What would happen if you applied the dynamics of a Fantasy Baseball auction to a baseball simulation game like APBA?
Let’s say you took the players from 4 historical teams and made them all free agents and you held an auction to create 4 new teams. Let’s assume all the “General Managers” at the auction have the same budget to bid on players ($260), who would build the best team? That is what I try to answer with a website I created a few years ago called baseballsimauctions.com. (In my example I use 4 teams, but you could hold an auction with as little as 2 teams or a full league of 30 teams).
Before I get into more details, let me give you some background on what led to this project.
Going back as far as I can remember, probably to the age of 10, I recall being intrigued by the idea that a baseball player’s statistics could be replicated on a card. My earliest memories are from a game called All-Star Baseball in which the player’s abilities were translated into a round disk which interacted with a spinner, the spinner would land on the different possibilities (single double, triple, etc. – sort of like “Wheel Of Fortune”) and that would dictate the outcome of the play. All-Star Baseball was a simple game, but it sparked my interest in baseball simulations, eventually leading to APBA, first the Basic game version, then the more advance APBA Master game.
APBA was and is a sophisticated baseball simulation, with beautiful, well-crafted player cards, fielding ratings, speed ratings, arm ratings, pitching grades, hitter platoon ratings etc. Over the years I played many memorable games with the cards & dice, I never replayed full seasons, but I did play countless Greatest Teams tournaments with my friends, always in a quest to find the best team. More recently I discovered the APBA computer baseball game (aka – Baseball For Windows) – this directly led to my creation of Baseball Sim Auctions. For a terrific description and review of the APBA computer game, written by Derek Bain, click HERE:
Besides baseball simulation, my other obsession has been Fantasy Baseball. I’ve been commissioner of two Fantasy Baseball Leagues since 1989 – one National League team, one American League team.
The best part of my Fantasy Baseball leagues is the auction, drafts can be a lot of fun, but nothing beats the strategy and split-second decision making of having to create a team via an auction. For some time I’ve been toying with the idea of applying the auction format to simulation baseball, but I hadn’t found the time or platform to pursue it.
Fast forward to the spring and summer of 2020. In addition to the pain and suffering caused by the COVID pandemic, it also gave many people time to reflect, and since many of us were sequestered at home, it gave us time to purse long dormant projects.
Baseball Sim Auctions was incubated around this time, thanks to a podcast I happened to hear during one of my daily walks. Double Take – episode #25, produced by SABR member Kirk Weber and his brother Kevin, introduced me to the APBA Computer Game. The guest on the show talked enthusiastically about the capabilities of the APBA program, such as the availability of all the MLB seasons, the ability to create teams from any of the players in the data base, robust stat compilations, and fast simulations… this was all I needed to hear, the spark was lit. Shortly thereafter I started building the Sim Auctions website and using the APBA computer game to turn my auction idea into reality.
Baseball Sim Auctions allowed me to take the best of Fantasy Baseball (the auction!) and apply it to simulation baseball – in essence I would go from bidding on projected stats to bidding on actual stats. Sounds simple enough, how difficult could it be?
The challenging (and fun) part of Sim Auctions is that you have to create your own valuation system. In Fantasy Baseball there are a plethora of commercially available projections and software to help you draft or bid on players, in Sim Auctions, the onus is on you to determine how much you spend on hitting, how much you allocate to pitching, how you value defense, speed, arm strength, etc.?
You can get more details on my website, but the essence of Baseball Sim Auctions is that you can take teams from a number of historical seasons, make all the players free agents, and create brand new teams via an auction, you can do this with any number and combination of teams from different seasons. There are primarily two ways to conduct the auctions, and I also offer a draft option:
- ZOOM auctions: with 2 to 5 participants, I hold a live auction via ZOOM, I am usually one of the “General Managers” participating in the auction, and I’m also the auctioneer. These auctions take between 1 ½ to 3 hours depending on the number of participants.
- The baseballsimauctions website – the auctions via the website are what I call “slow auctions” intended for 6 or more participants. These auctions are conducted over a period of several days and are conducted completely via the website.
- DRAFTS – although auctions are my favorite format, drafts are fun too, so I also offer that option. In a draft, the action is monitored via group texts, and an online shared excel tracking document.
Once the teams are assembled, the General Managers send me their lineups and pitching rotations, they also select a computer manager (there are several to choose from, all with slightly different profiles and tendencies). Once I have all that information, I schedule a time via ZOOM to run the simulations.
At Baseball Sim Auctions, I have a unique way of determining the best team, I designate the winner by playing a World Series, except this is not your typical World Series, in a Sim Auction World Series, the simulation of an entire season counts as a proxy for 1 game, the team that wins 4 seasons, wins the World Series!
One of the great things about Baseball Sim Auctions is that it doesn’t require a huge investment of time. APBA on-line leagues or season replays can take months to complete, but you could complete a 4-man APBA Sim Auction and simulate a World Series in approximately 3 hours.
Click HERE if you would like to review some of the auctions I’ve completed. Below are some thoughts and observations based on the results so far:
- There is no one perfect way to win – some teams have won with a lot of hitting and just enough pitching, some teams have won with a lot of pitching and just enough hitting, other teams have won with overwhelming pitching.
- The one strategy that has not worked yet, is overwhelming hitting, but weak pitching. That is not to say this formula would not work, I guess it just depends on how overpowering your hitting advantage is.
- If the number of historical teams you deconstruct is more than the Sim Auction teams, you can afford to be ultra-aggressive with your pitching bids. Recently we had an auction in which we disbanded the players from the 1998 Braves, 1999 Diamondbacks, 2001 Mariners and 2017 Indians, we then created 3 new teams, the winning General Manager spent a whopping 85% of his $260 budget to acquire pitching but was still able to acquire enough serviceable hitters to win the World Series (4 -1). The opposite approach has not been tried yet (aggressive bidding on hitters) – it will be interesting to see if that tactic would also produce a winner.
In future posts I’ll report on some of the more interesting auction projects. In the meantime, I’m always looking for a challenge, so if you have a favorite team or player that you would like to include in a Sim Auction, please contact me at baseballsimauctions@yahoo.com, so we can discuss scheduling an auction, or if you simply have a question, please send it my way!
I've been a baseball fan since 1974, I was originally a New York Mets fan, but in 1989 I discovered Fantasy Baseball, in the span of a few years, I switched my allegiance from the Mets to the yearly batch of players on my Fantasy Teams. I'm still the commissioner of the two Fantasy Baseball leagues I started in 1989! In my work life I'm a Compliance Manager for a Hearing Aids manufacturer. In my spare time, I like to read, play baseball game simulations and spend time binge watching science fiction shows with my wife.
