Blind Auction League - Play Ball!

[canauscot]

I have a concept for a league.

If you like the idea of deciding how much a player is worth (rather than the figure TSN has put next to them), and pitting your bidding skills against other managers, then read on...

Every Manager will have a notional $128M* to bid on a roster of 40 players. These 40 players are exclusively yours throughout the season (unless you make a trade) and you may not use any other players (unless you make a trade). That is, only the players taken at auction will be used during the season and all other free-agents are off limits. Bid wisely! Bids will be conducted via email to a pair of co-commissioners (more on that later) before the season commences. League 'drafting' will follow the completion of the auction so that each team is awarded 25 of their players they have won at auction. League by-laws would stipulate the other 15 players are in the 'minors' and only available to their manager. Managers may bid any amount for a player so long as it is 80% of the players salary (that is, there is a reserve of 80% of a players sticker price - eg. $750K players may be had for $600K or you can overpay for that 'ace' you have to have). No more collusion, it's a free market!


*: $128M for 40 players is in the same ratio as $80M for 25 players, but I'm willing to take input on it.
note: in theory a team could be assembled with a combined 'salary' of $160M but you may not win any high-ceiling players and have to take whoever nobody else wanted.
note: the league will be played under the $200M cap allowance to allow for the salaries of active players and for players movement between the minors and "the show". With the $200M game engine allowance, a manager will have plenty of money to make moves between the majors and the minors and will be able to make 'unequal' salary trades.

Other points.
The auction would need to be conducted over several iterations. Each manager would be required to bid for 40 players initially. Obviously not every manager would win on every bid, so subsequent rounds would be made so that each manager was now bidding on enough players to fill out a 40 man roster using the remainder of their notional bid cap after allowing for the successful bids from previous rounds.

Bid 'ties' would be awarded to the team with the least amount of notional bid dollars spent on players it has won outright i.e. to the team with the most still to spend.

I'd need a co-commisioner hopefully with lots of TSN SOM experience (I'm just an idea guy). The co-commisioners would exchange bids (hopefully via e-mail at the same time) prior to inviting bids from the other managers. Other managers would then send their bids to each co-commissioner and the commisioners would determine the outcome of the bid round and inform all managers. This process repeats until each manager has a 40 man roster. Co-commissioners makes sure everyone can have faith in the bid process.

Other bid rules.
Invalid bids would be ignored.
Some Invalid bids would be;
for amounts under 80% of player 'salary'.
for a player already awarded to another manager.
for more than 40 players. ie if a manager was awarded 28 players from the first round of bidding, only the first valid 12 players from the next bid list would be considered.
for more than $128M*. any bids which would take a team over the auction cap.
Eg. A manager who has been awarded 36 players with auction bids of $124M would not be able to bid $4M for another player as they must insure they have sufficient bid dollars to pay at least $600K for each remaining player to fill up their roster. In this example the manager could bid a maximum of $2.2M for one player in order to leave $600K for each of 3 other players.

Other notes:
This league set-up ought to promote trading. i.e. When I find out that I've got two excellent 2B's but none of my 3B's are any good, I'll be tempted to find a team with two good 3B's or maybe an untested one from another teams minors. Game 'salary' should not be an obstacle to completing the trade, since both teams are likely to have lots of $200M game cap space.
Active roster sizes will follow the general SOM rules, but a by-law would set a minimum of roster size of 38 (open to input). This means 2 for 1 trades could be done, but may stop some teams from concentrating their team too greatly. Trades could be conducted using the game engine and/or via e-mail (for non-active players), but should be communicated via league wide e-mail as a courtesy so managers can assess other teams rosters.

I prefer a unique stadium league.

I open the floor to your comments/questions.

And please volunteer if you can be a co-commissioner (I'm happy to bow out of commissionership if two 'unaligned' managers who will be able to communicate better (maybe in the same time-zone, I'm 14-17hrs ahead of the USA) volunteer.

First in, best dressed

1) canauscot - Fenway

[canauscot]

I used a lot of words to describe how such a league would work, but I've realised, I didn't use any to describe 'why' such a league would work.

Here's Why;

it replaces the challenge of knowing which players are likely value for money with the challenge of assembling a team that will perform even though you may be stuck with some bad cards.

it replaces the frenzy with rule based drafting.

instead of trawling and churning the free-agent pool looking for replacement talent, you will assemble the best team you can out of what you have and look at other teams and form trade concepts. Eg. Normally, If you get the bad Molitor year, you basically drop him because there must be better value for the money elsewhere, and nobody would want to pay the money for him. Here, Molitor in his worst year is still worth something, because his price tag is of little relevance. Is he worth a normal year Chili Davis? Maybe to someone who can use his speed or platoon him against lefties and already has 5 good/great outfielders. The difference in salary doesn't really matter.

it opens the game for some over-priced players. "He's perfect for my team, but he's too expensive". Not any more, you can get him for 20% off!

It is simply a different kind of challenge.

[bjs73]

1) canauscot - Fenway
2) bjs73 - Yankee Stadium

I think the salary cap of 128M is fine. I also think that a minimum roster size of 38 is plenty considering that 200M TSN dollars shouldn't place any constraints on how a deal can be made.

Love the blind auction concept.

[roofinghorse]

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1) canauscot - Fenway
2) bjs73 - Yankee Stadium
3) crossingroads- wrigley

don,t think i could do the commish thing,my time on the computer is usually tight,and never have done a auction, so ,thats challenge enough for me....sounds good to me...

[the icemen]

i'll give it a try...

1) canauscot - Fenway
2) bjs73 - Yankee Stadium
3) crossingroads- wrigley
4) Iceman - Riverfront


question...what happens if I bid on 40 get 30 but there is not enough room to get 8 more? Can i throw some back in the auction? Or can we post 10-20 players at a time and bid on them that way? In this scenario you will always have the chance to bid on anyone you want... I would hate to not get a chance to bid on a guy because he went in the first round and somebody plucked him. Make sense? Post 20 guys....everyone bids on who they want to...aucition is awarded...round 2... we could also manage our money better and not have too many people go over...that can be a mess that might screw up the whole idea which i think is a great one btw.

[canauscot]

Icemen,

thanks for your interest, I'm happy some people have thought it worthwhile trying.

Trying to answer in order;

because each bid rounds aim is to pick 40 for $128M, if you get 30 first time, the money you didn't spend on the other 10 is available to bid in the next round ie. you will still have as much to spend on a replacement 10 as you would have spent on your original 10, so there should always be enough to fill your roster. (I mentioned in the original post that it would be considered an invalid bid if you tried to bid too much of your remaining money on just one player and didn't leave enough - at least 600K per player - to fill out the 40 man roster. The commishes can monitor this, invalid bids ignored and you'd fill out your roster in a subsequent round). I think the only obstacle will be if there isn't enough TSN $750K players to go around at the end. I think there will be enough, but we could consider a smaller original roster if there is concern about this.

You will not be able nor will you need to throw some back into the auction. It gives me an idea, more below.

I considered the sometimes roto-auction style of posting groups of players. In this setting however, I imagine that would be an exceptionally long and complicated process (maybe I'm wrong, but I'll leave that for another league, another day).
You will get a chance to bid on any guy. Put him in your first group and pay what you think he's worth. That's the beauty of the blind auction, but you bring up a point I wanted to emphasise. In the typical league if you love Ripken (and who doesn't got a little love for Ripken?), you can only put him first on your list and hope nobody else does. Otherwise its just random luck. Here you can express your man-love more fully by putting some money where your mouth is. If you love him the most it will show. BUT HERE'S A NEW WRINKLE. IF SOMEONE NABS YOUR GUY, THEN BEFORE THE NEXT ROUND BIDS ARE REQUIRED, OFFER THAT MANAGER MORE MONEY (keep at least 600K for each remaining player you need and let the commishes know to approve the sale - they'll do so if you've kept enough money to fill out your roster and follow this rule - So nobody gets carried away with overpaying during a sale process {advantaging the seller versus other managers too greatly} the most that can be paid for a player during a between rounds sale is 125% of TSN salary and the least that can be paid - if you have an offsetting transaction as part of the deal- is 80% of TSN salary). IF YOU CAN REACH A DEAL, THEN SUBMIT IT TO THE COMMISHES AND EACH MANAGERS ROSTER REQUIREMENT AND BUDGET CAN BE ADJUSTED. This is something that can only be done during the auction process, otherwise you can only trade once the season commences. The 125% of TSN salary doesn't apply to regular bids (bid as foolishly as you like) just to sales.

These rules should make sure no-one goes over or doesn't have enough money to fill out their team and gives you three chances to get the guys you want... 1 bid high enough or 2 buy him out of your budget between rounds or 3 trade for him after the auction completes.

Sound fair?

[Hakmusic]

1) canauscot - Fenway
2) bjs73 - Yankee Stadium
3) crossingroads- wrigley
4) Iceman - Riverfront
5) Hakmusic - Anaheim

I like the idea. I could go for a full in 40 bids in the first round, or starting with two 20 bid rounds. Either way, I think it would work well.

I would disagree on the idea of selling players between round though, as I think that will really slow things down. Save trading for after the auction.

[the icemen]

I will go with what you all think...i hope it goes a little slow...i would caution the league to evenly distribute positions of players...if i see 30 2b's go up i may end up with grich / whitaker / sandberg / and 3 others because i wanted to make sure i got one of the studs...now what? that is my fear. have we thought that part through so we don't have too many of those situations?

[canauscot]

Both Icemen and Hakmusic raise good points.

I think most will draft in a manner that will see positions get distributed evenly, but the player sale process followed by trading should even things out if it does not. Hakmusic points out we wouldn't want delays because of sales. I think once the 12 managers are assembled we'd set a schedule for the auction and inlcude deadlines on when bids need to be in by (so trades would need to completed within the window).
Hakmusic's other notion about breaking the draft into two parts would maybe help alleviate someone loading up on one position (when they can see they already have 3 2B's from the first round, they aren't going to go for another 3 in the second round). I could maybe see round 1 asking for 24 players and round 2 (and subsequent rounds) asking for enough to fill out your 40 man squad (number will vary between managers depending upon their success in previous rounds). A problem with breaking it down is that managers may find it hard to manage their auction money. Also that a player could go to manager A in the first round for a lower bid than manager B was going to bid in the second round.
Once the manager list fills we can perhaps discuss and vote on this.
1) canauscot - Fenway
2) bjs73 - Yankee Stadium
3) crossingroads- wrigley
4) Iceman - Riverfront
5) Hakmusic - Anaheim

[roofinghorse]

say i bid 7 mil on c. ripken as my first pick and joeblow bid 7.5 mil on him as his 3rd pick who would get him? the highest bidder or whoever had him the earliest with the most money bid on him on their draft list?
in other words,the highest $ overall bidder or the highest /earliest bidder?

does that make sense or am i thinking this wrong.....