Hi all - I did a quick search, but couldn’t find any topics specific to my concerns, so figured I’d start a new one. Our league is figuring out scheduling right now, but may be forced to do a slow auction (Couch Managers was throw as a suggestion). I expressed my concerns on my league board, but figure this is a broader forum that might have more insight.
I was told that in slow auction you have multiple auctions running at once. My concern is - how does this work in terms of pivoting and reacting to winning/losing hopeful bids. Let’s say I need a top tier 1B. Freeman and Vlad are my hypothetical options, but both up for auction at the same time. How can I make a legit competitive bid at one, while being able to pivot to the other if I don’t win my first choice, and not end up with 2 $50 1Bs? Do I need to go all-in on one and ignore my backup option?
Anyone with experience who can chime in to provide any context would be appreciated!
Thanks Niv - I skimmed through those threads earlier, but they didn’t seem to address my specific concern about strategy. It could be that I’m just completely misunderstanding the format. But it seems like with simultaneous auctions running, your Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C could all be up for auction at once leaving you no way to pivot between them as a reaction.
My best advice is to focus on the auctions for the players that end soonest. So in your example where Freeman and Vlad are both up for bidding, I usually bid only on the player where their auction ends first. If I win the bidding on Freeman (assume he’s first to end), then I need not bid on Vlad. If I don’t win the bidding on Freeman, I can bid on Vlad. You do miss out on the first mover advantage of placing a reserve on Vlad, since the first team to bid $X is still the high bidder even if a second team bids $X, but for the positions I don’t want to win multiples of (1B, 3B, C mostly), this is how I manage things.
It is very tempting to bid on players as soon as they are nominated, and you can certainly do that, but just understand that if you tie up too much of your $ on open bids, you can be stuck both in terms of winning multiple at the same position and not having $ to place additional bids.
The other way you could do this is bid on the player that is currently discounted the most according to your personal values. Maybe Freeman is currently $5 under your value, but Vlad is $8. I might bid on Vlad before Freeman even though Freeman ends first, until the bidding causes Vlad’s discount to be the same as Freeman, at which point I pivot back to Freeman. Etc. etc.
Thanks, this is helpful context. I had imagined bidding on multiple players at once, but your strategy seems to make sense and hadn’t really occurred to me. Seems like you still lose a little bit of flexibility, but gain the advantage of accommodating all teams. No solutions, only tradeoffs. Also, we just confirmed feasibility of live auction, so I guess its a moot point, but good to know for the future!
Right, you gain draft scheduling flexibility, and it’s pretty fun to participate in a slow auction that feels more like actual MLB free agency, but you definitely get some downsides when it comes to bidding flexibility.