A fan of the Yankees, Red Sox, and large sample sizes.

 
ONE BUCK MINIMUM

Perhaps you all realize this already, and I'm just behind the eight ball, but I've been thinking a lot about the $1 minimum bid and how it affects valuation. You have to spend at least $1 on everyone you buy. Thus, that $1 doesn't really represent $1 worth of value, just the cost of aquiring a player. We've all noticed this phenomenon at the end of an auction. If you've got $6 left for four positions, you can't bid all $6 on one player. You can bid up to $3 on one player, leaving you with exactly $1 for the last three.

If we gave every team $23 less dollars to spend on 23 players and allowed minimum bids of $0, the auctions would run exactly the same. Players would be nominated at $0 instead of $1, and we'd decide whether to up the bidding or drop out. Every team is spending $23 of their $260 the same way - in order to get 23 players. It's really the money spent above the minimum that has any value.

So in reality, we should ignore $23 of each team's budget when assigning value to players. Go through the whole valuation process - find replacement, add up stats above replacement, compute $$/stat, and assign value - but only use $237 of each team's budget to value players. Then, add $1 back into everyone's price to represent the $1 minimum bid. The draftable pool will still add up to the actual total budgets, but value will be assigneed correctly - as value above $1 instead of value above $0.

I just adjusted my dollar values using this approach and it bumps down the top players about $3. Nothing extremely significant, but the fewer irregularities in values and projections, the better off you are. It can all add up and cause some prices to be way off.

Posted by Sky at 10:57 AM | 0 comments