Marco Scutaro for $15

I have participated in more fantasy drafts than I care to mention.  Last year, I completed my first fantasy auction, and this year my second.  If you have never done an auction before, it will change your life.

In a 10-team league, you are participating in a fantasy draft for about 1/10th of the total time, long enough to make your pick.  Even with the requisite trash talking and saying things like “Wow, this kid really picked Pujols first?  Guess he didn’t hear that Pujols got stranded on an island until August 29th and will only play half the season.”

In an auction, you are always involved.  A person will say a player’s name with an initial bid and any player in the room can bid on that player.  You are involved 100% of the time.

The league that will be most often discussed on this blog is the one Ethan and I are involved in together.  In this league, we did an auction with a fake budget of $260 allowing each team to “keep” 6 players.  Keeping a player means you can take a player from your previous year’s team and keep them at the same value.  So, for example, I bid $5 on Troy Tulowitzki in an unsurprising flash of genius during last year’s auction and get to keep the second best shortstop in baseball at the same price this year.  We play in a standard 5 x 5 Rotisserie league, meaning we get points for a player’s batting average, runs, home runs, RBIs, stolen bases, wins, strikeouts, ERA, WHIP and saves.

Here are some sample values of players taken this year to give you an idea of how our league operates:

Ryan Braun — $53 Providence Grays (Currently 1st place)

This is my team, I will provide an explanation for the name in the future.  Braun was one of the more highly paid for commodities due to his combination of speed, power and average.

Roy Halladay — $44 Team Cy Young (Currently tied for 2nd place)

Team Cy Young enacted the unique strategy of paying for a bunch of starting pitchers (he also has Lincecum, Lester and Garza…scary good), and it has worked for him thus far.  Halladay went for more than any other pitcher in our league.  Team Cy Young has a very weak hitting lineup, however, that will cause him to sink as the season goes on.

Mark Teixeira — $43 Natinals (Currently 9th place)

The top tier of first basemen went fairly high because of the excessive power of each player.

Joe Mauer — $25 YankeeHater (Currently 10th place)

YankeeHater is the defending champ in the league.  I am jealous, so I take great solace in the fact he is currently in last, but this will change as he unfortunately has one of the more stacked teams.  Looking at this price now, I realize I should have bid more for Mauer, but catchers always go low in our leagues because everyone assumes that they’re all similar and all the stats will even out.  Unfortunately, Mauer’s will not and will help YankeeHater move up towards the top of the league as the year progresses.

Joakim Soria — $19 Teamocil (Currently 6th place)

Ethan took one of the more expensive closers in the auction and has since traded him.  For some reason, Ethan thinks it is a good idea to not compete in saves (he has no closers, like none, 0).  It has not worked for him in a league yet, but I’m not complaining.  I will enlighten you in the future as to why this is not intelligent and could cause yet another tragic fall for our persistent hero.

Marco Scutaro — $15 PrnceFieldrUpLstNght (Currently tied for 7th)

The best moments in auctions don’t come when you get a certain player.  They come with memories to be forever remembered.  In last year’s auction, the bidding started on “Kone Figgins.”  Since that moment, there has been no Chone in our fantasy league.  This year, it was a substantial misjudgment instead of a substantial mispronunciation that made our auction.  I’ll set the scene:

The auction was nearing its end and the choice came around to one of our league veterans.  Everyone’s attention was beginning to wane and some beverages may or may not have been working through some of our systems.  Anyways, the room was loud, focus was low and a voice comes out of the corner of the room quiet, but confident, “Marco Scutaro for $15.”

Room goes silent.

Everyone stares at the player for about five seconds trying to confirm they did not imagine the line.  We did not.  Laughter started and Marco Scutaro was taken for $15, well above his value.  He should not have gone for more than $1.  Scutaro is a weak-hitting aging shortstop who has more value in real life than fantasy.  There is no worse feeling in an auction than knowing you have overbid a player and could have paid for something more useful than a shortstop who is easily replaceable.

So let this act as an introduction to a league you will be hearing a lot about in the coming months.

Never bid double digits on a guy who looks like this after lots of at bats.