How to weight categories - ROTO POOL

[Goudrea]

I'm in an Auction Cap Roto pool with the following 10 categories.

Forward Goals
D Goals
Assists
+/-
PPG
SHP
PIM
HITS
Goalie Wins
Save %

Our roster is made up of 12 fowards, 5 D and two goalies.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to approach the draft. For example, is it better to target players that are good but not elite in all categories, or target players that are elite or very good in 2 or 3 categories but below average in other categories. For example Mcdavid, is elite in Goals, Assist, SHP, he's ok in PPG and +/- but below average in hits and PiMS. The cost for that type of player is extremely high. Then you have a player like Kadri who's very good in goals and PPG, average in assists, +/-, hits and PIMs. Finally, you have Elite players in Hits and PIM's which are average or below average in all the points categories (Tom Wilson). How would you rank these type of players ? Are they all worth the same amount of money in the auction?

Do you assign the same weight to all categories?

Any suggestions or comments on how you would approach such a setup would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers !

[Eskimo Brother]

The approach is completely different if it's Roto or H2H.
If it's H2H, you want to pick 6 or 7 of the 10 categories to stack, and just ignore the other ones. In Roto you need good cross-category coverage, so the guys like Kadri are excellent.

The more bang for your buck you can get, the better. If you can get a pair like Trochek and Kadri for cheeper than someone else pays for McDavid and Wilson, you're easily coming out ahead. I would target a lot of those middle tier guys.

[parky777]

I'm in an Auction Cap Roto pool with the following 10 categories.

Forward Goals
D Goals
Assists
+/-
PPG
SHP
PIM
HITS
Goalie Wins
Save %

Our roster is made up of 12 fowards, 5 D and two goalies.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to approach the draft. For example, is it better to target players that are good but not elite in all categories, or target players that are elite or very good in 2 or 3 categories but below average in other categories. For example Mcdavid, is elite in Goals, Assist, SHP, he's ok in PPG and +/- but below average in hits and PiMS. The cost for that type of player is extremely high. Then you have a player like Kadri who's very good in goals and PPG, average in assists, +/-, hits and PIMs. Finally, you have Elite players in Hits and PIM's which are average or below average in all the points categories (Tom Wilson). How would you rank these type of players ? Are they all worth the same amount of money in the auction?

Do you assign the same weight to all categories?

Any suggestions or comments on how you would approach such a setup would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers !

I agree with Eskimo Brother. Trochek last year was actually better than everyone else on my team because of his coverage. The only other comment I would make is that scoring is harder to find than PIM, BKS, or HITS. I ended up 2nd in my league last year, partially because I was middle of the pack in the the scoring cats and couldn’t catch the #1 team. This year I will look for players who tick as many of the multi-cat boxes as possible, but will give a little more emphasis to scoring.

[Pengwin7]

There's two discussion parts to this league.

1. "Auction". That's the hard part. Auction is all supply & demand... one can't pre-allocate a $ value on any given player because it is the "demand" on the elite players that drives what they go for. There's no science that can forecast the sweet spot of getting value/$ in an auction league. Its all experience. What I can say is that I highly advocate a high-low theory. DO establish what the high-player goes for (McDavid) and then know what relative value other top tier players have and bid accordingly. You want to get your share of elite (top 10% players), get your 1 or 2 of these guys.

2. re: ROTO value. There is a long Excel exercise to capture player value. You total up the amount of any cat for the players likely to be selected. You total up that player's % in that cat, and that cats % of total cats. With 10 cats, each category is worth 10% of the total. So if a guy like Kucherov scores 40g and all forwards score 2000g, then Kuch is worth 40/2000 x 10% for his goals. That's 0.002. You multiply that by the total $ to be spent. Say 12 teams have $300, $3600. So Kucherov's goals are worth $6. Do this for 6 cats, Kucherov might be worth $36. BUT... the hard thing, again, is the auction. Because players with some value that is 20% of Kucherov don't simply go for $7. They go for $1. Which means that $6 saved is overbid on Kucherov and pushes him more towards $42.

The short summary:
Watch how the first top end players go that give lots of categories.
If McDavid goes for $50, you want to spend $45 on Kucherov or $40 on Tyler Seguin. Get at least a few high end guys.
You want to be "getting your share" at "market value".

It may feel like you are blowing your budget too soon... try to be 3rd or 4th among GMs in "early spending"... not the MOST spending, but up there.
The GMs that don't get their guys, end up paying $15 for James Neal. Then they have $40 left at end of draft to pick from the same scrubs that everybody else is getting for $1.

You want a bunch of scrubs: $1 guys.
You'll throw these back for waiver wire, free agents all year long.
THESE guys... will give you HIT/PIM. They CAN be found... all year... on the wire.

Big summary:
1. Spend with the big early spenders, but don't be the BIGGEST.
2. Pay for high-end offense.
3. Don't worry about grit: HIT/PIM... get those from your $1 players, cycle the waiver during the year.
4. Goalies are a crapshoot, get one average+ goalie, one average-goalie, and a 3rd $1 goalie that you can cycle on the wire.


Good luck.
(Btw, if this is your first auction league... expect to lose. Like poker, rookies don't win at auction leagues... unless everybody else is a rookie at the table too.)

[Moses]

^^ PENGWIN7 is your guy here. Draft stratagy is his middle name.

[Goudrea]

Thanks for the input. It is very much appreciated.

[BranDOOM]

Nice job Peng. I have been in an auction league for the past 9 years and can vouch for what he has said. Often what I do is take a full list of last year's prices and break it into tiers to understand cost relative to the expected performance of the player going into last season. Some GMs overspent on players some under as expected but you see a trend. I DO try to end in the high end of spending and focus first on my big names. I also focus on goalies because my league has 3 slots and 10 teams, 4 goalie cats. If I'm shit in goalies, I'm low in 4 cats and likely not winning. I DO also go for position coverage. A la, have a top forward, a top d man, a top goalie. Gives me balance and trade value. I ALSO focus my drafted players moreso on goal scoring because my league has G, PPG, GWG, PTS. Goal scorers will cover these for me and Apples are easier to acquire off the wire or via trade. DO draft a few players for the other categories at a lower cost if possible. There are always diamonds in the rough available when everyone is at a buck per player at the end. Last piece of advice. Keep a few more dollars than the remaining GMs in later rounds. When they all can only bid $3 a player, and I have $4, I get whoever I want and they miss out. Monitor average dollar per player left for GMs for these later rounds. I hope this helps! I think it helped me to write it out. Auction drafts are so fun, enjoy, don't get too drunk and spend $30 on Dominique haha.

[BranDOOM]

Side note - I am also in a roto league. Wrote post on my phone so signature with league details doesn't show.