The majority of fantasy baseball leagues have thankfully joined modern times where picking up free agents is no longer a first-come, first-serve experience. For those who still employee this format, please consider running a league vote to switch to FAAB. No matter how you pronounce it, FAAB stands for Free Agent Acquisition Budget but the ‘budget’ can also refer to ‘bidding.’ It’s the process whereby fantasy managers add new players to their team weekly via blind bidding system.
If you’re running a home league, the total amount of FAAB each manager receives for the season can be whatever you want to set it at. The typical amounts are $1,000 or $100, with the former being the standard budget used for high-stakes leagues such as the NFBC. We will use that $1,000 budget as our example for this piece.
How It Works
Each week – typically on Sundays, and beginning the week before Opening Day – fantasy managers have the opportunity to bid on all players available in the free agent pool. Most are blind-bid systems where the player in question is awarded to the highest bidder. A player must be dropped for each player added and under each bid, most folks set conditional bids. These are players we would hope to acquire for our team in the event that someone outbids us for our top option. Here’s what a typical bid looks like:
Drop: Jaime Garcia
Add: Andrew Heaney – $37
Add (conditional): Reynaldo Lopez – $24
Add (conditional): Derek Holland – $22
Add (conditional): Kyle Gibson– $7
Very simple, but you get whichever player someone does not outbid you on. If someone bid $58 or even $38 on Heaney but no one bid more than $24 on Lopez, then your team drops Garcia and adds Lopez.
Conditional Bid Overload
One of the biggest mistakes inexperienced bidders make is they don’t set enough conditional bids under each of their bids. It may sound elementary, but I’ve seen first time NFBC’ers and even veterans, with only one or two players listed under their drop. In the above example, if Heaney and Lopez are the only players you would consider dropping for Garcia, and you find Garcia more valuable than Holland or Gibson (either this week, or long-term), then you just leave it at Heaney and Lopez. If you know a player is certifiable drop, go ahead and load up as many conditional bids underneath your top bid to ensure you get someone new.
In this example, say you know you want to drop Garcia, or he’s hit the DL, and Heaney-Lopez-Holland-Gibson are the only pitchers you’d actually play in your lineup next week. Instead of keeping Garcia on your roster and wasting the roster spot, look to either add a pitcher who may have a good matchup or two the following week. Or, bid on a perspective closer, or a hitter with upside, for depth on your bench. If you have a certifiable drop, there is nothing wrong with doing the extra diligence to ensure you’re adding someone helpful to your squad. In fact, it is always the right strategy, especially if it’s just a $1 or $2 flier.
Working for the Weekend
This is a strategy specific for high-stakes leagues where you can swap out hitters for your active lineup on Mondays (for Mon-Thurs) and Fridays (Fri-Sun). Alluded to in the High-Stakes In-Season Management piece, it really is as simple as being mindful of platoon splits, primarily lefty-righty ones. Easier to employ in 15-teamers, the examples I used were of 2018 Robbie Grossman (MIN) and Ketel Marte (ARI) who both had stronger pronounced splits against left-handed pitchers and hit higher in the lineup against them.
If you look ahead to opposing starting pitchers on the schedule, you’re able to identify, and pick up in FAAB a week in advance, the lefty-mashers who may have more than three lefties they are facing that week. Even better if you’re able to split out for the two half-week periods (if Marte faces three lefties from Fri-Sun, he’s a locked in play and a must-bid). Ditto for teams you know are heading to hitter-friendly parks like Coors Field and Yankee Stadium, especially if they happen to be missing their rotation aces in those matchups. It is even easier to plan for in standard weekly, non-NFBC leagues where you can forecast for the entire week ahead. The key to maximizing output of splits is to have the roster flexibility with your last couple of bench spots where you’re able to burn and churn them without concern.
How to Win Bids
The art of winning bids is an artform that comes with experience. Some of the high-stakes folks call me one of the best FAAB’ers in the industry. I accept the notion with humility knowing that there are a handful of other FAAB masters and managers I’ve gone to toe-to-toe with in these leagues with weekly battles won and lost. Much of my success of getting the players I want is by feel, but also much of it nuanced and researched. Over the last couple of seasons, The quick-and-easy strategy for FAAB that has worked for me:
- Study bid tendencies of your league-mates
- Switch up your own bidding patterns weekly
- Bid a week ahead
Noting habits and patterns of others in your league is necessary in order to help figure out the amounts you need to bid to get the players you want. Keep in mind that there are different ‘types’ of bidders out there – those with the extremely aggressive, go-for-broke styles who chase the top-trending players each week and are always overspending on hitters or pitchers coming off big weeks. Alternately, you’ve got the ultra-conservative types who get beaten to the punch because they underbid each week. They like to save their money for a difference-maker but rarely figure out who that someone is until it’s too late and the rest of the league has passed them by. Most bidders fall in between, and the good ones know when to be aggressive and when to hang back.
Know who the ‘homers’ are in your league, too. There’s always some diehard Yankees or Red Sox fan who plays with their heart, not their head, to overbid for a hometown player. Be mindful of those folks and keep tabs on them to decide whether the hometown tax is worth it to you.
Lazy bidding is an issue as well. At this point, most know not to just bid every week with an amount ending in ‘0’ or ‘5’. Be sure to always switch up your end number amount (37 one week, 34 the next) so that league-mates don’t catch on to your bidding patterns seeing that you’re always ending your bids with a ‘9’. Reviewing prior weeks’ bids can help you identify bidding patterns of those in your league.
Figuring out how much someone may spend on a player is difficult early on in a league with a $1,000 FAAB budget. It’s usually the Wild, Wild West in April and May as folks overbid to address what they perceive as deficiencies on their team and spend extra to ensure they get their guy. We never truly know how much someone is going to bid on a specific player in the early months, but we certainly can figure out the correct range by figuring out (1) how many FAAB dollars others have left, (2) previous week’s bidding tendencies and (3) market value assumptions.
With a full budget in the early months, you need to pay attention to rate stats, playing time, role and lineup slot to figure out if someone is worth your while. Those who caught on early last season to guys like Jesus Aguilar, Nick Markakis and Max Muncy were rewarded for most of the season. Note that all three of these guys hit in crucial, run-producing lineup spots on three of baseball’s best offenses. Looking ahead leads us into the next assertion.
Closer Roulette & Looking Ahead
This goes for all positions, but it is the closer who is usually the best example. We look to walk out of a draft with the equivalent of 2.5 closers worth of saves. Because locking in three full-time closers in your draft means either spending earlier picks for them (three of your top-15) or taking a gamble on a dicey ratio-busting Fernando Rodney-types after Round 18 as your third. Most folks don’t want to sacrifice a great bat or SP5 with upside for a shady relief pitcher who may or may not get saves. We haven’t even touched upon how volatile the position is with more than half the league experiencing turnover at the position over the last couple of years.
What this battle for saves leads to is overspending in FAAB when there’s turnover and one is available to bid on. Over my years in high-stakes, I’ve seen upwards of 50 percent of $1,000 budgets spent on a ‘new’ closer in May. It isn’t uncommon to see $250 bids and that is what we saw last season with the likes of Jose Alvarado (Rays), Drew Steckenrider (Marlins), Sam Dyson (Giants), Jacob Barnes (Brewers), Tyler Clippard (Jays) and Joe Jimenez (Tigers). All were popular FAAB pickups seeing triple-digit bid amounts after new ninth-inning roles were assumed. This sextet ended up averaging four saves last season with Alvarado leading the way with his eight spread out saves as the once-in-a-while closer.
Of course, it is impossible to predict when an active closer may start to falter or get injured. But oftentimes we can start to see the writing on the wall earlier via poorer control, less whiffs or a blown save or two. We want to see what the managers are seeing and pull that trigger on these possible closers if we need a third one for our rosters a week before the rest of our league does. That’s how you save FAAB funds. Keep your bench fluid and churning so you can take a flier for a few bucks a week early instead of paying the triple-digit premium after a role change has been announced.
When looking at bullpen targets who might fall into saves, pay attention to their dominance (strikeout rate), control (walk rate, location) and target guys with high-end skills. Two years ago, I targeted Corey Knebel and Matt Bush near the end of drafts everywhere. The process led to a hit with Knebel and somewhat of a whiff with Bush, who scored some saves but then lost his job. Last season, that process lead me to late-round shares of Keona Kela and later in the season, snagging Jose LeClerc a week ahead of the big-spending bids, anticipating the Rangers to trade away a few members of their bullpen.
The same goes for those Muncy and Aguilar types on offense. Don’t be afraid to spend early and keep those last couple roster spots fluid. Valuable FAAB opportunities pop up all season, Adalberto Mondesi was another great example, and those who spot the skills, playing time and trends before their competition get that proverbial worm.
Save for September
Be mindful of how much budget you have left after the All-Star Break. My rule of thumb is to leave $100 for the final six weeks so I can attack players who provide in specific categories I need help in. Once the trade deadline hits and September roster expansion occurs, it is particularly helpful to have the dollar advantage in your league so you can outbid your opponents for the players you need, whether that be a studly minor league hitter promoted, a closer-in-waiting grabbing a gig post-trade or simply streaming two-start pitchers to catch up in strikeouts.
Working to set bid amounts on a clear head is very advantageous. I always set my bids earlier in the day on Sundays, step away, and then go back later in the day to review and tweak my bid amounts. Then step away again and check about a half hour before the FAAB deadline to make sure I’m not overspending on superfluous or overrated options or underspending on the guys I really want.
