Welcome to the first installment of Baseball Prospectus’ 2013 bid prices for “standard” Rotisserie-style formats.
In the tables below, you will find my recommended bid limits for AL-only, NL-only, and mixed leagues. For all three formats, the presumed settings are 12 teams, $260 budgets, 14 hitters, and nine pitchers. The bids for the top 168 hitters and 108 pitchers in each player pool add up to $3,120, which is equal to the total league budget for each pool.
The bids are not predictions of what these players will do, but rather suggested prices. While most of what I expect these players to do is based on projected statistics and values, other factors play a role in the bid prices. These factors include:
- Positional scarcity—Adding a dollar or two for some catchers and middle infielder.
- Proven stars—Adding a dollar or two for reliability. Ryan Braun and Miguel Cabrera are bumped up slightly, because they provide elite statistics year in and year out.
- Category bias—Cheating closers and speed guys who do nothing but add to one category.
- Rookies—Hedging your bets with rookies. Too many owners have been caught spending $20+ on a rookie because "that's what the projection said.”
- Part-timer bias—Not paying full price for someone whose real-life role is limited. A part-timer could very well earn $10-15, but even a small slump for a player with 150-200 plate appearances can have a severe impact on his value.
Mixed-league bids add more money to the top and cheat the players at the bottom, since the free-agent pool offers far more in the way of replacement-level talent.
These bids should serve as a starting point for your own auction preferences. If you think $27 for Josh Hamilton is too timid, then by all means push his price up to your preferred ceiling. Just make sure to take money off of another player or group of players so that your aggregate bids add up to $3,120.
I’ll be tweaking these bids every week in this space as we get closer to Opening Day, and some of the current ones are placeholders. Eight dollars for Wil Myers and Oscar Taveras are bids that serve more as reminders that Myers and Taveras will be worth something in 2013. For the majority of players on these lists, the prices you see are the prices I’m sticking with until Auction Day.
Finally, the idea behind bid limits is to set a price that is reasonable without being unrealistic in either direction. I’m down on Evan Longoria this year, but if I see enough evidence that his going price is sitting in the low $30s, I’ll move my bid up modestly. I still probably won’t get him, but I want my bids to have some semblance of reality. Likewise, if Alcides Escobar is going for around $20 in expert auctions, I’ll push my bid down to the point where I’m still expressing my preference without assigning him a “crazy” price. It is OK to use bids to show your affinity or dislike for a player, but you don’t want to be in a room of your own, and fool yourself into thinking that you’re buying a juggernaut, when in reality you’re overestimating everyone on your squad.
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PFM does an excellent job of showing potential player earnings using a number of different valuation models. The bid limits presented here attempt to adjust for 25 years of Rotisserie experience and push players up or down in a manner that the PFM tool cannot. For example, Maicer Izturis might very well earn $10 in A.L.-only 5x5. However, from experience I know that there are very few leagues in which Izturis will cost anywhere near $10. The bid limits are less concerned with what a player might earn and more concerned with what you should pay for a player based on likely market price.
Would love to see an article about what the Astros move to the AL does to single league formats. Although the Astros are terrible, that's still one more team to pick from for my AL only league - (1 more closer, etc.) and one less team for NL Leagues. What does that do to player values in single league keeper leagues?
However, in terms of bids you will want to keep players at the top the same and lop more money off in the middle or at the bottom. Fewer teams creates more variability at the bottom of the heap, and makes it more likely that a player you have valued at $4-5 to go for $1. You should have more $1 players at the bottom, not less.
In the NL, in a 12-team format earnings league-wide would stay at $3120 even though there are fewer stats to purchase. Again, though, the impact would be slight since it would take place across the board. As far as bids go, each Major League team would theoretically see $11-13 of value per team added (since the Astros were one of the weaker teams in the NL, it would be closer to the $11 estimate). This works similarly to the AL example in the opposite direction. $1-2 players wouldn't see money added to their earnings, but players at the middle and the top would be bumped up $1 or maybe $2 for the best of the best.
There isn't much variability at the top on who the best players are, so the bids will generally be aligned. Once you get to the middle of the pack, though, there tend to be larger differences of what a player might be worth. And once you get to the bottom, a player that you might have valued at $3-4 might not even be ranked by your opponent in a shallower format.
Here is an example of a conversion from a 13-team NL to a 12-team NL
http://rotothinktank.blogspot.com/2009/03/adjusting-for-smaller-leagues.html
middle of the road guys lower in value to make up for more $1 guys?
I noticed a couple of players you have valued at a $1 (Napoli and Dunn), that my custom PFM projects at $23 and $26, respectively (16-team, mixed, with OBP not BA). Would you consider a followup on the players with the biggest deltas between your values and the PFM's, and the likelihood of acquiring them at your suggested price?
Yes, a follow up on differences between my projections and the PFMs might be a useful exercise.
I do have a question regarding SS (although I guess this could pop up other places as well). In the Mixed values, you list Castro at 31, Rollins at 10,and Desmond at 9. In the NL the numbers shift radically to 30-22-22. To my thinking, the 35% premium in the NL for Castro's BA and youth makes some sense. but I can't account for the huge difference between them in the Mixed - I mean, Desmond was significantly better than Castro last year, so even if you feel the BA and some of the power isn't sustainable, that seems like a lot. I'd like to hear your reasoning on that one.
The best players in mixed are theoretically worth more because - when you get past a certain level - there is no "replacement" for them. This is why Braun, Trout, and a few others are higher in mixed than NL.
I definitely appreciate the feedback on mixed. Castro will probably go down and Rollins and Desmond will almost definitely go up in the next update. Additionally, there will be a further explanation from me on mixed values/bidding philosophy in my next update on Monday.
MG
As I also said, the parameters you use for these values make them of little direct use to me, but I always like to check these things out to see if I missed something - I call it the "really??" effect. In this case it caused me to check out Castro again, to see if I was wrong about his performance. Had you valued Desmond at $12 in the NL, I just would have moved on, thinking we had different opinions. It was the significant variance between the two versions that caused me to jump in and it seems it got you to take another look at the players, which is valuable to you and your readers. As I own Ian in both my leagues from last year, and will be keeping him, I am perfectly happy with the readers of this site getting better info on him. :)
Whether I would be that willing to "correct" a player I will be targeting, well,that's another story - I assume some of my league mates read this stuff.
"In mixed, Desmond and Rollins are a lot closer to those replacement level players than they are in NL-only."
This is extremely useful, thanks very much.
Second, I am in a keeper league(3 contract years), where people usually have closers at crazy cheap prices from FAABing, or previous auctions (grilli $1, cishek $1, etc)..if I am competing and need saves, how much inflation is too much to spend? (We usually have around 15-20% pitching inflation) For instance, I am freezing Putz at $16, but the PFM usually returns inflated numbers like $45 for Kimbrel etc. i know $16 it is a fair price, but what are the "real" value gains here? And is it worth paying an extra $8-12/closer if you have to?
Thirdly, our league has 30 man roster, 3 utility and 5 "reserve" spots which can be used for daily transactions (ie, streaming starters).. What would be a good roster setup for the PFM? (I get similar $ results for various constructs, but there are some large differences..)
I usually go 28 "spots" by just add 1 more util, and 2 RP to get the numbers "close"..but it is still "eyeballing", I hate that!
TLDR! Sorry for such terrible wording! And welcome to BP!!!
Glad you followed me over here.
The idea of how much inflation is too much to spend depends significantly on the strength of your freeze list. If your raw price on Kimbrel is $23 and his inflation price is $32 (40% inflation), you have to ask yourself if it's worth going $9 over his non-inflated price. Getting two closers for $50 in 5x5 might win you the category but if your freeze list is weak allocating nearly 20% of your budget on closers probably is a poor idea.
I'm going to have to defer to another expert on the PFM. I've just started playing around with it myself and am just getting started with its functionality.
Just a note on Lance Berkman ,could'nt find him in your list.I have him valued at $4 does this sound about right ?
http://rotothinktank.blogspot.com/2008/03/adjusting-your-bid-limits-for-fewer.html
The short explanation: keep the prices at the top the same or close and shave a lot of money off of the middle. The bottom 46 players disappear anyway, so you lose some salary organically. Decreasing the player pool increases the variability on the cheaper players, so that's where you want to shave dollars off of your prices.
My starting point is a player pool of 252 (21 roster spots, 12 teams). With the 92 keepers that leaves 160 players left for the draft. Do I just divide the extra money (350) among the 160 players and draft with an assumed $2 inflation for every player?
Inflation % = 1 - ((Total$$$-KeepSal)/(Total$$$-KeepValue))
So if you had $3000 in money to spend, with $1500 in keepers being saved for $1000 in salary, you would have
1 - ((3000-1000)/(3000-1500)) = 33.3% inflation.
As such, a player who would be worth $30 without inflation, should expect to cost $40 in the auction ($30 x 1.333).
When talking about adding or decreasing the player pool, the difference can be drastic: when the number of players expands, $1 players will become $5 players. When the pool decreases, $3 players will become reserve picks.
If you originally had 300 people that got $$$ values, but now you only have roster spots for 250 players, the last 50 become worthless in an auction.
As far as league expansion, that's tougher for me to answer from experience. Having more teams will push prices up, but you'll find that some teams probably won't adjust as well. There's a balance between making sure you allocate money correctly versus spending on 3-4 top players and cashing out early because you were trying to spend "correctly."
www.faketeams.com has a couple of good articles up right now on calculating keeper inflation as well as keeper/deep league strategies.