Free Agent Bidding

May 20th, 2009 | by Ray Flowers |

I was thinking about how the fantasy baseball free agent bidding process, and I’m continually amazed at how the process works. Before I get into why that is, let me briefly describe what I’m talking about.

Total Free Agency
Back in the day, and in some leagues still, players are on the free agent wire to be picked up at any time. While this might be the easiest way to do things and the way that most of us grew up with playing the game, the fact is this is really an unfair system. Let me give just one example that illustrates why. Let’s say you live on the west coast, and let’s posit that Brian Wilson blows his arm out at 11:45 PM in the 14th inning of the game (this is NOT true – it is only an example). On the telecast, right after the game, manager Bruce Bochy says that Jeremy Affeldt will be the new Giants closer so you run an pick him up off waivers. If you live on the east coast and are in bed because it’s 3 AM and you have a job, you are screwed. You never even had a chance to grab Affeldt.

Weekly Free Agency
Let’s assume the above scenario. However, let’s say that this happens on Tuesday night and your leagues free agency period ends on Sunday night at 8 PM, EST. That means that you have Wednesday through Sunday to put in a bid on Affeldt so that everyone has a shot. In this scenario teams are offered players based on the reverse order of the standings. That means, if you are in a 12-team league that the team in 12th place gets the first choice of free agents, team 11 second, all the way down to the first place team getting last shot. However, once a team picks up a player it goes to the back of the bus. Let’s say the 12th place team doesn’t need closers so they pick up Chris Coghlan off waivers first. They then drop to last in line and the team in 11th place would get a shot at Affeldt or whomever else they wanted and so on.

FAAB Bidding
This is the way that most of the “money” leagues do it. In this process each team is given a budget of Monopoly money, i.e. fake dollars, and they get to bid on free agents. Just like weekly free agency, most of the time there is one day a week when bids are due, though some leagues implement this FAAB process on a daily basis as well. FAAB means Free Agent Acquisition Budget by the way. This is my favorite style because everyone gets a chance at every player, provided they have any money left, and it adds an extra element of strategy to the mix. Continuing with our example, let’s say we have a $1,000 budget to work with for the year and we owned Wilson and now would like to have Affeldt. We’re not sure he will be able to hold the job down, but we need the saves, so we drop a bid of $135 dollars on him. Another team, super desperate for saves bids $210. Another team who is also desperate for saves might think Affeldt will eventually lose the job to Bobby Howry so they only bid $41 dollars on him. The point is, you not only have to identify the players you want in this scenario, you also have to identify how much is an appropriate amount to spend, because once your money is gone you can no longer bid so it makes no sense to simply toss out an outrages bid like $400 on Affeldt.

To show the diversity amongst owners, here are FAAB from Sunday the 17th on C.J. Wilson who will close until Frank Francisco returns from biceps tendonitis. Current reports have Francisco back on Friday, and the belief is that he will slide right back into the closers role. As a result, I personally bid $24 dollars on Wilson thinking I might pick up a week’s worth of saves because his work this season has been miserable (1.53 WHIP, 5.51 K/9, 1.11 K/BB) rendering him useless without saves. How did my $24 bid stack up? Well, I didn’t “win” Wilson, he went for $68 in my league, and here is what he cost in a host of the other National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) leagues this past weekend.

C.J. Wilson $200
C.J. Wilson $53
C.J. Wilson $116
C.J. Wilson $76
C.J. Wilson $129
C.J. Wilson $97
C.J. Wilson $65
C.J. Wilson $88
C.J. Wilson $157
C.J. Wilson $249
C.J. Wilson $75
C.J. Wilson $105
C.J. Wilson $195
C.J. Wilson $54
C.J. Wilson $63
C.J. Wilson $111
C.J. Wilson $89
C.J. Wilson $106
C.J. Wilson $169
C.J. Wilson $43
C.J. Wilson $57
C.J. Wilson $54
C.J. Wilson $52
C.J. Wilson $21

As you can plainly see we had winning bids from $21 to $249, a massive spread. In my league where he went for $68, there was one other bid for a dollar more than me at $25. What his means is that the $68 dollar bid would have been a winner at $26 dollars meaning that the “winner” ended up wasting $42. Still, as you can tell from the other bids, in a good deal of leagues even the $68 bid would have come up way short.

To me, this added layer of the free agent bidding process sets leagues like this apart forcing you to use yet another skill set in order to emerge victorious in your fantasy league. If your league doesn’t use this process I highly suggest moving to it in 2010 as there is nothing like being able to bitch about getting screwed by two dollars or lording it over your friends when you are the one that came out on top.

By Ray Flowers

Tags: Bobby Howry, Brian Wilson, C.J. Wilson, Frank Francisco, Jeremy Affeldt