I just got back from this year's Tout Wars events where I bought RotoWire's National League team, and I think it makes a good jumping off point for discussing auction strategy, specifically when it comes to nominating and bidding on players.
In most auctions, you go around the room taking turns nominating any available player for any amount you like so long as (1) he's eligible to be bought per your league rules; (2) you have the roster slot for him; and (3) the nomination amount doesn't exceed your maximum allowed bid. At the start of the auction, all three conditions are almost always met, so owners can choose from among the entire eligible player pool. As a result, you'd think there would be a wide variety of players nominated. But that's not often the case. For some reason, owners usually feel compelled to nominate the Albert Pujols', Hanley Ramirezes and Joey Vottos in the first go around. This makes no sense to me because everyone knows that Pujols will go for around $42, Ramirez around $40 and Votto around $35, give or take a dollar or two. There is therefore no benefit to bringing those players out early.
I prefer to nominate harder-to-value players with the idea that either people will be hesitant to spend money on someone they're not sure about while their choices are still plentiful, and I'll get him cheap, or whoever has the highest valuation of that player will get him for an exorbitant price he wouldn't pay once his budget had been depleted and roster spots filled. I've seen both outcomes happen early in auctions, and I've also seen players go for about what they should. But at least there's a chance for a beneficial outcome - either someone overpays, or I get a bargain. For example, I threw out Carlos Marmol at about $15 with my first bid because I had already bought Francisco Rodriguez for $17, and I wanted Marmol, whom I don't trust given his wildness, to go for full price. He went for $20 - about $1 more than I think he's worth - but $5 cheaper than I had hoped he'd go. (Not that Marmol?s so hard to value, but at least he has some range in his price).
Another bidding strategy is the "jump" bid. While some nominations start at $1 and the next bid is $2, and the one after that $3 until the player eventually goes for $10, you can hear $1 and immediately bid $9. In that case, the other owners won't have all the time it takes during the incremental bidding to consider whether they'd go an extra dollar. Sometimes, it'll get you a player for cheap. A variant of this is nominating a player for close to, but just under his actual value. I threw out Mat Latos at $18, and got to "going twice" before ESPN's Tristan Cockcroft bid $19 and eventually got him for what I think is $1 under his value. But I nearly got him for $18, and Cockcroft only went the extra dollar because he couldn't let me have such a bargain.
Perhaps the trickiest aspect of bidding strategy is during the end game when you're down to a few dollars for several players, and two or three other owners have enough money to top you. On the one hand, you don't want to nominate a player you want too early as other owners with more money can outbid you for him. If you wait, maybe those owners will deplete their budgets on other players, and by the time your player comes up, you'll get him. On the other hand, waiting for that player might cause you to pass on your second and third choices of players, and finally when the player you want comes up, you still get outbid, only without a good fallback plan. Sometimes, you want to throw out the player you want just to find out whether you're able to get him or need to move on while there are still decent options available.
Finally, the other key end-game consideration is choosing the price at which to nominate a particular player you want. If you nominate him at $1, you have a chance to get him for that. But you also open yourself up to being topped by a $2 bid, and then you'd need to bid $3 to win the player. But if you open at $2, then you force someone to bid $3 to take the player away from you, and in the end game where every dollar counts, that can be enough. In fact, I found myself in a similar situation Sunday with $9 and five players to buy (meaning a $5 max bid). The player I really wanted was Colorado's Jorge de la Rosa, a high strikeout pitcher whom two different major league players praised for having particularly "filthy" stuff on our Sirius XM show last year. I nominated him at $2, USA Today's Steve Gardner went to $3, and I went to $4, hoping to shave $1 off my max bid so I would still be able to bid $2 on one more player. This was a mistake as Gardner went to $5, also his max bid, and got him. After he said $3, I should have gone straight to $5 and locked Gardner out, even if it made things harder at the end.
The bottom line is that even after doing painstaking research, knowing the parameters of your particular league, evaluating players in that context and more or less executing your auction strategy, you'll still want to be deliberate about the nominating and bidding process, especially late in the auction.