There's good reason for so much interest, Auction Leagues are FUN!!
Last year was my first experience with any type auction draft and I was a little concerned that I might be in over my head and end up embarrassing myself. Our team ended up 3rd
, so don't let your lack of auction experience keep you from enjoying one of these great live draft events. It will be the most fun you've ever had at a live draft. With the $650 auction leagues being offered this year it's a great chance for you to try an auction for the first time.Below is a short article I wrote for Leaderboardsports.com about my experience with last years NFBC NL Auction draft.
I had read a lot about auction drafts and had always wanted to try one but was afraid I would be a lamb led to slaughter among the auction wolves. Being a straight snake draft roto player, my knowledge of the LIMA plans, Stars and Scrubs, and other auction draft strategies was minimal, and I have to admit I was a little bit intimidated by auction drafts.
I always felt auction players looked down on us poor mixed-league snake guys, sort of like how Hootie Johnson at Augusta National feels about the Booz Allen Classic. So much has been written about auction strategies, auction player values and everything else to do with auctions that you would think auctions were the only game in town, and yet in today’s Internet driven fantasy baseball world, snake drafts and list drafts outnumber auction drafts 3 to 1. But I was still consumed by the desire to try an auction draft.
My opportunity came at last in the spring of 2004. I was on my way to Las Vegas for Greg Ambrosius and Krause Publishing’s high stakes National Fantasy Baseball championship and since I was arriving early in Vegas that week to place some bets on the NCAA basketball tourney, I decided along with my friend and fellow Leaderboard Sports cohort Jeff Rackliffe to enter the high stakes NFBC NL Auction which was being held the day before the main event at the Rio Hotel and Casino.
Here I am, a guy who has never even watched an auction draft, and I decide to make my first one a high stakes event with a $1,250 entry fee and against some of the fantasy sport industry’s best auction drafters who just happened to be in town for the fantasy sports trade conference.
To try and give you a good analogy, think of Garth Brooks coming to bat against Randy Johnson, not in a meaningless spring training game but in the seventh game of the World Series. As “Animal-Muther” said to Joker in the movie Full Metal Jacket “You’re in the @#*# now.”
Jeff and I set about getting ready for the big day with lots of research and dollar value plotting. This proved to be at least somewhat difficult in that we were both entered in the big snake draft the next day and had to spend a considerable amount of time preparing for that draft, but we managed to come up with a cheat sheet and after at least 5 minutes of brainstorming came up with the strategy that we wanted Todd Helton, Juan Pierre and Eric Gagne no matter the cost, giving us a solid foundation in batting average, RBIs, HRs, SB and saves. It’s not a complicated strategy, but at least we had one.
We arrive in Las Vegas and after losing the obligatory $100 on Black Jack, we went to the Rio and the 4 p.m. NL Auction Draft. I look around the horseshoe table layout and see a couple familiar faces. Meat Loaf and Bruce Barnard sit across the table looking especially intimidating with their laptops, briefcases and 32-ounce Diet Coke bottles. Ambrosius gives us a welcome speech and goes over the rules, and finally the first player is thrown out and the auction begins.
I won’t go into all the details about the auction draft, I can sum it all up in one word: WOW! What a great time I had. I’ve never seen seven hours go by so fast. I became a convert almost instantly. Early players tossed out seemed to go for less than value as everyone tried to feel each other out and we had to overpay to get Helton when he finally came out. We picked up Gagne at about the price we thought, but refused to bid More than $40 for Pierre and didn’t get him, thank goodness.
We came out of the draft happy as we ended up with a fairly well-balanced team, a little weak on speed and strikeouts but solid on offense. But the biggest thing we came out of the auction with was a desire to do it again next year. That was the most fun I’ve ever had at a fantasy baseball draft. I would highly recommend to everyone to give auctions a try. As far as the intimidation factor of auction drafts, it’s still just 5X5 roto baseball, and just like any list draft or snake draft, if you put together a decent balanced team, you’re going to finish near the top.
[ November 03, 2004, 04:55 PM: Message edited by: Leaderboard Sports ]
