FAAB-ULOUS MOVES
Larry Bodin and John Sniezek
(This article is also available as a Word file and the formatting may be better in the Word file. Email Larry Bodin at [email protected] or John Sniezek at [email protected] and we will email you a copy of the article as a Word attachment.)
The FAAB or Free Agent Acquisition Budget is a process that is used to determine how free agents are acquired by the various owners in a fantasy baseball league. The various Internet scoring services can have different implementations of the FAAB and these implementations may restrict or even eliminate possible options that some owners would like to have in using the FAAB.
In this article, we discuss the implementation of the FAAB in two of the major Internet scoring services – Sportsline.com and STATS.com. We then propose a comprehensive FAAB procedure that both incorporates the FAAB implementations in these two scoring services and allows the FAAB to consider options not currently in the implementations in Sportsline.com and Stats.com. We hope that this article will lead to a lively discussion on these issues and lead to more uniform and comprehensive implementations of the FAAB across the different Internet scoring services.
BASIC CONSIDERATIONS IN A FAAB PROCEDURE
A FAAB procedure operates as follows. Each owner receives a FAAB budget for the season ($1000, for example) to spend towards acquiring free agents. The owner uses the FAAB budget to propose blind bids for the free agent players. Typically, when blind bidding, an owner must bid at least $1 from the FAAB budget (although some implementations allow for $0 bids) and can bid up to whatever $ the owner has left in his FAAB budget. At a set time each week, the scoring service determines the owner that wins the free agents according to the processes described below.
Various scoring services allow different types of blind bids. A discussion of the different types of blind bids that are typically allowed and the manner in which the scoring services decides upon the awards of the free agents to the fantasy owners are now discussed.
Types of FAAB Bids
The two primary types of blind bids (or FAAB bids) that are generally supported in a FAAB implementation are the Unconditional Bid (UB) and the Conditional Bid (CB). An Unconditional Bid is a bid that specifies (i) the free agent that the owner would like to acquire, (ii) the FAAB bid price and (iii) the player to be released from the owner’s team. An example of an unconditional bid is the following:
Acquire Jones for $15 and Release Smith
In this unconditional bid, Jones is the free agent the owner would like to acquire, $15 is the FAAB bid price and Smith is the player to be released,.
A Conditional Bid is a complex set of bids that has one or more conditional actions specified, in case the primary bid is not successful. The most common reason for the primary request to be unsuccessful is because another owner has bid more for the free agent in question. The first request in a conditional bid looks the same as an unconditional bid. However, there are subsequent requests with a conditional bid that only come into play if the primary bid is unsuccessful. An example of a conditional bid is the following.
Acquire Jones for $15 and Release Smith
Else, Acquire Johnson for $10 and Release Smith
Else, Acquire Booth for $3 and Release Walker
Under this conditional bid, Johnson could be acquired by the owner specifying this bid only if the owner fails to get Jones. If, under the FAAB process, the assignment of Johnson to a team is carried out before Jones is assigned to a team, then this owner will not be considered when assigning Johnson to a team. This is truly the meaning of a conditional bid.
Continuing this exampled, Booth can only be acquired by the owner specifying this conditional bid if the owner fails to get Jones and Johnson and Booth has not yet been assigned to an owner. In other words, a conditional bid in its most general context is executed in the order specified.
Two issues regarding conditional bids that can be and are often implemented differently with different scoring services are (i) the specification of the dropped player and (ii) the FAAB bid for each bid in the contingent bid. In the conditional bid example given above, Smith is released in the first two lines specified in the conditional bid and Walker is released in the third line of this conditional bid. Some scoring services assume that the same player must be dropped in all lines of the conditional bid while others allow you to specify a different player to be released for each line of the conditional bid.
Also, in the example above, the FAAB bid price is non-increasing among the bids in the conditional bid - in this case, $15, $10, and $3. All scoring services that we are aware of require a non increasing FAAB bid within a conditional bid. We believe this assumption is made mostly for ease of implementation and believe this assumption is an unnecessary restriction. This issue is described in more detail later in this article.
Order of Processing the Bids
For the purpose of this discussion, we define a primary bid to be any remaining unconditional bid or the highest remaining line within a conditional bid.
Under any FAAB implementation, there are potentially many different free agents being bid on by many different owners. The order in which the free agents are auctioned can affect the ultimate outcome of the FAAB bids. For example, consider the following three owner example with two different free agents being bid on:
Owner 1: Acquire Player A for $10 and release Player X
Owner 2: Acquire Player B for $20 and release Player Y
Owner 3: Acquire Player B for $15 and release Player Z
Else, acquire Player A for $12 and release Player Z
Case 1: Player A is auctioned first
If player A is auctioned first, then Owner 1 would receive player A since his primary bid for player A at $10 is the highest (and only) primary bid for player A. After assigning player A to owner 1, the two remaining primary bids would be Owner 2 bidding $20 on player B and Owner 3 bidding $15 on player B. Player B would then be assigned to Owner 2 as his primary bid of $20 beats Owner 3’s primary bid of $15.
The end result of this process when starting with player A is:
Owner 1 receives player A for $10
Owner 2 receives player B for $20
Case 2: Player B is auctioned first
Now let’s assume that player B is auctioned first. Under this scenario, Owner 2 would receive player B since his primary bid for player B at $20 is the highest primary bid for player B. Next, player A would be auctioned. Owner 3 would be awarded player A with a $12 primary bid (line 2 of his conditional bid became a primary bid after player B was assigned to owner 2) beating the $10 primary bid specified by owner 1.
The end result when starting with player B is:
Owner 2 receives player B for $20
Owner 3 receives player A for $12
Conclusion
Obviously from the small example above, the order in which the free agents are auctioned changes the outcome of the auction. Most Internet scoring services choose the order to assign free agents by determining the remaining primary bid that has the maximum FAAB price assigned to it. We agree with this rule and assume this rule in the discussion below.
Types of Bids Allowed by the Stat Service
As discussed earlier, the two different sets of bid options that various stat services allow are as follows:
a. Unconditional Bids only. In this implementation, all FAAB bids must be unconditional bids. This is the implementation that Sportsline.com uses.
b. Unconditional Bids as well as Conditional Bids where all FAAB prices in the conditional bid must be non-increasing. In this implementation, a bid may be unconditional or conditional. If the bid is conditional, the player being acquired by a primary bid must have a FAAB bid as least as great as the 1st conditional player in the bid, the 1st conditional player in the bid must have a FAAB bid as least as great as the 2nd conditional bid, etc. This is the implementation that STATS.com uses.
A third option that we believe should be considered, but to our knowledge, has not been implemented to this point, is the following:
c. Unconditional Bids as well as Conditional Bids where the FAAB prices in the conditional bid may be decreasing or increasing or equal. In this scenario, a bid may be unconditional or conditional. If the bid is conditional, the primary FAAB bid can be greater than or less than or equal to the 1st conditional bid in the overall conditional bid, the 1st conditional bid in the overall conditional bid can have a FAAB bid greater than or less than or equal to the 2nd conditional bid in this overall conditional bid, etc.
We now discuss the pros and cons of each of these options.
Unconditional Bids Only
Sportsline.com assumes unconditional bids only. The unconditional bids only criterion is (i) the simplest to understand for the novice owner, (ii) is the most restrictive of all possible bid options and (iii) restricts certain moves that an experienced owner may want to make. The biggest drawback to only allowing unconditional bids is that an owner may want to pick up a single free agent, but the player he drops would be dependent upon whom he picks up.
For example, assume an owner want to pick up a particular starting pitcher from the free agent pool, and drop one of his starters. However, if the owner is not awarded the desired starting pitcher, then the owner wants to attempt to pick up relief pitcher from the free agent pool, and drop one of relief pitchers. Unconditional bids prevents prevent the owner from accomplishing his goal.
As an example, assume an owner enters the following two primary bids:
Acquire Free Agent Starter for $5 and drop Starter
Acquire Free Agent Reliever for $5 and drop Reliever
Under this process, the owner may have both bids succeed. As such, the owner is awarded two free agents at a total cost of $10.
The owner can ensure only getting one free agent by entering two primary bids where each bid drops the same relief pitcher. This situation looks like the following.
Acquire Free Agent Starter for $5 and drop Reliever
Acquire Free Agent Setup Man for $5 and drop Reliever
Under this scenario, the owner is susceptible to getting a starter from the free agent pool and dropping a reliever.
In summary, under the unconditional moves only situation, the owner does not have the flexibility to tie the player to drop with the free agent to acquire, limiting the number of free agent pickups and control the total FAAB dollars spent.
Discussion of No-Price Increasing Conditional Bids
Conditional bids allow owners to better manage their bids. Using the example above, the owner can enter the following single conditional bid, and ensure that he get no more than one free agent while being able to drop the appropriate player based upon the free agent he acquires.
Acquire Free Agent Starter for $5 and drop Starter
Else, Acquire Free Agent Setup Man for $5 and drop Reliever
Under this conditional bid, the owner would get at most one free agent, and would be dropping the appropriate player based upon his free agent pickup.
A drawback to this type of conditional bid is that the conditional bids have to be non-increasing. We next discuss situations in which an astute owner may want to have a conditional bid be greater than the primary bid.
Conditional Bids that Allow Price Increasing
While we have not seen it implemented, we believe it should be allowed to have a conditional bid in which the conditional bid is greater than the primary bid. An example is as follows:
Owner 1: Acquire Jones for $10 and Release Smith
Else, Acquire Booth for $20 and Release Smith
Else, Acquire Johnson for $3 and Release Smith
Owner 2: Acquire Jones for $18 and Release Hammond
Owner 3: Acquire Booth for $15 and Release Clemens
When assigning the free agents based upon the above bids, the highest primary bid is initially Jones for $18. Thus, Jones is assigned to Owner 2 and Hammond is released. After assigning Jones, the highest remaining primary bid is now Booth for $20. Thus, Booth is assigned to Owner 1 and Smith is released. No free agent is assigned to Owner 3. The results of this process are the following:
Owner 2 gets Jones for $18
Owner 1 gets Booth for $20.
In this process, the only reason Owner 1 was able to get Booth was because his conditional bid for Booth was allowed to be greater than his primary bid for Jones. If this was not allowed (as in all current implementations of the FAAB with conditional bidding), then owner 1 would have been allowed to only bid a maximum of $10 for Booth, and, thus, would have lost Booth to Owner 3.
Bidding higher on conditional bids, however, does not ensure that an owner will receive the conditional free agent. To illustrate, consider the following example:
Owner 1: Acquire Jones for $10 and Release Smith
Else, Acquire Booth for $20 and Release Smith
Owner 2: Acquire Jones for $14 and Release Hammond
Owner 3: Acquire Booth for $15 and Release Clemens
Booth is assigned to Owner 3 as the highest primary bid is Booth for $15. After assigning Booth, Jones is assigned to Owner 2 as the highest remaining primary bid is now Jones for $14. The result of the bidding is:
Owner 3 gets Booth for $15.
Owner 2 gets Jones for $14
When Owner 2 lowered his primary bid on Jones to $14, the order that the free agents were allocated changed from the previous example and Owner 1’s conditional bid on Booth did not come into play as Booth was already assigned to Owner 3 before Owner 1’s primary bid on Jones was executed – even though Owner 1’s bid for Jones was higher than Owner 2’s bid for Jones.
Proposed Procedure
We believe allowing conditional bids to have higher bids that the primary bid allows for more gamesmanship and can help the owner in some cases, and hurt the owner in others. However, in all cases, the total amount of FAAB dollars spent will always be greater than or equal to the amount spent if conditional bids could not be increasing. We think that is a side benefit that also will benefit the savvy player.
Proposed General FAAB Procedure for All Scoring Services
The three procedures that we discuss for submitting bids under a FAAB were as follows:
a. Unconditional Bids only
b. Unconditional Bids and No Price Increasing Conditional Bids
c. Unconditional Bids and Conditional Bids with no Restriction on the magnitude of the FAAB
Bids within a Conditional Bid.
We believe all stat services should support each of the three procedures for submitting bids presented above with an option that allows each league to decide the rule that it wishes to use in the specification of the type of bids to allow. The implementation issues that a stat service would confront in implementing the proposed general FAAB procedure is really quite modest and allows the leagues to choose the process under which they wish to operate. Education of the owners becomes an important consideration with this general procedure. We urge that each league take the time to carefully explain the FAAB procedure they plan to use to each owner in the league.
Further, we suggest that, no matter what option is selected for submitting FAAB bids, the order to assign free agents to an owner is carried out according the Primary Bid that has the maximum FAAB price assigned to it at that step in the process.
Conclusions
This article proposes a more general approach for carrying out the FAAB procedure, a critical part of many fantasy baseball leagues. We think that this more general approach has many advantages and some disadvantages and that the advantages significantly outweigh the disadvantages. What do you think? Your comments are appreciated and encouraged.