Auctions have become, perhaps, the most popular form of drafting fantasy baseball teams in recent years. Dynasty leagues have seen a big uptick in recent years too as fantasy owners want the general manager experience rather than just a single year experience with the players they’re investing time into researching. Also driving the interest in dynasty leagues is the boom in prospect reporting and scouting and fans being more knowledgeable about who’s coming through their team’s farm system. So, we’ve gathered there’s a lot of interest in all of these areas, but what of it? Going into a dynasty auction with a standard auction strategy for a re-draft league will only lead to trouble for you building your roster past one year. That’s where this piece comes in. Setting up a strategy for dynasty auctions is paramount when you’re joining a new league or just starting a league from scratch.

What’s Different in a Dynasty Auction

In a re-draft league it’s all about amassing the best roster of guys that will put up their best numbers for the year you have them. Paying up for that stud pitcher or hitter has no effect on their value for the following year since it’s about one year at a time. That’s the clear difference between dynasty and re-draft, there are more years involved in a dynasty league, plain and simple. The other major difference is that prospects are more heavily involved in a dynasty league in general than re-drafts, unless you’re banking on the prospect coming up that year and crushing it. Depending on your league format, you may have to factor in drafting prospects in the auction, but if your league does a snake draft following the auction for bench spots, don’t factor the prospects into your auction plans. Pricing in dynasty auctions might be a bit deflated for the middle and lower tier players as compared to the re-draft or even shorter length keeper leagues depending on how your league is formatted. This is because owners will want to keep the price to keep the players for the following year down to stay under the salary cap with the best team possible. The other major difference in a dynasty auction, especially a startup, is that injured players will be bid on late in the draft to fill bench spots, if your league is setup to bid on bench players. In a short-term keeper, and especially re-draft auction, injured players won’t get bid on because the value for the next year or year and a half isn’t worth their time to roster. However, for a dynasty league those guys will come off the board, for a drastically reduced price depending on the injury.

Pre-Draft Strategy

After studying your league rules or knowing what they are in a startup dynasty league, we’ve got to dig into the pre-draft portion of the offseason. The top thing you want to do isn’t studying the projections or rankings from your favorite analysts or sites, it’s putting those rankings and projections into context. If they are just raw numbers to you, it’s hard to see what the difference is between players that you might put in the same tier at each position once you get in the draft room. How do you put context to the data? You read…a lot…A LOT! Scour Twitter for the beat writers for each team as well as the writers and opponent broadcast crews for the opponents of that team in spring training to see what everyone is saying about the different players in the game. Follow injury updates and what they mean for playing time for the injured player as well as their potential replacements. Lastly, don’t box score surf in spring training, actually watch the games either on TV or via streaming services, but watch the games. You need to see who is in the game at the time the player you’re watching is put up their stats. Did the home run come against an A-ball pitcher getting a taste of spring training or was it against a starter expected to be in the rotation? Did the pitcher strikeout 3-4 guys who never had a shot of making the roster and will be at home on the couch in a week? Or did he send the heart of the order of the MLB team down swinging? When were the relievers used in the game? Greg Jewett makes a great point of saying that, usually, the fifth inning is where you will see the typical closer come in during a spring training game and not the ninth like we’re accustomed to in the regular season. It might sound like a lot of work, but it’ll put you head and shoulders ahead of your league-mates that are just looking at box scores and drafting guys off good spring numbers against players that weren’t bound for the majors anyway. Most importantly in spring training, watch position battles and who is getting the starts in what situations, especially when prospects are involved who are hoping to break camp with the team. If you spot a sneaky starter, that gives you an advantage to nab a starter for your roster for not a lot of money which saves money for the higher-priced players.

Another thing that is always a good idea to do is to use multiple projection systems. There are a huge number of them out there for a reason. Each one uses slightly different methodology and algorithms to generate the projections but if you combine several of them, two things happen. First, you almost ensure that you’ll have your own unique set of numbers in whatever league(s) you’re in, and secondly it will mitigate those system that are super high or low on a particular player so you’ll have fewer outliers. You can then also make your own rankings off those combined projections and that will set you apart as well.

In-Draft Strategy

You can do all of the research and prep that you want to, but it won’t matter unless you have multiple plans in place. There’s that Mike Tyson saying that everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth and the same can be said for auction drafts as well. Everyone goes in with a dream list of players and a full roster of targets but guess what? So does everyone else and they likely have some, or a lot, of all the same targets you do. That’s why having back-up plans after back-up plans as to how you want to build the roster throughout the draft. Mock drafting can help you with putting together these strategies, but dynasty drafts require a bit of different strategy than you’ll find in re-draft or keeper drafts. The elite players will go just as they normally do, though perhaps a bit less depending on the league setup and keeper rules. The strategy gets more involved when we’re talking about the young players, rookies, and prospects that will get bid on with eager anticipation. Everyone loves the new shiny toys on their rosters but here’s the thing, paying too much for these players can hamstring you not only for the current draft but also future seasons depending on how your league’s keeper rules are set up and if there are any additional costs to retaining players. In my Risk of Rookies piece you will see that banking on rookies to be a big part of your lineup for fantasy purposes is still a big risk and that remains true in dynasty leagues as well. I am one that doesn’t go bid-heavy on the rookies that are coming up, but you can’t ignore them completely so picking and choosing your spots on the young guys is the most reliable way to strategize. For example, looking for rookies that are guaranteed playing like Jo Adell or Nick Madrigal or Jesús Luzardo or A.J. Puk are better bets than going for guys like Alec Bohm or Nate Lowe or even Carter Kieboom to a degree where there are vets that can play third base in D.C. By no means am I saying to avoid these players, but in order to find success, you should dig deeper into their situations and know what you’re comfortable paying in the auction.

Getting depth on the roster is also a big-time key in dynasty leagues as you don’t have the option of just dropping a player mid-season because of an injury like you do in re-draft leagues. If a guy gets hurt you have to store them on the roster and have depth to replace them without having to make a major move either by trade or free agent pickup since both of them require you to lose a player you may want to keep past this current season.

If you are in a tough spot having to decide between two players that you really like heading into the year, going with the younger player is generally the better strategy play for dynasty leagues for a few reasons. One is simply that the younger player gives you the shot to roster them for a longer period of time. The second reason is also simple, younger players generally have a better chance to put up big seasons more regularly since 26-32 is generally considered to a player’s prime years. The third reason has to do with what we just touched on, which is younger players tend to get injured less and rebound from injury, when they do get them, quicker and therefore don’t leave as big of a hole in your lineup. Aside from age, also avoid players with an injury history, at least for hitters. Guys like Giancarlo Stanton , Yoenis Céspedes , David Dahl , or even Gregory Polanco are players who will just infuriate you year after year and you’ll have a hard time getting your investment back on them if they can’t stay healthy. Pitchers fairly routinely come back from major injuries, so their injury history has to be very in-depth for them to be scratched off the draft board.

Conclusion

Dynasty leagues take more strategy both before and during the draft than a standard re-draft or even keeper league does. You have to take into account the numerous seasons you have a player on your team for and that takes more research and prep for the draft. During the draft make sure you are executing your plan, and backup plans when necessary, and when you get into a tough decision spot, pick the player that’s younger and has a better health history. All of these can guide you through a dynasty auction with a team that is ready to compete, and ready to compete for the next several years.