There’s one factor that I think can give you an incredible edge on a Yahoo auction: Knowing Yahoo’s prices. Yahoo’s prices are displayed for each player that is brought up for bidding. It acts as an incredible price control — people are unwilling to stray too far from Yahoo’s recommendation. And this is an opportunity to leverage the situation.

Here are my four rules for dominating a Yahoo auction:

1. Configure the Price Guide for Yahoo leagues. The Price Guide can build values for any league, so you need to make sure it’s customized correctly for a Yahoo auction. Yahoo’s $260 cap includes 5 bench players, so I’d drop that down in the Price Guide (which only values starters) to $250 or $255. Yahoo leagues only do 1 C, no CI or MI, and 2 Util.

On the pitching side, Yahoo starts 2 SP, 2 RP, and 4 P. I think 5 SP and 3 RP gives a pretty good approximation. I also set a custom hitter/pitcher split to tone down the values for pitchers — 60/40 seems to be pretty close. This should be pretty close to what you need.

2. Be willing to spend on top-tier talent. Yahoo’s suggested values top out at $37. The Price Guide has no problem spending $50+ on Hanley and Pujols. It is quite realistic to end up with 4-5 guys who would typically be 1st or 2nd rounders.

3. Nominate guys that Yahoo overvalues. Once you’ve spent all your money on the best talent, it’s time to sit back and wait a while. Having spent lots of your money in Step 2, it’s time to help others spend their’s.

If there’s anyone autopicking in your draft, they will usually jump up to Yahoo’s recommended bid whenever they can. If there’s anyone that Yahoo has ranked higher than you do, you can easily clear some cash from the room.

All you have to do is nominate someone that Yahoo has ranked highly that you don’t want. It won’t take long for an autopicker to jump on it. Some names that worked well for me:

Rick Porcello
Garrett Jones
Jorge Cantu
Curtis Granderson
Elvis Andrus
Mark Teahen
Neftali Feliz
Ubaldo Jimenez
Gavin Floyd
Jason Bartlett
Aaron Hill
John Danks
Orlando Cabrera
Chris Coghlan
Kendry Morales
Ichiro Suzuki
Brandon Phillips
Andrew Bailey
Nyjer Morgan
Ryan Theriot

None of those are guys that the projections here think very highly of. And even if you don’t have anyone autopicking, your league is unlikely to resist the pull of Yahoo’s rankings. It’s unlikely that you will win any of those guys with a $1 bid.

4. Look for bargains where Yahoo’s prices are too low. As mentioned before, Yahoo doesn’t have the top-tier high enough, so don’t be afraid to get several guys in the $30-40’s. Yahoo is also really down on RP: Trevor Hoffman for $3? Bobby Jenks isn’t even ranked above replacement.

As your league is filling up on the trash you’re bringing up in Step 3, keep an eye out for potential bargains that you can get with the money you have left. Following the Price Guide, these are some guys you could be targeting:

Vladimir Guerrero*
Javier Vazquez
Mike Napoli
Hiroki Kuroda
Jonathan Broxton
Billy Wagner
Ryan Ludwick
Matt Holliday
Lance Berkman
Russell Martin
Ted Lilly
Trevor Hoffman
Carlos Quentin
Heath Bell
Johan Santana
Hanley Ramirez
Jay Bruce
Jair Jurrjens
Tim Hudson
Jose Reyes
Manny Ramirez
Albert Pujols

* Vlad only qualifies at Util, but Yahoo has two Util spots this year. Guerrero under $10 looks like a great deal in this format.

Are there any other strategies you’ve found for Yahoo’s auctions?

Vladimir Guerrero $20
David Ortiz $10
Hideki Matsui $5

I’ll admit, seeing an Andrew Jackson beside Vladimir Guerrero’s name surprised me a little. After a horrific 2009 (valued at $1 according to the Price Guide), I had tempered my expectations.

And apparently I wasn’t alone: Just to compare a couple of other sources, Fantasy Ball Junkie calculates the average auction price for Vlad as $8. Tim Dierkes values him at $9. Yahoo also suggests $9, but the Yahoo mock-auctioners are bidding an even more cautious $5.

In reality, when Vlad played last year, he played great. He hit for average and for power, he walked plenty, and even nabbed a couple of bases. His skills aren’t diminished, he just couldn’t get healthy. If we assume a healthy 2010 as the Rangers’ DH, he should be a lot closer to his 2008 ($25) than 2009. And that would make Guerrero a great bargain for 2010.

David Ortiz’s fall from grace is a little more worrisome. Whereas Guerrero was still batting around .300 in his down 2009 year, Ortiz couldn’t top .240 (after hitting .264 the year before). I don’t know if Ortiz is done or not as fantasy contributor, but I think the risk is much higher for him than for Guerrero. (Interestingly, Dierkes puts Ortiz at $8, just one buck below Guerrero. The Price Guide thinks there’s a much wider gap.) One redeeming feature for Ortiz is that he at least qualifies at 1B in leagues that requires 6 GS or fewer (like Yahoo).

Just like there’s an unquantifiable bonus for qualifying at multiple positions, there’s also a monetary penalty for a player who locks up your utility spot. I’d say that fantasy drafters take that into account when they are bidding, potentially to the tune of $2-3 below the true value.

Which brings us to Hideki Matsui. Matsui never had the power that the other two guys had, and that means he’s a notch below both of them. He’s valued at $5, and the DH inflexibility takes off a little of that value. Honestly, I think I’d rather have a slightly inferior hitter who can play a position and who doesn’t have as much age/injury risk. Even somebody like Mark Teahen (3B,OF) — valued at -$2 — seems like a more attractive option to me than Matsui.

Here are some of the things it lets you do:

Customize Player Values for Your League
In fantasy baseball today, there’s no such thing as a standard league — your specific league settings can drastically alter the fantasy values of players. So why do so many fantasy sites and magazines only give a one-size-fits-all ranking of players?

The Price Guide adjusts player values to the particulars of your league. So if you’re in an 8-team, NL-only league with standard categories or a 14-team league that adds OBP and holds, the Price Guide delivers values that are customized to those exact specifications. The Price Guide can be configured to handle literally millions of unique leagues.

Wonder how the Price Guide works? The details of its inner workings are all spelled out on the site, so there’s no proprietary secret or black-box to the methodology. There’s nothing about the Price Guide that you shouldn’t be able to recreate on your own.

Edit the Projections
While the Price Guide projections are already great, what happens if you disagree with the projected stats for a player? With the Price Guide, you can easily tweak any player’s stats and the values for all players will be automatically recalculated.

So let’s say you come across a prospect who is initially slated for 10 HR and 10 SB, but you think he can get 20 of each. Enter new values on the Price Guide, and you’ll not only see his value jump, but you will also see a slight revaluation of everyone else as the number of available HR and SB increases.

Enter Keepers
If your league let’s you keep players, you know that they can have a dramatic effect on draft-day prices. With the Price Guide, as you enter keeper prices, you can watch the inflation rate raise the values of the remaining players.

Upload Your Own Projections
If you ever encounter a situation where you want to change a large number of players’ values, the Price Guide also lets you upload your own projections into the system. All you have to do is put the stats in a simple Excel format and upload them to the site. You can upload as many sets as your want, so you are free to continually adjust your projections throughout the spring.

Add Values to Your League Website
Using a Firefox add-on called Greasemonkey, you can even add Price Guide dollar values to your league website. Get a leg-up on the competition with this handy tool to help you evaluate free agent pickups and trade opportunities.

The dollar values work with Yahoo, ESPN, CBS, and Allstar Stats leagues. As on the Price Guide site, the values are customized for your exact league settings, and the year-to-date values update daily throughout the season.

Interested yet? Everything is completely free, so why don’t you try it out?

J.R. Towles (C – Hou)
Erick Aybar (SS – LAA)
Mike Napoli (C – LAA)
Matt Diaz (OF – Atl)
Gregg Zaun (C – Mil)
Chris Iannetta (C – Col)
Jorge Posada (C – NYY)
Elijah Dukes (OF – Was)
Rickie Weeks (2B – Mil)
Ryan Doumit (C – Pit)

On average, these players saw their fantasy values jump by about $14 after the playing time adjustment!

In fantasy baseball, a player’s value is based not only on his skills, but also on his opportunities. A relief pitcher gains tons of value when he moves from an 8th to 9th inning role and starts accumulating saves. Pitchers on good offensive teams will get more wins, and hitters will get more RBIs.

And a playing time opportunity will give some players a chance to find fantasy value this year. A couple of names on the list find themselves unexpectedly at the top of the depth chart for 2010 — J.R. Towles, Matt Diaz, and Gregg Zaun especially.

Others on the list missed significant time last year due to injury. That is true for Ryan Doumit, Elijah Dukes, and Rickie Weeks. The projections all downgrade their playing time, but they get quite a boost if we assume they will be healthy in 2010.

Notice also the unusual number of catchers on this list; I’ll come back to them in a minute. On the other hand, you have to go down a ways to start finding pitchers. Chris Carpenter and Billy Wagner get big boosts after injuries, and Mat Latos gets a depth-chart jump.

Here are the players whose value decreases after adjusting for projected playing time:

Chris Fetter (SP – SD)
Carlos Alvarado (SP – LAD)
Brad Brach (RP – SD)
Jon Jay (C – StL)
J.R. House (C – KC)
Matt Miller (2B – Col)
Matthew Way (SP – Phi)
Juan Francisco (3B – Cin)
Kelvim Escobar (SP – NYM)
Eric Farris (2B – Mil)
Oscar Salazar (OF – SD)

Who? I’d say taking these guys off the list is a definite positive. Once again there are a few factors that are evident:

First, apparently Petco can make several guys buried in the minors look like decent pitchers for fantasy. If they played anywhere else, we wouldn’t be seing Chris Fetter or Brad Brach on this list.

Others are just too far down on the depth chart and blocked by other players at the major league level. J.R. House looks like a decent catcher from his minor league stats, but he’s unlikely to get ahead of Jason Kendall and Brayan Pena on the Royals’ depth chart.

As mentioned above, catcher is the position with the most movement (in both directions) from the playing time adjustment. Real baseball teams determine playing time based on more than just fantasy production, and — for catchers especially — defense matters. So guys who have an above replacement bat might not figure to get any time in the majors, while several fantasy-irrelevant catchers will get plenty of starts. I think this shift is also responsible for pushing higher the dollar values of the top-tier catchers on the adjusted projections.

Dan has graciously allowed me to include the ZiPS projections as an option in the Price Guide, where they are available individually and mixed in with CHONE and CAIRO (Composite projections). If you find the ZiPS projections useful, I encourage you to donate a little to Dan to help keep these free. A ton of work goes into making these, and the only credit I can take is as a middle-man.

I’ve also recently updated the CAIRO projections to version 0.4 and CHONE to the freshest 2/28 spreadsheet. Throwing ZiPS in a blender with those two new releases gives a new look to our composite projections that admittedly makes me a little uncomfortable: Joe Mauer has moved into the #1 spot as the projected most valuable hitter for 2010. I think this is due to not only the quality difference between him and the last catcher picked, but also to a difference in quantity. The playing time adjustments indicate that good catchers play more often than bad catchers, even starting at DH or 1B on days they aren’t catching.

In a 1-catcher league, the difference is not as pronounced. But with two starting catchers, the combination of qualitative and quantitative advantages puts a huge gap between Mauer and guys like Ivan Rodriguez and Nick Hundley. I’d be interested if someone has any suggestions for making these rankings stick a little bit closer to reality.

Mass answers the question I’ve always been wondering: “What happens if you rank fantasy hitters using bizarre, illogical criteria?” His top 10 fantasy hitters:

1 Jacoby Ellsbury
2 Carl Crawford
3 Michael Bourn
4 Albert Pujols
5 Matt Kemp
6 Mark Reynolds
7 Ryan Braun
8 Ian Kinsler
9 Hanley Ramirez
10 Chone Figgins

Now there’s something unusual about that list, but I can’t quite put my finger on it… Mass has already expressed his love for Ellsbury, so I guess it’s not too surprising that he puts Carl Crawford #2 and Michael Bourn #3.

How did this happen? The secret is in the faulty starting assumption:

What we’ve done is very simple. We’ve taken the league-wide totals from last season to create a statistical universe for our players to inhabit. We determined the expected statistical output of the average player, assuming even distribution among the lineup spots. From this, we were able to extrapolate the relative value of each hit, each run scored and so on. In other words, since there were more home runs than stolen bases in 2009, by a ratio in the neighborhood of 7-to-4, the value of each stolen base was about seven-fourths that of a home run, matching the relative frequency of the event.

I’m pretty sure you want to use the totals from a typical fantasy league, not all of MLB. Using the pool of fantasy starters will either get you to SGP or standard scores, either of which should yield a pretty realistic result.

Using the pool of all MLB hitters is just going to give you a mess.

At this point it just looks like an experiment, but the potential shift has lots of people talking. For fantasy purposes, a 2B-eligible Figgins would be a throwback to his legendary flexibility of years past.

But how valuable is Figgins at 2B? As a 3B in a standard league, I’ve got him at $11. That may seem a bit conservative after his breakout $19 campaign in 2009, but don’t forget about a 2008 where he barely managed to be above replacement level. He’s also making the transition from the Angels to the Mariners, and I don’t see many guys in Seattle that will be able to provide much help for his run totals. He’s hard to predict for 2010, but the best guess is that his true talent lies somewhere in between 2008 and 2009 — maybe about $11.

All of that assumes he only qualifies at 3B for fantasy, though. You might notice that the Price Guide lists a “Total” value and an “Adj. Total.” The former represents a player’s value without regard for position; the latter is after taking position into account. Since the typical 2B is a little worse than the average 3B, a player with equivalent stats will be worth a little more as a 2B than as a 3B. The “League Info” tab of the Price Guide tells you how much each position is adjusted.

To figure out what Figgins is worth as a 2B, all you have to do is replace the 3B adjustment with the 2B one. It turns out that, in a standard fantasy league, Figgins would get a bump from about $11 to $15 if you could put him at 2B.

There’s also some value in a player qualifying at two positions: You gain roster flexibility for off days, and you have more options for replacing an injured player. Those things are tough to quantify, but I’d pay a couple of extra dollars for a 2B/3B. I could easily see a swing from $11 to $18 when everything is accounted for.

Keep in mind that all of this is for a standard league that starts an extra CI and MI. Surprisingly, in a shallow league like the Yahoo or ESPN default setup, there is basically no gain for switching from 3B to 2B. The hypothetical 2B-Figgins is valued at $8, just a slight improvement from the expected $6. With only 10 or 12 starting at each position, the drop-off on 2B is much closer to that of 3B than to SS.

In a situation without a MI slot, I’d be willing to give a little extra for multi-position eligibility. So maybe that original $6 becomes $12 if Figgins is a 2B/3B in Yahoo/ESPN.

How might that be done? My first choice for predicting playing time would be Tom Tango’s Community Forecasts, where he recruits large numbers of fans to predict the playing time for players on their favorite team. Unfortunately, when that survey is opened up in late March, it will be too late for lots of fantasy drafters.

So I’ve attempted a different approach in the meantime. I started with the average playing time that resulted when SG simulated 100 seasons using the CAIRO projections. I then made some manual adjustments based on my own guesses for teams’ depth charts (e.g. putting Alcides Escobar as the Brewers’ primary SS over Craig Counsell). I added estimated PA and IP for free agents. Finally, I knocked 10% off of pitchers’ IP and 5% off of hitters’ PA, which scaled them pretty closely to match the existing projections.

If that sounds like I’m just making stuff up as I go along…well, I sort of am. But I think it’s possible to improve on the wisdom of the computers with some subjective (but commonsensical) knowledge. For those who may be concerned with my meddling, I plan on keeping the unadjusted numbers around, as well.

You can see what the composite projections look like with playing time adjustments by selecting 2010 Composite (Adj.) on the Price Guide. I would love to hear input on where these can be improved. My initial concerns will probably be dropping PA for catchers a little bit and seeing about inflating the top tier a little bit.

Hanley Ramirez – Again, you want just about anyone but Tulo, Reyes or Rollins. Ideally, you want a big bat. I.e., not Carl Crawford. Someone that is going to get you 30+ homers. Howard and Fielder will be gone, but A-Gon, Morneau, Zimmerman or even Votto should be there. I’d consider J-Upside, but if I went that way I would definitely want another 30+ hitter sooner vs. later.

I really like the idea of thinking ahead for future picks, especially since so much energy is spent just thinking about the fantasy first round. I don’t think this is even inconsistent with the “take the best available” strategy. With a pairing strategy, you’re not locking yourself in on a certain player for the second round — you have to be flexible at the draft — but you are considering the kind of player you want. It’s hardly a reach to take Adrian Gonzalez over Carl Crawford with your second round pick.

Of course, it’s not strictly necessary to balance power-speed with your first picks. If you start off with Hanley and Crawford, you can fill in some power hitters in later rounds (say a Jason Kubel or Billy Butler). If you wind up with two power hitters early (maybe Prince Fielder and Adrian Gonzalez), you can always mix in some SB-threats later on. Your first two picks won’t put you so far ahead in any category that won’t need any other help in that stat.

But looking for a power-speed-pitching balance early does give you much greater flexibility later on. If I have some of each, I don’t have to reach for Michael Bourn a few rounds early to make sure I get stolen bases. I draft Bourn when he makes sense, and I never have to do anything desperate. Having both power and speed early in the draft gives you the freedom to just draft the best players later.

What can cause prices to change during an auction? I see a few possibilities:

A player below replacement level is drafted.
All it takes is someone bringing up Francisco Liriano or Daisuke Matsuzaka, not realizing that these are pitchers who are not expected to match their performances from a few years back. They are valued at a negative amount — below the replacement level for starting pitchers.

Every time this happens, the replacement level at that position moves up one player, and players at that position lose value. Basically, the supply of above-replacement pitchers has stayed the same, but the demand has dropped (as one less team needs to fill a spot).

A team overpays for a player.
The same dynamic deflation happens whenever someone overpays. Now there is less money than expected available, and prices for all players go down slightly.

A team underpays for a player.
The reverse of this has the opposite effect. If a team gets a bargain on a player, they now have extra money that must be spent on remaining players. Extra money drives prices up.

A team fills their roster with money left over.
Typically, any money that isn’t spent at an auction goes to waste. When a team finishes their roster, not only do you have one less bidder in the auction, but their remaining money disappears as well. Both of these factors will deflate prices for the remainder of the draft.

Are there any other factors that cause prices to go up or down during an auction?