Ok, the season is almost upon us, and I’m going to take a break from my usual Outfield coverage for some special programming! I did an NFBC Auction Championship for the first time ever, and I’d like to go over it both for my own sanity (try doing an auction and not second guessing 10 decisions you made!)…and also hopefully provide something helpful for anyone with auctions pending or considering auctions.
If you are in that latter group and have never done a Fantasy auction, well, I can’t recommend them enough. They are super fun, especially when they are in person. My auction on Friday was live in New Jersey, just about an hour from my house, and was the first in person one I’ve done since before COVID (my home league used to be live but switched to Zoom). I have done a few live NFBC Main Events, but this is even better. Live drafts are great, too, but your strategy and opportunities are somewhat dictated by your draft position. In an auction its all up to you! That can be a blessing or a curse.
Before I get into it, let me just explain quickly how this particular auction worked. There are 15 teams, and we each get $260 or play money to spend on a starting 23 man standard roster. Then we have a 7 round reserve snake draft. The 23 man roster has to be fully “legal”, so unlike a standard 30 man draft, you can’t have 10 pitchers or 8 OF’s or whatever at that point. We get a set “draft” order, but instead of picking a player, you “nominate” him and start an organized open outcry bidding process. The winner rosters the player, and gets the salary deducted from his initial $260. And so on, until all 23 man starting rosters are filled.
There is a lot going on during the auction, and it moves pretty fast, so you really need a plan going in, and then a series of backup plans or pivots, since it will never go exactly as you expect. NFBC publishes Average Auction Values for each player, and in online drafts these prices become near-anchors to the eventual prices. If Aaron Judge has an AAV of $48 for example, he’s likely to go very near there in your auction e.g. That’s less true in a live auction, even though everyone probably still has the AAV’s on their screens.
My strategy started with flexibly allocating about $160 to my hitters and $100 to my pitchers. I then came up with a main plan for both pitching and hitting, and then all manner of pivots, since you can never count on the first one working out. On the hitting side, my top targets were Jose Ramirez or Juan Soto if I could get him for $40 or less, and then a 2nd top level hitter in the $25 range. My pivots were all manner of hitter combos for about that same $65. Beyond that, I had $ slots and targets within those slots. I find the $ slots help me throughout the auction since, unlike a regular snake draft, guys get nominated in no particular order. In fact, auction players make a point of throwing out cheaper dollar guys in the middle of a run of studs just to mess with the room. So you need to know how they all can fit in your plan. And within all this, you have to have a Catcher strategy since they have somewhat of their own economy.
I do something similar with pitchers, though it’s mostly about how much you spend on closers and your top SP, and everything else flows off of that. I had really just two plans. Plan A was to spend about $25 on closers, buy the best SP I could get for about $23, and fill in the rest with as many $10-$15 guys I could get and squeeze in. My alternate plan was getting one of the 3 major aces (Skubal, Skenes, Crochet) for $35 or less, but they all went early and higher.
Anyways, here’s how it played out, batters first.
Top Buys
Kyle Tucker $36
Junior Caminero $30
Ramirez went for $42 and Soto for $44, so it was early pivot time! I passed on JRod ($37) and Corbin Carroll ($33) and went for Tucker and got him at $36. Carroll just returned from hamate bone surgery, and I like Tucker a shade better. As long as he can stay on the field for a change, he’s a lock for a 30-20ish season with a plus batting average and monster counting stats in the batting early in that insane lineup.
Once I got Tucker, I really targeted Caminero as my number 2 bat. I know that moving back to the Trop might ding his homers a little, but should I really worry that much? Here is how his Statcast page looked in a season where he turned 22 in the middle.
Plus 3B is a very tough position to fill this year.
Outfield
James Wood $19
Taylor Ward $11
Brenton Doyle $10
Dylan Crews $9
I did not target Wood, but I really liked him at this price, and this marked my first major pivot. In Plan A, I had Jo Adell and his power surge penciled in here at $13. Wood’s overall .256, 31 homer, 15 steal line at age 22 looks fantastic, as does his 98th percentile EV and HardHit%. But he slumped enormously in the 2nd half, with a 39% K% and just 7 of his homers. You need to take calculated risks to win one of these leagues, much less contest for an overall prize, so this is my shot here.
Ward was a major target, and I got him exactly at his AAV. He exploded for 36 homers, 103 RBI’s, and a 13.7% Barrel% in 2025 and now moves to a wildly better situation in Baltimore. He did bat just .228, however, so I do need to offset that somewhere.
Doyle and Crews came later and were both also guys I had my sights set on at their price. I needed some speed later in the auction, and the aggregated projections I’m rolling with have them combining for 48 steals, and 37 homers. Neither is a batting average asset, which brings me to…
Middle Infield
Otto Lopez $7
Corey Seager $13
OK, one of them technically goes to my utility spot, at least until Polanco gets 1B eligibility
All but Polanco project as batting average assets, and even Polanco is in the .250 range, which is fine. Seager is a 4 category monster, and way underpriced at $13 if he can stay somewhat healthy. Unfortunately, he rarely can, as he played just 102 games last year and has only exceeded 145 twice in a career that started with a 2015 callup. I will settle right now for 125 games as he’s still an excellent hitter who had a .365 wOBA and elite .400 xwOBA last year. As for the others, Otto “the bus driver” got nominated early, which highlights my point that you need to stay ready to bid (or pass) on everyone. I really liked him as a later 2B target and got him right at fair value. Polanco and Bogaerts are “olds” in good lineups who still provide decent production.
Other Corners
Josh Bell $1
You can’t fill every position as you want, and this (and Catcher) did not go anywhere near my plan. I did intentionally pass on the best 1B’s as I liked the lower tier. But I targeted Jake Burger, Christian Walker, Jonathan Aranda, and Sal Stewart at lower prices, and all went above where I maxed out. So I effectively bought Polanco instead at $7 and then overpaid a bit to get Vargas at $6. I am somewhat optimistic on him, but I felt that way last year, too. He has great plate skills with Chase%, Whiff% et all all in percentiles between 72nd and 89th, but he has substandard power for a corner. Bell will probably get his annual 22 homers or so, but hopefully most of them will be on my bench as I FAAB hitters to replace him.
Catcher
Samuel Basallo $7
Ryan Jeffers $4
C1 really went off the rails for me. Top tier C’s went a shade light, Ben Rice for $19, Agustin Ramirez for $14 to name two. I planned out getting a 2nd tier C for $10-ish, but I got outbid on my biggest targets (Francisco Alvarez, Adley Rutschman, Alejandro Kirk, Gabriel Moreno). In hindsight, I would have paid up for a better C, so bad read by me. Jeffers at $4 I do really like, he was one of my 3 targets there.
Starting Pitchers
Spencer Strider $11
George Kirby $23
Nathan Eovaldi $13
Reynoldo Lopez $2
This is the order I bought them, and here’s my story. Strider came out early, and at this price, I am willing to take a shot. He has an enormously wide range of possible outcomes. He’s probably never returning to his mega ace 2023 levels, but I do like the odds that he’s much better than his 4.45 ERA, 1.40 WHIP disaster of a 2026 injury return. His spring has gotten monster scrutiny….what’s his velo? How about his IVB? Yada yada yada. He has 11 K’s and 2 BB’s in 8.1 IP, so far so good. It’s a risk, we’ll see.
Kirby slots into my “ace” hole. He had a kind of bumpy early 2025 after missing a month+ and then starting slow. But post ASB he had a 3.31 SIERA with a 26.8% K% vs. 5.8% BB%, which isn’t that cosmically different from his 23.9% K% and 3.6% career levels.
As for the others, I love Eovaldi, knowing full well he’s probably only giving me 125-150 IP or so. They should be near ace level innings. Sandy probably isn’t going back to his Cy Young days, but he pitched much better in the 2nd half last year with a 3.33 ERA and 1.04 WHIP. McClanahan and ReyLo both return after lost seasons (two in McClanahan’s case). As for Ashcraft, he was my last buy, and I had $7 left. He also looked excellent late in 2025.
I guess I have common themes here in all but Strider; guys with strong finishes or cheap shots on injury returns.
Relievers
Ryan Helsley $19
My goal is really just to get a mid pack saves result. Hey, I’d like better, I just don’t want to allocate the resources here. The top closers went in the $23-$26 range. Do I love Helsley? Not really, I’m a Mets fan. It’s a leap of faith here that he returns to at least his Cardinals closer levels. And Suarez I do actually like as a cheap shot that he gets the Braves closer gig at some point
Final Evaluation
I spent $167 on hitting as I adjusted to how the auction played out. As per my projections, I am weak in saves, slightly weak in steals, and fine everywhere else. I’ll take it!
