My first auction league draft

Not having read up a lot on auction drafts, I decided to use the composite price projections for my auction league set up at this site, especially since it incorporates Chone, my favourite projection system.

My initial ideas were to go for a fairly balanced approach with a slight bias toward hitting.

After getting Hanley Ramirez for a couple of dollars more than projected, I soon picked up Johan Santana for a good deal less than expected, and early on suspected pitching was being under-valued as per my projection system. So although I did pick up Brian McCann marginally under expected price, started focusing on pitching and picked up the following at well below my projected prices - CC Sabathia, Cole Hamels, Jonathon Papelbon, Mariano Rivera and Joe Nathan, although that was probably one too many in terms of dollar pay outs, since I was now quite low, but I was aiming to pick up about 2/3 of my remaining position players, and do the rest on the waiver wire after the draft. I soon found out the draft software does not allow you to do this, you have to keep at least one dollar for every position not filled. This drastically effected my drafting abilities over a couple of young un's like Nelson Cruz late in the draft, who was nominated just before I was going to.

So bearing all this in mind I'm not too displeased with my offensive set up, definitely lacking in power and steals too, but I made sure I picked for average, in the likely probability that if I trade one or two of my big arms hopefully for some decent pop and steals

Brian McCann - C
Casey Kotchmann - 1B
Aaron Hill, Tor 2B
Melvin Mora , Bal 3B
Hanley Ramirez, Fla SS
2B/SS Mike Fontenot, ChC 2B
Mike Lowell, Bos 3B
Johnny Damon , NYY OF, DH
Kendry Morales LAA OF
David DeJesus , KC OF
Jason Kubel, Min OF, DH
Ryan Spilborghs, Col OF
Jody Gerut, SD OF
Bench
Micah Hoffpauir, ChC OF
Nate Schierholtz, SF OF
Chris Dickerson, Cin OF

SP
Johan Santana
CC Sabathia
Cole Hamels
Jordan Zimmernan
Kelvim Escobar

RP
Jonathon Papelbon
Mariano Rivera
Joe Nathan
Jason Motte

Bear in mind this is a 5x5, with only 3 bench players, so although my pitching is really strong at the moment I've not got a single back up pitcher, so can't go the pitch and ditch route, although the innings maximum in this league is lower than normal.

Straight after the draft Ramirez, Hamels, Santana, Rivera and Nathan, I think, were suddenly day to day, but slowly they are all coming off of day to day, much to my relief ;)

So I'm well interested to know how this league will pan out for me, since i really don't have a clue how I'm standing with such a lopsided team, though I'm well pleased I got position scarcity offence like SS and C covered so well, and some pop with Hill at 2nd, which should make it easier for trading less scarce positions, but my injury risks, like Lowell, Mora and Hill just coming back worry me. Morales needs to have a good year too, as well as 2 of my younger outfielders.

But certainly it was fascinating doing an auction draft, and possibly a little too easy to get into reactive mode and dive in, when a lot of bargains are there to be had later on, which I lost on 2 dollar bids ;), live and learn. I also need to read up on the psychology of nominating, it's certainly a completely different kind of draft, yet I'm also pleased at how I changed tack so totally, and early on, we'll see whether that pays off, but I reckon I gained value in the pitching stakes, but lost some of that later by having so little left.