outfielders give me speed versus power or which one might not hurt my average.

I also, you know, I will make exceptions if there's really good prices, but like I would, ideally the positions I'd like to fill last are like, you know, utility only or my fifth outfielder or middle or corner. you know so if you you if you buy two expensive short stops and you're down to dollar days yet you know you're limited to the second base pool but if you have a good second baseman in shortstop and you're down to dollar days then you can choose any middle so you know you have a wider range to choose from outfield you know I don't mind leaving um you know my outfield are five uh for a dollar or two because I outfield is such a broad position that I if I need power I could find a $2 outfielder with some power or I could find a $2 outfielder that gives me speed. So I try to maintain that flexibility.

And then, yeah, when you get to pricing, you also have to, you know, if there's, well, while there's a bidding on a player that you are not interested in, you know, you try to take a look at who else has money. Who else is trying to fill the same positions as you? you know, if there's three other players that have, that still need a middle infielder or have a UT open and, you know, see how much money they have. And then, you know, you try to make your best judgment on who to call out and whether you need to start at two or three or you can go to what. You know, if I really want the player and I think there's a good chance the player's going to go to and I have the two, I'll probably, you know, do two. But, you know, if I'm willing to go three, I might start one. And so hope to get them at one, but if someone goes two, at least I have the option to consider going three.

But it's really very specific based on how much money you have, what you're trying to fill, and where are you standing money compared to the other players. So I have long felt and contended that the end game is the most important part of the auction. and that everything we've talked about at this point, you know, I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but this is really what matters, is avoiding being the guy who can only nominate players for a dollar and watch them get bid up and then have to wait through a whole round of nominations

before you can nominate anyone else and just end up with a bunch of sludge at the bottom of your team because of that. Because everybody interesting in the end game you miss out on because you can't bid them up. You're limited by your nomination and you don't know how low to aim with your nomination to have a realistic chance of getting them.

So what I try to do is there's not like a set number, but somewhere in between two times as many dollars as roster spots I have and three times as many dollars. So my max bid and my amount of money, my max bid is either, you know, half the amount of money I have left or a third of the amount of money I have left. And then I get very, very, very disciplined at that point. I am in watching like a hawk every nomination.

If it's a guy I like, I go straight to $2 before anyone else can. If it's a guy I really like, I go $3. skip two completely, go straight to $3 before anybody else can. It's the most perfect player left for me. I might jump straight to $4, but always being conscientious that I can't leave myself with only $1 bids because then I'm kind of out on the bidding permanently at that point. And you can get some really good deals for $2 and $3 doing this approach. So I find that that's the biggest differentiator in auction.

And I just wonder, I mean, given the amount of success you've had doing this, do you feel similarly or do you think it's not that big of a deal if you're left with nothing but dollar bids? No, I feel very similarly. There was a time a number of years ago where you could have four or five, one dollar players and do okay. But I don't think that's the case anymore, at least not in the leagues I play in. And so I think you're right. I think the quality of player you can get for $3 or $4 is so much superior to a $1 player that you really want to have money for the end game to extent you can.

This is a question for both of you guys, but when do you consider it the end game? How many roster spots do you need to have left to fill? where you're really paying attention to this. Is it, you know, I've got six or seven spots left. Now, this is the point where I need to have, you know, around $20 so I can go that, you know, two or $3 per player if I want to. It's the ratio. Like I said, the ratio of how many spots I have left versus how many dollars I have left.

It needs to be. I need to have twice or three times as many dollars is. And then as far as I'm concerned, I'm in the end game, no matter how much money or roster spots anybody has left. I am only spending two or $3 on players, maybe four on the most perfect player. Otherwise, I'm just letting everyone else do whatever they want. Got a couple of other questions. Go ahead, Mike. I was going to say, my flip answer is I start paying attention to it when they have 23 players left in $260.

I mean, I'm like kind of reasoned focus from the start of the auction to the end. But I think to me, the end game is kind of when you're down to like four or five players, $10 to $15. I think that's when you start seeing one and $2 bids and, you know, the pace of the auction picks up. You know, early on the auction, you could be, you know, a minute or two or even three bidding on a player depending on how expensive and how quickly the bids are. But when you get down to the end, it's, as Scott said, you have to be, make instantaneous

decision. Someone nominates a player you want for a dollar. You know, there's a whole bunch of other players who are probably interested in that nominated player. And you have to decide instantly, do I bid two, do I bid three, or do I keep my mouth shut and go after someone else? Yeah. And you made a really good point earlier that I don't think I've stressed in the past. In order to do that, you have to be really familiar with the player pool. And you have to be really familiar with what's left. because you have to know, okay, among the players that are left, I'm willing to jump to $3 on this guy. Because you have to make that decision immediately.

You have to know ahead of time. If I see this name come up, I'm jumping to three. And so if you're not crossing off names, whether that's on a spreadsheet or on pen and paper like you and I both do, Mike, you have to know instantaneously how you're going to react. Yeah, and I think part of it is knowing who the best players left available at the different positions, but also knowing your team.

Are you deficient in power? Are you deficient in speed? And the answer to that will influence who you go the extra dollar on. I did have one other leftover question here. Something that we were talking a little bit about earlier on and trying to get elite players on your team. Again, Mike, it sounds like you more so like to go after some of those top tier pitchers. If everybody is overspending on the elite talent, do you force yourself to join in? I mean, what are the limits where it goes too far?

Is it, all right, if I really like Scoobel, I'll go two or three dollars more on him, but anything more than $3 within what I'm expecting to pay for him, is this too much? And do you force yourself to maybe get in there? Because if you get locked out of all the elite talent, then you know, you just have a full team of, you know, 15 and $20 players. And maybe you can make that work, but I have had a team before

where I did not have like a first, second or third round player. And it just, it was a really bad feeling in the moment. So what do you think about something like that? Yeah, I think, you know, you have to have some idea for valuations on the players. And, but you're also, you're reading the room. And if it's a really hot room and players are going way over,

You know, then I'll want to wait to the next fees of the auction. But at the same time, I think it's important to spend some money. You don't want to be in the business of having just too much money. And then you're kind of forced to buy players way above what they're worth. And so, you know, I guess you kind of rationalize it that if everyone else is paying, you know, $5 over the AAB, you know, and you can get a good player, two or three dollars over the AED, you know,

just, you know, and you like the player, of course, that's the prerequisite. Then it's okay to do that and spend a little money. And, you know,

hopefully there'll be bargains later on that make up for. Yeah. And that's just the inflation that comes within auction drafts. Again, it's, I've referenced it before, Ariel Cohen, he's a great auction player,

but he talks about this a lot is, you know, if there's inflation, you can notice that early on, if it's a hot room like you just said, Mike. And if that's the case, you don't want to be completely locked out from getting some of those elite players. You know, maybe it's not, you know, one of the top three or four best players in fantasy.

But, you know, if you want some first or second round talent, you might have to join in and overspend a little bit, you know, within means, of course, not, you know, $10 over what someone's projected to be. But, yeah. Yeah, and I think a quick and easy way of doing it because, you know, there's so much to pay attention to it in an option. But for the first couple of rounds, you know, if the first player is called up and he has an AAB of 40 and he goes for 43, I just write plus three on a strap of paper. And then, you know, the next guy's AAB is 40 and he goes for 42.

So I cross out plus three or eight plus five. And, you know, you just keep track for a couple of rounds and you'll get a feel. You know, if the number is close to zero, it's kind of tracking close. Some are going higher. some are going lower, but if you have a big positive number, a big negative number, that's a clear signal that it's going to impact the next phase of the auction. Yeah. Honestly, there are so many ins and outs and nuances and so many different things to talk about

for auction drafts. Honestly, we could do probably like a two, three hour episode on all the different types of things. Are there any other things, Scott, that you could think of? And then I'll throw it to you as well, Mike. Anything else that you could think of that you think is worth bringing up before we shut it down. Yeah, I think we pretty much hit on it. I don't know, Mike.

You got anything else? I guess I'd just say, I think money management's really important. I think you want to kind of have a good idea where you sit compared to your competitors throughout an auction. And so, you know, if everyone's bidding players and you're trying to and you're not, maybe you're not being aggressive enough in the bidding. But, you know, at certain parts of the auction, it really, is very helpful to have the most money and have the hammer.

But I think you want to be conscious of where you stand relative to your competitors. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point too. And last year in the Tout Wars auction, this is a live auction. We all do, you know, 15 people in person. And we got to the first break and I had the most money by far. I think maybe I only had, you know, two or three players, whatever it might be. But I knew the players or the types of players, the groups of players that I wanted. And honestly, none of them got nominated.

I could have nominated them myself, but I just knew, like, hey, there's still a lot of players left. It's just this fine line of, yes, you need to be disciplined, but you also got to know when to go in. So I knew that I, A, had the most money left, and I could still, I have that hammer to drop on people and bid on whoever I wanted, but also, like, the players that I was looking for

just didn't get nominated. So I just knew that they would come out later on and I could just outbid other people for them. So you shouldn't. you probably shouldn't have the most money for long and you probably shouldn't have the least money for long. There are going to be times in a single auction where you will have the most money, where you will have the least money. At least that's usually how it goes for me. I'm usually one of the first to enter endgame mode like I was talking about.

But I'm so disciplined in it that eventually within the end game, oftentimes I have the second or third most money left at some point during that phase. So it's, yeah, I mean, I've auctioned with people who are just so committed to getting the best possible deal on players and ensuring that they have the hammer, that their hammer ends up functioning more like a chisel, you know, because there's just, there's just not anything good to use it on. and they end up overspending on like a McKinsey Gore or something like that. Okay, it's the best pitcher left at this point in the draft, but what's it going to do for you, honestly, unless this is McKinsey Gore's breakout year and then I'll do a lot. But you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I was going to say, Frank, it sounds like it worked out really well for you, but I think like if someone experiences something similar where they have by far the most money just because their players aren't getting nominated, I think at that point, they should start nominating the guys they really want and start spending that money. Yep, yep, totally get that. Big thanks to Mike Mager, back-to-back, NFBC Auction Championship overall winner. He'll be inducted into the NFBC Hall of Fame out in Vegas this year, March 21st. So again, congrats to you, Mike, on that.

He writes for FtN Fantasy, Follow him on X at Bronx Yankees 23. Anything else that you'd like to promote, Mike? What do you actually have that you've put out or working on over at FtN? Well, just coincidentally, I just finished a two-part auction primer and an article on kind of the most common auction mistakes for FTA. And now I'm going to kind of address some other strategy topics. I think the next one I'm going to tackle is just some thoughts on how to diversify for those folks who, like me, who draft way too many leagues. And now I want to know what the 10 biggest auction mistakes are. I guess I got to check that one out.

All right, we're going to wrap there from Mike and Scott. I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning in to fantasy baseball today. Please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify, and we will be back again tomorrow. Bye-bye. Paramount Podcasts.