Fantasy Baseball Today - Auction Strategy 101; Nick Senzel Deep Dive (04/22 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

We're answering everything you need to know about Fantasy Baseball auctions but first a deep dive on Nick Senzel (3:10). How much different is Senzel from Scott Kingery? Is he a player you should just have blind faith in because of his prospect status? ... Frank thinks auctions are the best way to play Fantasy but why (17:45)? ... How do we usually split our $260 budget between hitting and pitching? ... How much do you plan for the auction before it happens (25:15)? How much of your plan should be rigid vs. allowing a certain level of flexibility? ... How do we create auction values (31:05)? Many people have asked how to create auction values. Scott, Chris, and Frank all differ a bit in their process. ... Once you're in the auction, how do you handle nominations and the bidding process (45:09)? Do you just nominate players you don't want? Should you try people or price-enforce while bidding? ... Email us at [e-mail]. 'Fantasy Baseball Today' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @CBSFantasyBB, @AdamAizer, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ Download our printable Draft Kit from CBSSports.com/draftkit! 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. I drive, center field, at the wall, grand slam. This is magnificent. 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, Chris, and Adam.

Welcome everybody to Fantasy Baseball today. Wednesday, April 22nd. I was going to start to show. off by saying back-to-back days. We have everybody here on the podcast, but what do you know? The NFL draft is this week. So Adam Azer is leaving his good old fantasy baseball today friends behind. But I still do have Chris and Scott here with me. Chris, how's it going, man? Yeah, you know, I'm working on some NFL draft content. You know, I am the senior editor for CBS Fantasy, so that includes football. So unlike Adam, though, you know, I can do both. So I'll be,

writing a quarterback prospect piece and making an appearance on the fantasy baseball today podcast because that's just the kind of dedication that I have to the craft. Look at the dedication from Chris Towers. Scott is here as well. Scott, no NFL content for you. Yeah, Scott's not as dedicated. Yeah, well, Scott's dedicated just, you know, to baseball, which is what we respect here on the show. Scott, how's it going? Good, good. It wasn't too long ago. I was writing about football too, but I think the baseball audience demands more for me. So this is a very good thing that I'm here full time for them. It's not a good thing, Scott.

It's a great thing that you are here for the people. Fantasy baseball today on today's show, we're going to deep dive Nick Senzel. Interesting player just because looking at doesn't really have a everyday role in the lineup as of now, unless, of course, we do have these universal DHS. That's something that can help Senzel. And this is one of those players that we were requested via Apple podcast review to deep dive. So we'll do that. And we'll also do another one of these general strategy discussions,

which I really enjoyed our conversation on trading last week. Today, we're going to really dive into auctions. I want to hear as much about how you guys attack auctions as possible, from the preparation to, you know, once you're in an auction, you know, how do you set up your auction values. These are all things that we've gotten questions about and things that I'm just, in general, excited to hear about. We will answer your questions no matter what.

When we get to the 50-minute mark, I'm going to play Stone Cold's theme song, and that means everyone stop talking, and we're getting to emails, fantasy baseball at cbsi.com. But let's start off with that deep dive from Nixon Zell. Average two and a half fantasy points per game last season and head-to-head points leagues. his ADP right now, outfielder 63, picked 224 off the board.

He hit 256 with 12 home runs, 14 steals, 55 runs scored in 104 games. That's a 15 game pace of 17 home runs and 20 steals. So in your 2020 player, he has some pop. He has some speed. Now, the stat cast numbers are not great, but the one thing that stood out to me was that his sprint speed was in the 96th percentile. and, you know, was regarded as one of the top prospects as a hitter the past couple of seasons with the Cincinnati Reds. Last season was great against left-handed pitching, 897 OPS against Ritees, a 689 OPS.

His minor league numbers show that he was actually much better against right-handed pitching. So I don't think this is something to the effect of like Gavin Lux, for example, because he has a history of not being great against left-handed pitching in the minors. and then from May through July last season, the first three months that he played, he hit 285 with an 821 OPS. From August on, he hit just 188 with a 554 OPS,

and he was dealing with like an elbow, thumb injury during that time. Scott, every year, there are players who are quote-unquote blocked or we have questions about their playing time heading into the season. Last year during draft season, we didn't know if Catelle Marte,

would play every day. If you looked at the Brewer's roster, you would have thought there's no chance that Kessinjura would have had a major impact on the season because they had Travis Shaw. They had Mike Mousakis. The Reds currently have five outfielder's for three spots, potentially the Universal DH.

But these things typically work themselves out. And I feel like if Nick Senzel hits, he will be in the lineup for the Red Scott. Yeah, I feel like in the pecking order, among all the Reds' outfield possibilities, Senzel would probably be second behind Big Dollar Free Agent Nick Castellanos. He's a difficult player to size up for 2020, though Nick Senzel is because he's kind of, I feel like he's kind of the ultimate blind faith in the pedigree kind of thick,

because the actual production last year, he was bailed out by a decent steals total, but otherwise it was pretty underwhelming. but former third overall pick, a guy who all three of his years in the minors was top 10 in overall prospect rankings. You rarely see somebody so consistently that high. I feel like he would have been up sooner, if not for all the injuries he dealt with in the minors. There was about with vertigo. There was, I think I can't remember what the injury was. A finger.

He had a finger injury in 28. He had surgery in late September on a torn labrum as well. So the issue there is twofold. Because of that time he missed, we don't have a great minor league track record for him to look at. What we do have is pretty spectacular. I mean, 2017 was pretty close to a full season, 455 at Bats. He had 321 with a 905 OPS, 14 homers, 40, but the home runs really came around late in the year.

There are probably some lingering questions about his overall power ceiling, but the pedigree is so high that I kind of don't want to put limits on who Nick Senzel could be. And yet at the same time, I'm lukewarm on him going into this season because the stats and the supporting stats were so overwhelming. Yeah, like Frank said, playing time concerns generally do work themselves out. a great example of that with the Mets last season. When early on in the season, they couldn't really find an everyday spot for Jeff McNeil, let alone J.D. Davis.

And by the end of the season, both of those guys were playing pretty much every day. Jeff McNeil ended up at or close to 600 plate appearances. The problem is those things tend to play themselves out if the player forces the issue. And Nick Senzel did not force the issue last season. So he really, you're looking at. at a twofold, he has to get past the can he hit question mark? And really, can he field? Because there are questions about where he's going to play and how viable he will be in the outfield as well. And then he has to get, he has to prove that he's worth playing every day. So there are

multiple possible speed blocks or, you know, exit ramps for Nick Senzel's fantasy value. And that, that's what makes it, you know, a difficult question, and that's why he's ranked so low. I have more questions about his hit tool at this point than I really expected to, because what we've seen is decent power, probably averaged slightly above maybe, with slightly better than average strikeout rates. but in the majors last season all of a sudden, he really couldn't hit the ball very hard at all, and he wasn't making much contact. 24.4% strikeout rate. Overall in AAA, it's about 22%, which is about average.

If Nick Senzel is an average hit tool player and an average power hitter, and probably not much more than an average or maybe a slightly above average stolen base guy, the profile starts to get a lot less appetizing. And that was one of the questions for him as a prospect was, does he have the ceiling? He was viewed a catcher or a college draft pick,

very safe, very ready, probably could have gotten called up, like Scott said, in 2018, if not for the injuries. All of a sudden, maybe the injuries start taking their toll on his skill set. If he's not safe and he doesn't have the upside, what exactly does Nick Senzel bring to the tape? Yeah, it's obviously a question he's going to need to answer in the next year or two since he's already 24. Yeah, 25 in June. I mentioned he was the third overall pick the year he was drafted.

He was actually second overall, so just to clear that up. But like if he is the ultimate blind faith pick this year, I feel like the ultimate blind faith in the pedigree pick last year was Raphael DeVos. And obviously that that worked out swimmingly. So these things can turn around quickly. But as you've pointed out before when I've made that comparison, Chris, Senzel is is several years older. So he's going to have to kick it into high gear here soon. Yeah.

Like Senzel is or Senzel was as old as Raphael Devers was last year like four years ago. So how much older does he than Devers? Two years. Okay. there you go about two years about a year and a half in riddles um but you know you look at the minor league track record and it's it's fairly comparable um you know both hit for high average senzel was a better hitter uh overall in the miners but the that age is really where you know you can expect a player from you know 18 19 you know made his major league debut at 20 you can expect that guy

to start adding significant power, or at least you can hope for it. It's a lot harder to hope for with Senzel when he's not even established as an average hitter in the majors at 25. Senzel reminds me a lot of Scott Kingery. Scott Kingery last season, 19 home runs, 15 steals, 64 run scored, a 258 batting average in 126 games. So he played a few more games, but in terms of power speed, they don't seem far off. biggest difference is in ADP right now, Scott Kingery is going at pick 181, whereas Senzel is going

at 224. So over 40 picks later, nearly 45 picks. These players seem quite similar here, Chris. And, you know, why is there such a big disparity in draft values? Is it just that you know Kingery is going to play every day and he has more position eligibility? I mean, should that be a 40 pick difference in ADP right now? Yeah, Kingery's not coming off a shoulder surgery, which is, that's a really significant thing for hitters. You know, we talked about Michael Conforto in a deep dive last week and how, you know, it probably took him a full year to get back to full strength. We saw Gregory Polanco last season basically wasn't able to come back from, I believe it was a Torman-Labrum as well.

And so it's a tough injury to come back from. He is being discounted, I think, rightfully. the Kingery comp is a very interesting one because like Nick Senzel, Scott Kingery in the minors was mostly noted for his hit tool. He actually struck out a little bit less than Nick Senzel and really didn't hit for any power until 2017. And even that was mostly one stretch at double A. But, you know, it's an interesting comp because Scott Kingery got to the majors and all of a sudden he can't. make contact at all. He is incredibly strikeout prone and we've seen a less extreme version of that with Senzel as well. And so it's a question of whether, you know,

in an era like today when guys are trying to maximize for power and trying to maximize for ISO and, you know, not as worried about contact, if the, you know, fringe average power guys start selling out for power and lose hit tool as a result of it, can they make up for it. In Kingery's case, maybe. You know, certainly we weren't hoping he would hit 258 in the majors in a quote-unquote breakout season. So it's their interesting prospects. I'm not exactly sure how to feel about them. Scott, would you rather have Nixon Zell or Alex Verdugo in rank it in Roto and in head-to-head points? In points, I'd rather have Verdugo because that strikeout advantage is just so valuable in that format.

Roto, I mean, the fact you're likely to get double-digit steals from Senzel, I think makes him the way to go there. Yeah, I do feel like compared to Verdugo, compared to Kingery, Senzel's upside is the highest, but his downside might be the lowest, too. Oh, I actually think Verdugo's upside is high. higher specifically after the trade to Boston. I just think that was an exceptionally good landing spot for him, although we won't necessarily see the potential impact of that until 2021.

I'm less convinced Verdugo's ever going to develop power, I guess, where if you're holding out hope for Senzel, too, I think there's still a chance, just judging on scouting reports from their time in the minors. Verdugo did hit the ball harder last year. ultimately what the Senzel conversation comes down to is he's got to get better. Yeah. You know, if he's the same guy he, yeah, if he's, if he's the same guy he was last season,

he'll be an okay, you know, fifth outfielder, but definitely not. And that's only if he keeps running, which I don't think is guaranteed from him. I mean, I think if he hits 260 with a near 2020 season, that's probably better than a fifth outfielder. Yeah, that's probably more like a fourth outfielder. All right. So there you go, Nick Senzel. Look, the upside is there, but has to stay healthy, has to have a spot in the lineup, has to hit his way into the lineup. But those are some of the things that we think about Senzel for this season.

Guys, before we get into auctions, I'm really excited to talk about auctions. Chris, a couple of weeks ago, we did a live Q&A on Facebook, a video, a live video Q&A. And this Friday, we're going to bring that back. Fantasy baseball today, the Facebook page, 5 p.m. I didn't even ask you about a time. Does 5 p.m. work for you, Chris? We'll figure that out right now on the show. Yeah, 5 p.m. works for me on Friday because, you know, we got the NFL draft.

We'll be doing some coverage for that in the evening. So, yeah, that's perfectly fine with me. I'll take a break from playing call of duty for that. And the NFL draft doesn't resume until, what, like 7 p.m. that night anymore? I think so, yeah. All right. So use, you know, your fan. Fantasy Baseball today, live Q&A on our Facebook page at 5 p.m.

As kind of your warm-up. Bring us your life questions, your fantasy baseball questions, and then go watch the NFL draft and do whatever you want. But this Friday at 5 p.m., we'll be doing. Scott, you're more than welcome to join. Scott, you could jump in, feel free. Yeah, I like to chat it up. I like Q&A.

His little Amy A, Amy A, A, AMA thing where, you know, we get some kind of interesting questions from out of left field. And I would like to, you know, we've talked about this a little bit. I think it would be really fun to do a live podcast on Facebook. So, you know, we might start trying to do that maybe next week we've talked about. So that would be fun. So make sure you subscribe to that or join, like, join. Like us on fantasy baseball today, Facebook page.

Join the Facebook page, the fantasy baseball today Facebook page. I would have asked Adam how his live fantasy football today Q&A went last night, because if you're listening to this, today's Wednesday, April 22nd, he did a live football podcast on Twitch, and it seemed like it went pretty well. I would have asked him about it, but again, we got big-timed by Adam. He's not here. You know what? The show goes on. I want to talk about auctions. It seems like our general strategy discussion regarding trades last week was received pretty well. And, you know, people, want to hear more about just our strategy in general on how we attack certain things in fantasy baseball and auctions to me the auction format is the best way to play any fantasy sport because you can construct the team however you want there's no excuses about ADP yes you have a finite amount of money that you can spend but you can go stars and scrubs you know if you do in a snake draft you cannot draft ronald de kunia and mike trout on the same team In an auction, you can do exactly that.

Now, the rest of the players on your team are going to suffer, but that is a decision that you can consciously make. You can have two first-round players on your team. So to me, auctions are the best way to play because you can construct a team in your vision, basically, however you want it to look. I wanted to ask you guys, how many listener leagues do we normally have every season?

Two. Can we make one of those an auction? Has that ever been discussed? I don't know if it's been discussed. The problem, so the only downside for an auction is you need to invest a significant amount of time. You're talking about for a head-to-head auction, probably three and a half hours at least. And for a roto auction, especially if you're doing benches, that can hit, yeah, five hours easily. I mean, one of my longest running leagues is a keeper league.

and we still were looking at four hours for our audience. Yeah, way to put Chris on the spot. I think that's a no. No, no, I mean, look, we totally can. We have not figured out how we're going to fill the FBT podcast league and the FBT for the People League, which I'm going to take over for Heath. But, yeah, I mean, look, we all got extra time right now.

So maybe I don't want to say yet. or no definitively. Good non-committal answer. But probably not. We are a show of the people. So I will put it up to vote. I'll ask if there's any interest. If people want to do an auction, then we'll make it happen.

If people have the time, they're going to say yes. Come on. They want to look, that would be the right answer, in my opinion. I want to play an auction league. But the standard budget for, you know, look, I think some leagues are different, but I think the standard for most is a $260 budget. If anybody knows how we got to the number 260, feel free to just blur it out because I have no clue

how we got to $260 in an auction as like the standard. I mean, I don't know why we call it rotisserie baseball. So there's lots of unanswered questions here. I think it's because they met at a chicken shop. I was going to say that jokingly. They convened? No, I think that's it. I mean, they being the original league.

it was a group of guys who met at a chicken shop. Wow. But I don't know 260. I don't know that one. That's one of the questions that will remain. I think Chris is trying to verify on my answer here. No. No.

Don't worry. It's in fantasy land. You can read a great book. Nando Defino is a principal character in it. It's actually one of my favorite books. And yes, Nando Defino is in the book. But I wanted to ask you guys,

how do you normally in an auction divvy up your spending? In terms of the $260 budget, or whatever your budget might be. Because in Roto, I've heard a lot about 6535, just kind of being the rule of thumb. I mean, some people go 70, 30, with the 70% representing how much they spend on hitting, and 30% represent how much they spend on pitching in a Roto league.

Of course, you have 14 hitters that you start. You have nine pitchers. So hitters make up just over 60% of your roster. Does that mean that you should spend more money on hitters because there are more of them in your starting lineup, because there are still just five categories for hitting and five categories for pitching. So technically, they're equal, are they not?

So, I mean, how do you guys typically, is this something you figure out before the auction? Do you just say, all right, I'm going to spend 60% on hitting, 40% on pitching? Scott, what do you normally do in terms of how you divvy up your budget? I know that's a normal thing to do. I've never broken it down that way. This is how much I want to spend on hitting.

generally this is how much I want to spend on pitching. I've gone, I usually lay out the whole lineup and I look and see where it's worth paying up for impact, which varies, of course, from year to year. This year, I'm saying it's starting pitching. In the past, I might have spent hardly any money on pitching. It might have been more like 90-10 on hitting. But yeah, I look where I can get the most impacts, like where we're actually paying up for the big player, I think is going to make the most difference. I estimate looking at auction values how much I'm going to have to spend on that, maybe estimating a little over if it's somebody who I really want, and then I just lay it out position by position until it adds up to 260. Usually it adds up to like

360 and I have to start making cuts. But yeah, I get a working budget going that way. And then I know, and usually I have a player or two in mind that specifically that I'm going to spend that amount on, but if you can just get it down to an amount, that gives you a nice blueprint heading into an auction. Chris, in a head-to-head points league, you start nine hitters and you start seven pitchers. So hitters make up about 56% of your roster. Should your budget for hitters versus pitchers be closer to 50-50

in a head-to-head points league, considering the roster construction? And most people emphasize starting pitchers in that format in a head-to-head points league. So is that somewhere where you would maybe kind of split the budget 50-50 in a head-to-head points? I have, I don't, like Scott, I don't really have a hard and fast rule on that, especially, you know, as I've gotten more experienced as a player and as an analyst, you know, I used to be pretty, you know, I used to try to be pretty strict about like a 65-35 or 70-30 approach. But, you know, now if I'm playing in a head-to-head league, like, I'm more like. I'm more likely to pay up for the elite starting pitcher,

which means I'm more likely to spend a significant amount of my budget on it. But, you know, I've done auctions where I've spent 80, even this year, 80% of my budget on hitting. And I've done somewhere it's been closer to 50-50. And, you know, I think you can lead yourself astray a little bit going in with too hard of a rule, because the thing about auctions really, like you have to have a plan, or at least you should.

I often don't. Well, I mean, like I don't have a specific, like write out my whole plan for this draft. Yeah, no, sure. I know who I like. I know where I think the values are. But the thing about an auction is, every single one is different.

So if you try to set yourself a plan, you have a very good chance of screwing yourself up and a big part of auctions is psychological. It's not just drafting players. It's, you know, something that Scott talked about with one of our, with one of our last auctions was getting in your own head and kind of psyching yourself out. I think you spent too much, you thought you spent too much on Charlie Blackman and it kind of sent you spiraling, I think, in one of the drafts. And so that's you have to be flexible with your approach and so if you see that the entire draft you know we did one head-to-head draft where I ended up with like six top six hitters with ADPs in the top three rounds because nobody was spending on hitting and then there are other ones where I'll you know go get to 25 or 30 dollar pitchers it you can't have one rule going into an auction.

Yeah, no, that's, I feel like you need a plan because otherwise it's just easy to lose track of how much money you have left to devote to things. Yeah. But it has to be flexible. And kind of the reason I like breaking it down by position is because I could just do the arithmetic real quickly. Okay. I had to go $5 over on this player. So no, I have to take $5 away from some other spot. Or, you know, this, I plan to spend $35.

on this first basement, but this good one fell in my lap for 14. How do I divvy up those extra $21? And you always can kind of keep molding your plan as the auction is going on and not feel overwhelmed by just the lack of information. But it's, yeah, it's very important to adapt to the behaviors you're actually seeing in your auction. And that's what I think the preset auction values are best for. Now, they're optimized for the standard format. So they're optimized for 12 teams, $260 budget.

And the lineup, you know, in a rota league, it's optimized for two-catcher lineup and head-to-head just, you know, the standard nine hitters, five starters, two relievers, and the five-man bench. So, you know, if you do that, don't play in one of those, you're going to have to kind of adjust based on your format and that, you know, obviously you're just going to have to figure out how to do that. But the idea is that if you see the high-end players going for a lot more, which is most typical, the high-end

players go for more than what the preset auction values are, then you know there's going to be a lot less money on the table for those mid-tier players, the next tier down, low-end players, maybe. There's going to be a lot less money. So those guys are going to go for less than they're projected to go for. And you might decide maybe I could stand to have one less stud so that I can get those bargains later. That's something that I tend to go with often. Now, I do think the studs are more important, the shallower the league you're in, and maybe they're all worth paying up for. I don't know. Certainly if it's like a head-to-head format and you're auctioning your bench as well, I mean, I don't want to spend that much on my bench. Those can all be one dollar guys.

as far as I'm concerned. But yeah, although I don't mind, especially if you go extreme one way or the other, if you go really pitching heavy or really hitter heavy, I don't mind an approach where you save a little money for, like you go into your last eight picks with $18 instead of $10, which can happen.

Yeah, that way. That's, that's a good point. I should, I never really want a $1 player in an auction because, well I think you're about to get into it yeah like I'm looking back at the last head-to-head auction that we did and it was you know more than a month ago at this point a month and a half ago so some stuff has changed but I'm looking at my team and what I really liked was yeah I only had one one dollar player and this was a team that I went really hitter heavy just because that's

the way the draft unfolded it wasn't necessarily my plan the first player I drafted actually was Justin Verlander for $44. And then I saw basically every other starting pitcher going for that price. You noted in the write-up for this that Ronald Acuna went for $2 less than Zach Grinke in this draft. And so it was a really weird draft. And that's, you have to be flexible. And so once I saw that happening, you know, I ended up with J.D. Martinez, Alex Bregman, Jose Ramirez, Glaber Torres, Aaron Judge. Like my hitting is absolutely stacked. And then I saved enough money so that when it got down to the end of the draft with starting pitchers and I was trying to fill out the rest of my lineup and then my bench,

I went really pitcher heavy on the bench. I made sure that I could go $3 for, you know, a Joe Musgrover Lance McCullors rather than, you know, trying to sneak through a dollar pitcher and not being able to get them. Yeah. So that's something to keep in mind. I feel like we're kind of jumping ahead to the end game there, but that is, I feel like, the most important bit of auction advice I can offer

is that you want to delay being down to $1 bids as long as you can because then you're just limited to whoever you nominate. And anybody else wants that guy, you have to wait another round of nominations to have a chance at anybody else. And you could just end up with a total scrub bench, where if you're the guy who can jump in for $2 or $3, pretty much never go to $4 at that point, but I either jump straight to three or just do two,

then obviously you have a much better chance of getting the bona fide sleepers that are still available at that point of the auction. And sometimes they can be pretty high end just because of the way the nominations went. Somebody pretty high end will sneak through and nobody has much money left and you can get him for very cheap. So that's, yeah, that's simple. And usually I know about the time to back off on the bidding and just focus on jumping in with two or three dollar bids is when I have, when my max bid is about half my total dollar amount left, then that's all I'm doing. The rest of the auction is just nominating players that I don't really need, but I could stand a half for a dollar if they sneak through and then just sniping everybody else's $1 nominations. Scott, I wanted to ask you. And we get a lot of questions about this.

I don't know, what is your process for creating auction values yourself? Because, you know, people want to kind of make up their own auction values. And, you know, I'll be honest. I mean, what I've always done is I go to Fangraphs. If you hover over their projections, they have a projections tab on the top. You'll see auction calculator. It allows you to plug all of your league settings in and then it kind of spits out auction values. So I usually do that. And then I usually do that. And then I, I kind of look at a reputable source what their auction values are. Let's just say, I don't know, Scott White's auction values, for example. And then I'll kind of compare and contrast and kind of make my own auction values by like combining all of those things. I know that there's a way to do it where if you create your own projections, they can convert those into auction values using Zed scores. I mean, that's like a whole-

Some kind of formula, yeah. Yeah, there's actually a really good piece on- because I know that you're like, you're the math guy here on the show, apparently. There's a really good, I mean, I'm not a math guy at all. I'm faking it, you know. I know Excel functions, but. You fake it the best of us. Yeah, yeah.

But no, there is a very good piece on Sportsline.com from Aero Cohen, a friend of the podcast, where he, you know, created auction values based on the sports line projections and also kind of walk you through the process, and he uses Z scores to do so, and he has a somewhat automated system for doing it. So, you know, that's one way to do it. I have my own process where I, you know, came up with a formula based on last year's rotissory results

and, you know, how to weight each category and the contributions for each category, and then I establish what the kind of replacement level player is, the $1 players, and then go from there. Scott's process, I think, is a little less automated than that. Mine is about as low, as unscientific as it could be. It's closer to what you're doing, Frank.

I get a sense of how much I want the top player to be. how much, not necessarily how much I'm willing to pay for them because that would depend on probably the depth of the league and, and just the kind of team I'm trying to design. I'm kind of intentionally low-balling the top player just to kind of play it safe. But I get a sense of what that top player should be, and then I just, I go down my rankings, my top 276 or however many players are going to get auction rankings. and I just, when I see a drop off, I lower the auction amount. I just, I just work relatively off what that top player is and keep dropping the amount until I get to the end. And then I keep adjusting them until it adds up to 3120, which is 12 times $260 budgets. And it's actually a pretty fast process. It's one of the few things I do quickly compared to the average person probably.

And it seems to work well enough. I'm often very surprised at how on the nose my auction values end up being as the auction is playing out. Of course, none are perfect. But it seems to work. It works well enough that I'm not interested in really. I haven't been motivated to change the process. So that's how I go about doing it. And if somebody wants to make their own auction values, I'll just remind you.

I mean, you can kind of equate auction value to round value. So, you know, typically a first round pick in a 12-team league is, going to cost you anywhere from, you know, in the high 30s to the mid 40s. You know, maybe for like the Trout, Acuna, Yelage group in a Roto League, maybe they hit the high 40s. But for the most part, you know most first round players are going to be low 40s. They're going to be high 30s. So, and then kind of tip to take it down based on that.

It's kind of what you said, Scott. But you know that each round player kind of has an auction value. you kind of attach to where they are drafted. You guys talked about this a little bit. And in terms of prep, Chris, you mentioned that you want to plan, but you're also flexible. And I posted two images in a rundown if you guys just want to check about. This is typically what I do. It's kind of crazy.

And I'll tweet these pictures out if people want to see them. But I'm a madman in terms of like planning out my auction. I have a target at each position. position. I have a backup target at each position. I know how much money I want to spend at each position. If it's a roto league, I know how much money I want to spend on each like category. So like I'll say, I'll put 10 or 12 dollars aside for a 20 stolen base outfielder. These are just things that I think of and I'll have backups in place. And I really do plan it out. But with that being said, while I do have a, it seems very rigid plan, the flexibility comes in the prices that I allow. So I'll write down

an amount that I have in my mind that I want to pay, but I'll be willing to go one, two, maybe $3 over that price once the auction starts. Because again, you mentioned every auction is different, and I think that's the flexibility that you have to have. So I create a very, you know, rigid plan, but within that plan, I am flexible with my auction prices, if that makes sense.

I, um, I don't know. One of the things that I, I always try to remind myself, especially in auctions more so than even snake drafts is, I don't care what the player's name is. Does that make sense? It's really easy, especially in an auction because they move so fast and you always have to react.

You know, you can't, in a snake draft, you can get up and walk away for a few minutes, especially if you're on an end. In an auction draft, they're kind of exhausting. They require four hours of, of you being on top of the draft. Because, you know, schedule bathroom breaks.

Yeah. If you step away, if you step away for 45 seconds, you can miss an entire player. If you go to a different window. And so you could miss the player, the single player you were most looking out for. Yeah.

And, and so that is one of the side effects of that is you'll reach a point sometimes where you'll be looking at something else. You'll be checking your list or scratching someone off or something. and you'll go back to the window and see, you know, Boba Shet is up for auction, and he's at $15. And you're like, well, oh, crap, I want Boba Shet.

And so you'll hit the plus one button. And then you'll realize, like, oh, crap, I already had a shortstop. Or, oh, crap, I only have, you know, $67 left and I need X, Y, and Z. And so that's one of the, that's part of why I try and often fail, at least once per draft, I do that specifically. And hopefully I'll get bailed out by someone else. But I try to remind myself that it's not the player who matters. It's the production that you're expecting to get from them. And so you always have to keep in mind that for every player, there are generally going to be some analogs who can provide you similar expected production. And so that's why I try to avoid making a specific

list. It's a little different in keeper leagues just because, you know, if you go into a draft with 10 keepers for $37 of your $260 budget because you drafted really well and played the way over wiring, you've got some really great cheap keepers, then it makes more sense to say, I'm going to get Rona de Kuna this year because I want the best. No matter the cost. Yeah, no matter the cost. But that's really the only situation where I feel comfortable having a specific list of players that I, you know, want to make sure I get. Unless it's, you know, if it's your late round guys, your Mitch Kellers and Joe Musgroves and guys that you personally like, your Marks, Kana, that's different.

Yeah. Although, part of what I've had to learn from doing auctions is that though it's often pitched as you can build the team you will. want. Like you can make a team that more resembles your feelings on players than any draft. I find that's actually not true that my draft

teams more resemble me than my auction teams because because it, you know, the players the trendy players everybody likes are the trendy players that everybody likes. And in an auction when they're nominated, everybody was waiting to see them.

And it seems like the price gets inflated. Everybody's sleepers are the same. It always seems like, depending on when they're nominated. I mean, if they happen to stick around later in the draft, maybe you can still get them at a discount. But if somebody's eager to throw his name out there, he gets nominated early, he inevitably goes for too much. And like, you just can't get that stuck on a single sleeper

or else you're going to end up overpaying. You have to be open-minded about what a sleeper can be, and you have to be willing to accept the ones that are available to you at the right price. In a draft, by comparison, I mean, everybody knows to wait until a certain point to draft Marcana. Nobody's reaching and drafting Markana on round 10, unless it's like a really deep leak. But so you don't have to, you never have to reach that much for him. In an auction, he could go for $12 more than he's projected for very easily. And then that totally screws up your budget and it's not at all a discount anymore.

So that's something I've had to train myself about. Sleepers only, I mean, this isn't 100% true, but sleepers only matter if they're a discount. Yeah, Mark Kana's only, Mark Kana's not, I mean, Scott thinks he is, but, you know, Mark Kana is expected or hope to provide more value than you invest in him. but if you invest what you expect him to do all of a sudden there's not really any point in in making mark kana you know one of your one of your building plots you know if you have to spend ten dollars on mark kana well all of a sudden you might as well just spend 14 on nick castianos or something like that someone who's a probably a safer bet and it's very likely that that mid tier

tends to get past it over a lot in standard mixed leagues like the nick castiano's tier and if Mark Kana gets nominated for before Nick Castellanos, it's very likely he could go for even more than him. So that's, auctions are so tricky, man, because that right there is another thing. That, the most frustrating ones to me are those,

where that happens, where all the high-end players go for a little too much, and maybe enough enticing low players were nominated early that they all went for way too much, and you just underestimated how much money is going to be left. And all those mid-tier players go for peanuts. And you keep thinking, well, that guy's clearly worth more than that. I want to jump in on the bidding there too.

But you look at your pile of money. It's really not that much. You could maybe do that once or twice. And it's really hard to disconnect, to separate the player from the price. just thinking in terms of that player is clearly a discount, so I must have him, while still keeping in mind, oh, I only have this much money left

and I have this many needs. I can't do it. One thing I found is my teams and auctions are also much more, God, what's the word? They look a lot less like my teams in snake drafts. You know, in a snake draft, I think we probably all have a core group

players that we draft, you know, pretty regularly. And, you know, your teams tend to look pretty similarly. But in an auction, you know, I'm looking back at the head-to-head points auction, I don't really like Paul Goldschmidt that much this year. I think Labor Torres is overvalued. I don't really, I haven't drafted much Eddie Rosario at all, I don't think. And I have all three of those guys on this team just because you hit a point where, you know, Goldschmidt was six. I don't like Goldschmidt this year, but Paul Goldschmidt for $6. he's probably going to return at least that if not more. Eddie Rosario, the same thing,

Glaver Torres for 16. And that's why, again, going back to, you know, I don't, I want to not really care about the name because I made the mistake in this draft with Adrian Houser as a pitcher with Spark eligibility, who I like as a sleeper, starting pitching was starting to get thin. I ended up spending $8 on Adrian Houser.

probably not my best buy. But those are the kind of psychological things that you have to keep in mind as you're going through the draft. You know, I wanted to ask you guys about your mid-auction practices because this is, honestly, I mean, we could do a whole other show just on this alone. But in terms of nomination and your bidding process, these are just two things I want to get your thoughts on. And for nomination, a lot of people just automatically,

all right, I'm going to nominate a high-end player, the highest-end player that I don't want so that other people spend their money. That's fine. I mean, that can be, you know, how you attack it. It could be, you know, you're going to nominate, every time you're up, you're going to nominate a position, a player from a certain position that you just don't want anything to do with. I remember in the Tout Wars head-to-head points auction that I did this year,

Ian Khan, who is the defending champion, every time he was up, he nominated a closer because based on the scoring format, he realized that closers were not really worth much. So he would just nominate a closer every single time. So how do you guys nominate typically? And with the bidding process, are you guys that like you wait for the clock

to get all the way down to one? I hate that person so much. And this is part of the- But that's part of the psychological warfare of an auction. Right. is that I get tripped up by that, at least once per draft. If I've got a guy I really want, and it's like $16, and I'm there, and I'm like starting to write them into my spreadsheet.

And then it gets down to one second. And the bidding's been going on for a while. And it gets down to one second and someone jumps in, someone who wasn't involved in the bidding before, I'd lose my mind. And there will always be one time in every auction where I'm just like, I'm getting this guy. I don't care how many time they press. And it just

The second volley. You have to try to stay zen. And it's really hard. And that is like he is someone who loves to do that. And he loves to do that to me specifically. Because he's been in drafts with me. And this is where knowing your league also helps you get an edge. He's been in drafts with me.

And he knows how much that infuriates me. Because we're in, you know, three football auctions and two baseball options every year. And so not even counting all the mocks we do. And so Heath knows me well enough that he knows that if he does that to me at a specific point in a draft, I'm going to react that way and spend $4 more than I should. This is why Heath is why I call him the master troll because he just lives to upset people sometimes. One thing he does with me is he has my auction values in front of him. And particularly for high-end players that he knows.

knows I'm going to have some interest on. It's still early. I haven't spent a lot of money yet. He'll just go straight to what my auction amount is so that I have no chance of getting him for a value that I think is a discount. Such a joke move. But anyway, yeah, boy, I've had a lot of things I wanted to react to what Chris is saying, and now I'm forgetting them all. I guess I'll start with the nomination question where, you know, what kind of players do

nominate. I think typically it makes more sense to nominate someone you don't want than someone you do at more points in the auction you're trying to take other bidders out on future bids. There's less money in the pool with every pick. Yeah, right. But there are times where I think it definitely behooves you to nominate a player you want. One thing, like if there is a single player who stands out above all the others that the rest of my draft plan depends on whether I get this guy or not. You can't wait around half the auction for him to be nominated because you're missing so many buy opportunities finding out how that's going to go. So you just got to put him out there. And it may mean he ends up going for more than he could have if you waited longer.

It's less than optimal. I get that. But it's so much better than the alternative thinking you're going to get him and saving a lot of money for him only to find out you don't. And now what are you going to do with all that money? That's like one of the biggest auction disasters you can have. So, and that's even true on the high end. Like if Trey Turner is my plan A for steals, I need to know very early if I'm going to get Trey Turner or not because I need to pivot if I can't. Yeah, it's one thing that I like to do,

you know, I'm typically not going to spend much on closer, and I'm typically not going to spend much on catcher. So one thing I'll try to do is target the low-end guys who I'd like and see if I can sneak them through early in a draft for like $2. And so, you know, if I know I don't want to spend much money on catcher, but I know I like, I know I like Buster Posey and nobody's really excited about him, I might with my third nomination throw Buster Posey out for $2. And if someone wants to take him for three, go for it.

I would guess nobody in my draft has Buster Posey valued at $3. And so there's a decent chance that I can get him lock in that spot on my roster and lock in some cost certainty without necessarily having to spend a lot of money to do it. Chris, speaking of catchers, I know that you like Wilson Ramos in a a two-catcher league, which was Tout Wars, I got Wilson Ramos for two bucks. So how about that? And a two-catcher league, he should go for more than $2.

I should say so, yeah. Wilson-Ramos? Yeah. I think I got Wilson- You got him for $2. And that's the kind of thing that that'll never happen. And I mean, I guess it could happen where he could slide to like $180. But for the most part, you know, you pretty much know,

Wilson-Romis is going to cost, you know, the seventh most catcher. in a snake draft. In auction, it's entirely possible that, you know, if Danny Jansen and Francisco Mejia and Carson Kelly get nominated first, and Wilson Ramos is still out there, you could get him for cheap. And that's true at any position. Yeah. Oh, I remember one of the things I want to do address that Chris was talking about, that the volley, that's what I call. Yeah. When the bids are bouncing from person to person, when it's just you and one other guy and you've gone up three or $4 at that point. I do.

I do drain the clock at that point because I want him to think that I am debating whether to go that extra dollar. I want him to think if he bids again, he's going to be stuck with that amount. So I wait until, you know, I may be willing to go up three or four more times, but I start bidding slower because I want him to think I'm really having to sweat it at this so that maybe he backs off so he doesn't risk bidding more than he wants to. Or maybe it makes him second guess his own bidding and he backs off for that reason. And we haven't really, we've talked a little bit about price enforcing,

but that's, you know, what you're talking about is assuming that the other guy is price enforcing and assuming that that guy basically just seized it and says, I don't want him to get that player for that cheap. Not necessarily. But they don't necessarily want them because that's what. I never price enforce. Yeah. Personally.

You play it safe. Yeah. Price enforcing is a risky strategy. I've pretty epically gotten burned on price enforcing before with a certain nando Defino and a certain Jed Jerko. I was going to bring this up. Is this like a famous story? From a while ago, right?

Didn't you, are you price enforcing Jerko to mess with? It was like 20 bucks or something, right? And you wound up. Now, this was back when Jed Jerko was pretty. big deal. It was popular breakout pick. Yeah. But Nondo specifically was high on him. And Nando specifically likes the guys he likes. He wants his guys and he will pay whatever it takes to get them. So, armed with that knowledge, I had already committed to this draft to getting, this was back when Trout and Miguel Cabrera were clear one and two. And I paid like 60 bucks for each. I was

going ultimate stars and scrubs. So I really had to be careful about the rest of the money I spent, having already devoted that much to those two guys. But I was really going to stick it to Nando. And when Jed Jerko came up, I just, I got carried away bidding him up. And sure enough, he backed off at like $24, which was probably more than twice what I valued Jerko as. And this is probably his second, this is probably the 2014 season coming off that rookie year. when he hit 23 homers. It may have been. For context sake, he hit 210 with 10 home runs that year.

I wasn't big on price enforcing before then, but I thought I had Nando's number, man. I thought I knew exactly the way he operates. And that taught me a lesson. I think I still managed to finish like fourth or something. It didn't completely wreck my season, but I'm still curious how that team would have turned out if I had been able to distribute those dollars the way I wanted to.

So it's, yeah, I don't do that. But, you know, if somebody is a price enforcing with me, or even if they're just getting caught up in the bidding, like I like to slow things down, make them think, okay, do I really want to go that extra dollar for this guy? Clearly, Scott White, fantasy baseball expert on the other end, is starting to think this is getting too high. Maybe I should think about that too.

and then hopefully, hopefully I can stop the volley there. It's email time. Fantasy Baseball at cbsi.com. This question comes from Frank, Frank, Adam, Chris, and Scott. Well, three of the four are here today. I listen every day and really trust in your advice. I'm in a 10-team points league and have been offered this trade, Garrett Cole, David Dahl, and Wilson Contreras for Mani Machado,

Chris Bryant, and Julio Urias. and it looks like he is the team that's actually giving up the Machado side. So Machado, Bryant, and Urias for Contreras, David Dahl, and Garrett Cole. His current catcher is Kurt Suzuki. I love that trade. You're getting the best player in the trade, obviously, in Garrett Cole. But you're also really, you're getting a first round player and you're not giving up, you know, probably any of your first three picks, I would assume.

possibly any of your first four picks. And so that just feels like an easy win, especially because David Dahl and Wilson Contreras are pretty good. Wilson Contreras is the top three or four catcher. And David Dahl, you know, if he stays healthy, should at least be a starter. Well, in a 10-team points league, maybe not at least a starter. But, you know, won't be horrible, hopefully, maybe.

And the fact it is a 10-team league. I think the shallower the league is, the more tru it becomes that the person who gets the best player wins the deal. Yeah, I think that's an A. This would make Frank's pitching staff, Garrett Cole, Mike Clevenger, Patrick Corbin, U. Darvish, Jack Flaherty, Justin Verlander. It's just absurd.

So you're going to have an excess of starting pitching there, which is what you want in a points league, but might even be able to look at another trade, flipping someone else and improving another spot on your team. But yeah, I do like that trade a lot as well. This next one comes from Brian Young. Hi, Frank, Colt, and Spike. So this appears to be...

This is some kind of YouTube thing, right? From a freemium mobile video game called Brawl Stars developed and published by the Finnish video game company Supercell. Okay, yeah, because I searched this up and I found Brawl Stars on YouTube. So I thought it was just like some kind of YouTube animated series, but it sounds like your answer is probably a little bit closer here, Chris. I have no. I mean, yeah, sure. So on your show, you talked about how y'all say things.

I swear, I never hear Scott say the D and didn't. To me, it sounds like he says, didn't. Yep, that was, that's what Ellen Adair pointed out. I can't remember if it was the first time or the second time she was on. But yeah, there's a, I think I mentioned this on one of the previous podcasts, but, you know, when we were talking about this, there's a book called The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson. It came out in the 90s, I think.

And it's like Bill Bryson is a travel writer who has moved on into like the history of things. And so this one is the history of the English language. And it's fascinating. He talks about all of these things that we all do that, you know, we see how words are written, but we never actually speak them the way that they're written. Even with stuff that doesn't have like there's no silent D and didn't. but nobody really says didn't. Most people most of the time,

you know, slur the word. They say didn't. You know, nobody says wednesday. We say Wednesday. Morton. English is a- February. For sure.

You know, my fiance is Polish, so I try to like read some of the words. It's impossible, at least for me. It would probably easier for someone else. But yeah, someone who would just be trying to pick up English and sound out every word phonetically, like how it looks. Good luck, because there are a lot of misleading words in the English dictionary. I do think Ellen Adair probably says, didn't.

Well, she's a professional communicator. Aren't we? No. I'd like to think we are, Scott. God, there's a word for those, for that process when you, like, I can't remember. Pronouncing things really well or like, no for like the didn't thing.

Oh, okay. I can't remember what the word is. Somebody's smarter than me, send us an email telling us what that is. I think I'd recognize it if I heard it. It's not like a colloquialism. It's, there's a specific word for that process

of removing sounds and words when you're speaking. But anyway, Brian's question is when I draft hitters, I try to at least get two players in the same lineup. This year, how things panned out in my draft, I ended up with pairing three different lineups up, wound up with Trout and Rendon, Kesson Hira and Lorenzo Kane, and Nelson Cruz, and Jorge Polanco. Does this strategy work, and did I overdo it with three pairs?

This is a head-to-head categories league in a 10-team league. It's... I think it's irrelevant. I think the only time I would say it's not is in a head-to-head league, either point. points or categories, there can be a slight boost to having that in a head-to-head matchup. You know, if you get to the end of the week and your score is close, Mike Trout hits a home run with Anthony Rendon on first base, you're getting double points from that. So in that instance, there is value, but.

But even then it's a matter of timing because it could be that that whole team gets shut out on a Sunday. Exactly. So it's, you know, we talk about a lot in DFS with. stacking. And that's really, I think, where when you're trying to lean into the variance and you're trying to build these high scores, especially in your tournament lineup, that's where it makes sense to say, well, the twins are going against a bad pitcher. I'm going to go for, you know, the one through four in the twins lineup and hope that there's a ton of production there.

So I think it matters less in season long. Although I don't, like I want to, at some point in a mock draft, we do and I haven't done it yet, but I want to try to just draft every twins hitter because I think it's a viable strategy. I will point out that last season, I had three Rockies on the same head-to-head points league roster, and it was terrible. You got to bench them, yeah. Oh, my. I mean, yeah. Don't do that. Do not stack Rockies in a head-to-head points league. They're much better in Roto formats because, all right, the end-of-season production, you know Charlie Blackman, going to be great at home, he's going to stink on the road. But when the season ends, he's going to hit 300. He's going to have 30 home runs, yada, yada. In a points league, man, let me tell you. I mean, you need consistency

weekend and week out. When you have three Rockies hitters on the road in your lineup together, I think I had Trevor Story, David Dahl, and Daniel Murphy, oh my God, it was so bad. So don't do that in a head-tend points league. Do not stack Rockies. It might have been that one of those Rockies was just bad. Yeah, Daniel Murphy, the season was just that's on me. You know, I don't want that profiled better as a points league player last season, but wow. I mean, I was all in on Daniel Murphy last year. I thought Daniel Murphy was going to hit like 340. Yeah, me too.

Yeah. It did not work. So that's my last point on that regarding stacking players in a head-to-head points league. But that'll do it for today's show. Thanks for listening fantasy baseball today for Chris and Scott. I am Frank. We will talk to you again on Thursday. Bye-bye.