Just joined a new dynasty league, and although I have played FBB for a few years now I have only participated in leagues with keepers (with the most keepers being set at 4 per year), and have not had to worry about balancing a full roster. So I'm looking for a little insight into a general strategy as to how to best spend my $$ in the auction. That said, here are the guidelines:

12 man league; Roto Points based scoring system
$260 Cap to spend on auctioned players
Can assign players contract lengths anywhere from 1-5 years
40 Man Roster (10 of which are reserved for Minor Leaguers)

So my first thoughts as far as a strategy goes is to get 1 big young bat, and 1 big young pitcher early in the auction. Then jump into bidding on players that seem to offer value in the middle rounds. So essentially I will be securing 2 high end players that I can build around. However, because the league is just starting out I would like to secure at least 3-4 highly touted minor leaguers, so ultimately I want to make sure I have enough $$ towards the end of the draft to accomplish this. I want to balance my team so it's good this year, but more importantly has either the flexibility to trade a haul of minor leaguers for a piece needed for a playoff push as the trade deadline closes in, or to establish a foundation of young controllable talent that will hopefully set me up for a nice run for consecutive years.

Does anyone that has dynasty experience have any thoughts on this strategy? If so, what should I be looking to spend percentage wise of the $260 I have to work with between Major/Minor Leaguers and Bats/Pitchers?

I play in two deep dynasty leagues but they have been around for so long, I don't really remember my strategy for drafting. But I wouldn't be too concerned about age, a lot of times owners seem to go crazier for the young talented players thinking they are building for the future and miss out on better, older talent.

I am also not one to restrict myself too much with so much money going to pitching/hitting or so much towards minor league players. If anything this would be a good time to assign dollar values to every player including minor league players and then at auction stick to those numbers pretty strictly. If you see a guy who you value more, going cheaply then go get him and vice versa. By doing that it will help keep you from getting sucked into over bidding on a guy.

While you want to have a competitive team 5 years from now, a championship this year is just as good as a championship down the road. So that is why it is important to not let guys like Pujols go cheaper than they should.

Lastly, I would focus on guys that were prospects a couple years ago but haven't quite lived up to expectations. Those are guys who could easily get things going and are likely to go cheaper than some minor league players. I am talking about guys like Hosmer, Lawrie, Moore or Montero. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they all go cheaper than Profar or Machado but give you better numbers.