5 Spending Strategies for Fantasy Auction Drafts

What’s the “right” way to spend your fantasy auction budget? Mike Sullivan (@mikesully58) looks at several different approaches. 

I recently came out with some auction draft tips and strategies for beginner’s but wanted to explore things a little more in-depth.

One of the biggest challenges in auction drafts is finding the “right” way to spend your auction budget and the best way to build your roster for fantasy success. Building a strong team at the draft gives you the edge once the season starts and doesn’t leave you scrambling the waiver wires or trying to make changes. 

Typically in auction drafts, a drafter has the advantage if they stay very open-minded in how they want to spend your money in the draft. This can be difficult as many people want to be as prepared as possible for the upcoming draft. However, I believe one can be prepared, but also be fluid in your approach. Especially in auction drafts as the outcome is so much more unpredictable than a typical snake draft. 

There are often several strategies or approaches many people might want to utilize when their auction draft comes around. I am here to explore the pros and cons of each one of these styles and really provide you with some knowledge to be as prepared as possible for your upcoming auction draft. I decided to utilize fantasypros.com auction values, which just like ADP are often ever-adaptin, so it’s essential to keep an eye on them as you get closer to your draft. 

The focus will be on a 200 dollar budget for this article and Average Auction Value (AAV) from fantasypros.com. For this article teams will be referenced as if they were in a 12-team PPR league in regards to AAV. Also, I decided to stick with a “typical” lineup, I went with one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one flex, one tight end, one kicker, one defense, and six bench spots. However, one can simply take some of the principles in this article to fit your own league’s roster spots if it is different. 

The Big Spender

One approach many people take is to go after several big-name players who often might be the first-round draft picks in snake drafts. For example, one could draft Saquon Barkley (63), Christian McCaffrey (55), and DeAndre Hopkins (47). These three picks provide us with three guys in the top ten overall but come with a total amount spent at 165 dollars. This allows for a remaining total of 35 dollars to be spent at your other positions. 

One important factor is to know if your league requires you to fill every position at the draft, which if we take out just a dollar for every remaining position you have a maximum bid of 23 dollars for your next acquisition. This puts you in range to grab guys like Kenyan Drake, David Montgomery, Tyler Lockett, and Kenny Golladay. However, if you do max bid on your fourth player then you are relying on making dollar bids to fill out the rest of your roster.

Now acquiring three top ten fantasy options is every fantasy player dream come true, but it can become a difficult one to rebound from if something does go wrong. When drafting this way you are expecting and relying on consistent, top of their position, point totals week to week. When you don’t get that you’re stuck hoping that your lower investment guys somehow blow up. If a guy underperforms or misses time you’re in trouble. For instance, in 2018 you could have taken this approach and drafted Le’Veon Bell or David Johnson as one of your top three and you would have been most likely let down by this approach. 

If you are dead set on taking this approach, you’re going to want to secure the lowest risk possible players you can get with your high priced acquisitions. You want to leave as little to chance as possible. Now I know we can’t predict injuries, but we can definitely identify several players who are “safe” picks and that is the best way to approach it. For instance, as I am writing this Melvin Gordon is holding out of training camp. He’s an obvious avoid if you’re taking this approach. 

Another way to try and recover from this if you notice you have spent a good chunk of your money on your first three to four players is to load up the rest of your roster with high-upside guys. This can be guys that might take over a starting job, are an injury away from breaking into a lineup, or younger players with high upside. Again I prefer taking a different approach, but if you find the desire to go this route you need to reduce risk wherever possible. 

The Stick-to-AAV Spender

This approach is someone who gets stuck with the idea that they should not overspend on players. When players begin to get nominated this drafter doesn’t adapt to what is going on. There might be running backs who start to go for way over what the average auction value is, which then creates the tendency to not overspend. This is where there is often a fine line in auction drafting, but it is one that is a walkable line.

What you want to avoid is not budging on auction values and end up waiting to get someone that is more in line with there AAV. This tendency may leave you with getting your top running back from a much lower tier than what you were hoping for. Sure you might have good depth, but depth can only carry you so far if you’re going up against teams with several top options. 

To counter this tendency you want to be open to whatever might come your way. Once again flexibility is key. This is also a chance to really get to know your league mates. I have mentioned it before in previous articles, but my home league does an auction draft and the top-12 running backs all go for fifty dollars or more. Knowing this I can adapt my strategy as well as expect to come draft day. This is where in this league I tend to nominate players at different positions to see if I can’t get others to spend some of their cash elsewhere (maybe a Patrick Mahomes nomination or a guy I don’t necessarily care for) before we begin the spending for running backs. 

Also knowing your league allows you to adapt AAV to reflect more accurately for the upcoming draft. For instance, fantasypros.com has the 12th ranked running back, Damien Williams, going for 31 dollars. In my home league, I know I need to bump that AAV up by approximately 15-20 dollars more. This at least prepares me for the fact that these running backs will go for more and allows me to not be surprised come draft day. If it’s a new league your joining, see if you can’t have access to the previous years draft to get an idea on spending tendencies. 

The Follow-the-Crowd Spender

It’s easy to get caught up and follow trends in an auction draft. You might start to notice a trend as the top running backs begin to get nominated and seem to be going for much higher than expected prior to drafting. I can tell you that you are not alone in noticing this and everyone else will often be thinking “I better make sure to lock up my top running back”.

One way to counter this, as we discussed in the last article, is to be aware of trends in the draft and be flexible. This is a good point to see if you can’t snag a different position for some value. Let’s say six of the top twelve running backs have gone off the board and it’s your turn to nominate. Why not try and toss out Deandre Hopkins or Travis Kelce to see if you can’t get him for his AAV or possibly even less?

Now let’s explore this a little deeper so I can show you what I mean. Below are two teams, which the one on the left is overspending on a top running back while the right is adapting to running backs going higher in the draft and getting a top wide receiver for three dollars less than AAV. I utilized dollar amounts to fill out kicker, defense, and bench and focused spending on starters to give us an idea of how this might turn out. 

Now on the left, we do acquire Barkley, but you can see how just spending 12 dollars more for him impacts the rest of our starting lineup. On the right is an auction drafter who has adapted to trends and moved away from a run on running backs. You can see on the right we have arguably the best receiver, an upgrade at wide receiver two, and an upgrade at flex. 

Now there is always the chance you break free from the run on running backs and nominate a receiver, but he still goes for more than his AAV. This necessarily isn’t a cause for panic because you still may get a good value on a different positional player despite it being “more than AAV”. For example, if you have Hopkins and you pay 52 dollars for him (five dollars over AAV). This still allows us to possibly get a guy like Robert Woods as our wide receiver two (instead of Thielen) and guys like Josh Jacobs, Phillip Lindsey, Tyler Lockett, or Kenny Golladay as our flex. 

Also spending five dollars early on could eventually help you when a run on wide receivers most likely begins. Let’s say we have had six top-12 running backs go for over AAV, we then adapted and took DeAndre Hopkins for five dollars more than his AAV. There are several options for what may happen from here. Either you started a run on receivers as others will notice that top options are going and shift focus there, which will most likely drive up the cost.

Option two is that the run on running backs continues, which then we stay willing to adapt and possibly toss out a top tight end or another receiver. Or option three: someone else starts a run at a different position. All in all, we want to avoid following the crowd and we want to be the one to start a run, rather than jump on board when everyone else is focusing on one position. 

The Late Spender 

Often times an approach in auction drafts is to completely punt away any spending in the first 20-30 picks (or more) and allow everyone else to spend their money acquiring top fantasy prospects. Then that person swoops in and begins outbidding everyone else for players who may range from 30-60 or later. This provides your team with some solid depth and gives you some good bench players, but once again makes it difficult to compete against some high powered teams. Let’s look at a few rosters to explore this. 

On the right is a value-based approach as you can see the drafter focused on lower-cost players. This team also had bench players that were Chris Godwin, Josh Jacobs, David Montgomery, Courtland Sutton, and Rashaad Penny. What makes a value approach difficult is having to go up against other teams with some strong players, like the one on the left. It is tough to compete with a team that took a more balanced approach but still was able to obtain two top ten fantasy options. 

Now approaching a draft with a value-based perspective is never a bad thing, but don’t automatically assume that there is no value to be had with the top 20-30 picks. Like we had discussed before, you want to keep an eye out for possible chances to gain top players to make the best team. We don’t want to miss out on developing the best possible team because we chose to ignore several players due to a potential cost. 

The Fluid Drafter

Now I have been preaching throughout this article about the importance of being fluid in your draft approach and discussed several ways to do this above. What I wanted to do was really express how beneficial I feel like an open-minded and fluid approach to an auction draft can benefit you. First of all, if we were to look at a snake style draft many people will recommend the best player available approach for who you select in each round.

Often times we might not want to go into a snake draft with the thinking “I am going to take a running back round one” as this can sometimes not be the best player available depending on how the draft falls and your draft position. This is very similar to auction drafting and coming in as open-minded as possible. 

Now part of the appeal of an auction draft is the ability to select whatever player we want. If we want to get McCaffrey, we can go and get him no matter the cost, and he is most likely going to be a strong fantasy asset. One of the main ways to remain a fluid auction drafter is to not focus on single players, but more so on tiers of players. This helps us find the best possible value at the position. 

For instance, if we tier the top four running backs Barkley, McCaffrey, Kamara, and Elliott (pending holdout) together we can then widen our vision and focus on saying “I want one of these guys” instead of just saying “I want McCaffrey”. Let’s say we focus on McCaffrey and want him no matter what. McCaffrey currently holds around a 60 dollar ADV and it is definitely possible, in order to get him we might need to spend 10-15 dollars more. So if we overspend 75 dollars on McCaffrey, but then find out we could have gotten Kamara for 60-65 auction dollars (56 AAV) we then have spent 15 dollars more than we could have to get a top asset. Many people might feel like it is just 15 dollars, but that 15 dollars could really help out filling out other positions as well later on in the draft. 

Developing a good auction draft strategy is really an art form, but it is doable. There will most likely be some trial and error when doing auction drafts, but I prefer them over your typical snake draft. Overall if you approach the auction draft with an open mind and are willing to remain flexible, you will begin to see how much it can pay off.