Trust the Gut: Fantasy Baseball FAAB Primer

FAAB stands for “Free Agent Acquisition Budget (or Bidding).” It is the process of adding new hitters and pitchers to our fantasy baseball rosters in exchange for hitters and pitchers we have chosen to drop. Most fantasy sites, including NFBC, run FAAB once a week, on Sundays, and use a blind bidding protocol. Over the last decade, FAAB has become the universal method of roster turnover, replacing the antiquated process of “first-come, first-served” and waiver wire priority.

In home leagues, FAAB can be set to whatever total for the season you want – typically $100 or $1,000. NFBC uses a $1,000 budget for the season. Including the first FAAB period (this Sunday, March 26), there will be 27 in total for the 2023 season. This averages roughly $37 per week. 

“Trust the Gut” is my weekly FAAB column where I will recommend players to consider adding, by position, for both 12- and 15-team leagues, as well as corresponding dollar amount bid ranges for each player. I’ll publish a list of options for the first period midday Sunday. Obviously, this first FAAB period only applies to NFBC leagues that have been drafted prior to March 26.

Here’s my detailed primer with just about everything you need to know about free agent bidding.

FAAB Basics

Each Sunday, starting the weekend before MLB Opening Day (for 2023, that’s this weekend), fantasy managers can bid and acquire any player available in the free agent pool. Let’s use a 12-team NFBC Online Championship as the example. A total of 360 players were drafted, and everyone who wasn’t drafted is considered a free agent and can be bid on. In NFBC, minor leaguers are not available to bid on unless they’ve played in one MLB game or if they were originally drafted among the 360 in your league and subsequently dropped.

Most FAAB, and specifically NFBC’s, is a blind bidding system where the players who receive the highest bids are acquired by that manager. A player must be dropped for each player added. Most utilize the conditional bidding function to set additional players under their top bid to ensure they have someone replacing the player they are dropping. 

Over the course of the season, the total dollar amount of your winning bids is subtracted from your $1,000 budget. The primary purpose of utilizing FAAB is to leverage the best free agents available each week to improve your team and rack up stats on a weekly basis. More on strategies later but the goal here is to avoid taking zeroes in your active lineup. We can leverage advantageous matchups for hitters and pitchers based on upcoming schedule and ballparks. We can use it to attack category deficiencies in our lineups (adding a two-start SP when we need wins and strikeouts). Or occasionally we hit the lotto on a breakout player who earns us tremendous profit and becomes a mainstay on our squad.

A standard 12-team bid for this upcoming season might look like this:

In this example, if no one else bid more than $26 on Lane Thomas, then is on your team and $26 is subtracted from your $1,000 FAAB budget after FAAB runs Sunday at 10 p.m. ET. If someone else bid $27 or more on Thomas and wins them but no one bid more than $14 on TJ Friedl, then Friedl is yours. In the case of a tied bid, tie goes to the person lower in the standings at that time.

Here is the way not to set your bids (claim lists):

Technically, this works, but it’s bad practice and can get you in trouble if you have multiple drops. Setting a claim list for each player you intend on dropping is the correct way to FAAB. The last player in your claim list should be the very last free agent you would prefer on your roster over the player you are dropping. Which leads us into conditional bidding.

Importance of Conditional Bidding

The biggest mistake inexperienced FAAB’ers make is not setting enough players in their claim lists to ensure the player they are dropping is off your roster for the following week. Especially if that player you intend on dropping hits the injured list or has been sent down to the minors. In my claim list example, my drop is Josh Lowe. If he does not make the Rays’ Opening Day roster or I don’t want to stash him, then I’d certainly be dropping him in real life. If we haven’t thrown in several players in as conditional bids under our preferred option (Thomas), there is a good chance Lowe is still on our roster the following week. We want to hit the ground running when the season begins, which means optimizing conditional bids in the order we want players.

Conditional bidding is important so that we can field full and optimal starting lineups each week. Some of us may have drafted some players who will start the year on IL or in the minors. With the goal of setting a full, healthy and optimal lineup this first half-week, we must set up our pre-Week 1 FAAB bids properly. Having obvious drops makes things easier for us but we may also encounter difficult decisions with players we like long-term. One example is Brandon Pfaadt – a studly pitcher prospect who will start the season in Triple-A. If we are unable to field a lineup this first half-week with nine pitchers, and Pfaadt is our most expendable guy, then dropping Pfaadt is what we must do. Do whatever it takes to make sure you are not leaving any stats on the table, and don’t take a zero at any spot. 

A similar scenario for those who drafted Logan O’Hoppe or Bo Naylor – two of the best catcher prospects who likely won’t start the season on their respective big-league clubs. O’Hoppe still has a chance, but it does look like veteran Matt Thaiss will take the second spot for now. We may have spent a 19^th-round pick on O’Hoppe and don’t want to drop him right away, but there’s also no reason to begin the season taking a zero at one of your catcher spots, especially when most everyone is healthy. This always leads back to the issue of being careful to not draft too many “stashes,” aka minor league or injured guys. We may have a personal affinity to O’Hoppe, but head (not heart) needs to take over so that we are making rational business decisions when it comes to our rosters and starting lineups.

If you’re dropping O’Hoppe or anyone else to fill your C2 spot, make sure you have several conditional bids in place (at least 5) to ensure coverage with a healthy bat that week.

Do all in your power to utilize conditional bidding to ensure you’re fielding a full and healthy lineup each scoring period and every week.

Optimizing Starting Lineups/Platoon Splits

In NFBC, we can swap out hitters in and out of our starting lineup twice per week (Monday, for Monday-Thursday and Friday for Friday-Sunday). Pitchers, we can only swap once a week, Mondays. Utilizing Matthew Davis’ Weekly Hitter Planner and Eric Cross’ Weekly Pitcher Planner, we can always plan ahead and prioritize player bids based on what is most advantageous for our lineups for the upcoming week. 

We should always be looking ahead at upcoming schedules to target pitchers in advantageous matchups. As well as platoon hitters in hitters’ parks or expected to face a set of opposite-handed, below-average starting pitchers in the upcoming week or two. 

Joc Pederson has been the classic example of a left-handed bat with pronounced platoon splits favoring matchups against right-handed pitchers. In over 3,000 career plate appearances, over 80% of those have come against RHP, as the Dodgers and Giants have quite frequently benched him when a left-handed pitcher is on the mound. It’s not at all surprising that over 90% of his career home runs have come against RHP. Pederson may miraculously improve against LHP this season, but that is not a likely outcome. Due to lack of offensive depth, it is highly likely that Pederson will be in the Giants’ real-life lineup most days. In an ideal fantasy scenario, we can optimize Pederson’s career splits and only start him when the Giants have an RHP-heavy set of upcoming starting pitchers in a week. And we are able to bench him (or drop) when the upcoming set of SP are lefty-heavy. 

Part of being able to optimize our starting lineups in this fashion goes back to our previous conversation on roster flexibility. If your bench is logjammed with stashes, you may have no choice but to start Pederson in a suboptimal LHP-heavy week. Sure, we can drop him, but part of our consideration there is how deep the FAAB player pool is. It’s much more difficult to drop a 30-HR bat like Pederson’s in a competitive 15-team Main Event league than in a 12-team Online Championship. 

The level of competition in NFBC continues to improve over the years and usually even the least informed manager in your league likely knows who the standout FAAB targets are the following week based on upcoming schedule – for example, a hitter who has recently heated up or moved up his lineup and lines up for seven road games in the two best hitters’ parks (Coors Field, Great American). Having roster flexibility and limited stashes allows us the ability to FAAB these types of players for single-digits two weeks in advance. Instead of ponying up inflated bid amounts the week of. 

Over time, we train ourselves to look ahead to take advantage of scheduled matchups. Or starting pitchers with two starts that week in pitcher friendly stadiums facing below-average offenses. The key to maximizing output of splits and schedules is to have roster flexibility with your last couple of bench spots where we’re able to burn and churn them without concern. The more multi-position eligible hitters you have on our teams, the easier we can slide players across different positions and avoid those goose eggs.

Before we move on, here is a list of borderline roster/part-time hitters with a wOBA over .350 over the last two seasons. For example, AJ Pollock would be a good FAAB add in a 12-team league in a week where the Seattle Mariners are slated to face 4 LHP in their six games. If you see that the San Francisco Giants are going on the road to face some RHP in Colorado or Cincinnati, then it’s a good time to pick up J.D. Davis.

Winning Bids Consistently 

Consistently winning bids is an artform that comes with experience, understanding leaguemates’ tendencies and a full comprehension of the platform you are playing on. With humility, I accept the notion of my colleagues who dub me a great FAAB’er but acknowledge that I’m always working to perfect my craft and that the NFBC and other leagues are filled with experienced and talented craftsmen and women in this regard. Much of my personal success of getting the players I’m targeting is fueled by feel and touch but it’s also very nuanced and well-researched. Over the last decade or so, this quick and easy process flow that has worked for me:

• Studying bidding patterns and tendencies of league-mates
• Switching up my own bidding patterns weekly
• Not getting married to players or feel like they “owe” me – keeping roster nimble

Noting habits and patterns of others in your league is necessary to help figure out bid amounts to get your pitchers and hitters of preference on a weekly basis. There are different types of bidders out there. There are the aggressive/go-for-broke types who chase top-trending players each week and typically overspend on a hitter coming off a .400-4 HR week or a pitcher coming off a no-run, eight-strikeout gem. Often, these bidders are falling for a trap where they’re paying top market value for someone based on one great start or one successful hitting week. Perhaps the pitcher faced the lowly Pirates and is now slated to face the voracious Dodgers. Or perhaps that pitcher came up for a spot start and the rotation incumbent is about to come off the IL and reclaim his spot. Balancing our aggressiveness or tendency to overbid is done so by valuing more of what we project to occur in the immediate (or long term) future as opposed to what has already happened.

Alternately, there are the ultra-conservative types who get beaten to the punch and underbid each week. They are unable to cut struggling players on a whim because they’re waiting on the production they drafted them for. Or they don’t place substantial or competitive bids on players who would be real boons for their team, whether that be attacking a specific category deficiency or a truly talented prospect up for the long haul who can be a real difference maker for them. These folks typically like to save their money for a rainy day but sometimes that rainy day never comes. 

Most bidders fall somewhere in between. The experienced ones know when on whom to be aggressive and when to hang back. The players who succeed and crush leagues every year are the ones who project forward instead of reflecting backwards.

Be sure to also be mindful on who the “homers” are in your league. There is always some diehard Yankee or Red Sox fan who overbids for a hometown player with their heart and not their head. Keep tabs on if you have any of these folks in your league and whether their hometown value appreciation is worth it to you. This season, it’s probably the guy who was drafting Jacob deGrom well before his new ADP.

Lazy bidding is an issue as well. You would be surprised how many of your leaguemates will simply throw in a bid ending in the same number each week. Be sure to always switch up your end number amount (37 one week, 34 the next) so that leaguemates don’t catch on to your bidding patterns seeing that you’re always ending your bids with a specific number. Reviewing prior weeks’ bids can help you identify bidding patterns of your leaguemates.

Money Management

As I alluded to in the “Winning Bids Consistently” section, it is incredibly easy to be swayed by recent strong performances, aka recency bias. We already see high draft ADP jumps on hitters and pitchers performing well in spring training and will certainly be witnessed to overspending on guys coming off hot weeks. Let’s say Oakland’s Nick Allen hits three homers opening weekend and Colorado Rockies’ southpaw pitcher Kyle Freeland twirls a gem in San Diego. Chances are there will be at least one person in your league overvaluing the microscopic sample and bids based on what just happened instead of what we project to happen in the future. Most recognize Allen as a low-power fringe bat and Freeland is a below-average MLB pitcher — they won’t bat an eye. But the person in your league who overspends on him may not have the foresight to look ahead that 1) Freeland’s next two starts are against top-notch offenses in Coors Field and 2) that they can’t even fit him into their starting lineup next week to begin with. 

That’s why knowing the player pool and the skill levels and upside with the pool is important before we even begin our weekly bidding. My personal mental checklist:

• Is this a flash-in-the-pan week? Is the player worth the new, inflated price tag?
• Is he getting more playing time because of injury to a starter?
• Where does he hit in the order? Who hits behind team? Team context. Ballpark context.
• Is my team shallow at this position where he’d be an every-week start for me?
• Who are the comparable hitters in FAAB who will be my secondary/backup bids?
• What is he worth to me and does he have staying power on my squad?
• What are the short-term and long-term benefits of this player at expected FAAB cost?

As the season progresses, you’ll have a better feel of your league-mates bidding tendencies and nuances to figure out how to get the players you’re targeting in FAAB.

The Allen and Freeland scenarios illustrate the simple yet important notion that context is everything when it comes to FAAB. Our season of 27 total bid periods where on average you make two bids per week means that on a $1,000 budget your average bid price per player is only $18. Granted, we’ll throw some whale bids of a few hundred for a player we deem a difference-maker, and we’ll win some players for $1 to $7 as well. But with a few big spends through the first three weeks, your team could be low in funds with more than five months left to play. That’s why running through these mental exercises of determining value of the player on his own team as well as for your fantasy team is of the upmost importance. Bidders will be more aggressive in April, and you can be too, but they must be calculated and strategic.

Reliever Roulette & Planning in Advance

Our precious $1,000 budget may seem a like a lot of scratch, but those funds can dwindle quickly. A total of 27 FAAB weeks comes out to only an average of $37 per week. Not a one of us will draft perfect rosters and just about every one of us will begin focusing on replacements from the FAAB pool. There will be some massive FAAB allocations before the season starts this Sunday, too. If Jordan Walker and Anthony Volpe crack their team’s respective rosters on Opening Day and we find that out before Sunday, we will see some massive bids in those February OCs where they were not drafted.

Each league is its own animal, and you can even get away with punting specific categories, but you’d still have to have drafted in a way to put your team in a position to smash all the other categories. The truth is, there are always glaring holes in our Opening Day rosters. As the season plays out those first few weeks, those category deficiencies begin to stick out and we must address them. Sometimes at higher prices than we feel comfortable paying. 

One way to avoid putting your team behind the roto eight-ball is to draft as balanced of a squad that you can. Focus on the power and swipes and don’t forget to be mindful of batting average along the way. Balance out more volatile high-strikeout starting pitchers (Hunter Greene types) with the strong control, low walk-rate types (like Logan Webb) who can help anchor down your ratios. 

The stronger your team is out the gate, the less tempted and less likely you are to tinker and overspend on flash-in-the-pan pick-ups at their top market rates. I call it “Drafting not to FAAB.” Not to say we’re not planning to make wise use of our budget to improve our team every week, but more so that we aren’t tiltishly bidding from a position of panic just to fix draft mistakes.

We see it a lot with closers. It’s the most volatile of positions and even more so in recent years with less clarity on who the closer is and more closer committees employed in general. In your standard 30-round, 5×5 draft, we’re hoping to land at least two closers locked into their roles and perhaps a third or fourth. The latter, a high-leverage reliever we believe could step into the role quickly. 

What happens when closers are inequitably spread out across teams in a league where a few teams have hoard more than they need while others only have one is a scarce commodities market in free agent pool where any reliever anointed a team’s new closer becomes a very valuable (and expensive, usually overpriced) target to bid on. In NFBC leagues over the years, I’ve seen up to $500 of that $1,000 budget spent on mediocre relievers simply because they were named their team’s closer. 

In contests like NFBC that have the overall prize component (12-team OC and 15-team ME) require teams to be well-balanced and competitive across the 10 standard roto categories if you want a shot at the big bucks. You can certainly win your 12-team OC with a 3 out of 12 in saves points, but you likely won’t be in competition for the grand prize in a field of 2,500. In a best-case scenario, you draft three closers in your 30-round draft who combine for 85 saves and get you in the 80^th-90^th percentile in saves overall. But we all know that we don’t live in a perfect world and accomplishing this feat is rare. We’re constantly losing closers to injury or role loss and ferociously grinding in FAAB each week to grab the next closer.

You don’t need to necessarily hoard them, and you probably shouldn’t play three closers among your starting nine slots each of the 26 weeks. But you do want to be mindful of the category just as you would every other category. Closer Roulette becomes an animal of its own if your squad is not fairly equipped with enough ninth-inning men and it could force poor decisions and overspending chasing a costly closer who was just anointed the saves guy by his manager. There’s nothing wrong with staying one week ahead of your competition by picking up a solid high-leverage reliever you believe might fall into a closer role. Since they don’t have the job at the time, you can usually pick them up for single-digit FAAB bids and you won’t feel as bad about dropping them if they don’t pan out. In fact, playing Reliever Roulette on the cheap instead of Closer Roulette for top dollar is my recommended approach. You may not need to do so if you have good fortune with the saves category, but chances are your stolen bases, WHIP or batting average might be a category you chase.

Saving for September & Time Management

Be mindful of how much budget you have left after the All-Star Break. My rule of thumb is to leave $75 to $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 a rarely broached topic. 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 I 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 players I really want. 

Thankfully, NFBC Swiss Army knife Darik Buchar, founder Greg Ambrosius and team have created a phenomenal tool to help save you time in FAAB by allowing you to do all FAAB on one page. Here’s a video illustrating how it works.

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My weekly FAAB column (Trust the Gut) will be out Saturday afternoons with an update Sunday afternoons. Note that this first column (for this Sunday, March 26) will be lighter than usual as I will be out of town and have several drafts this weekend in Las Vegas and online.

Best of luck with the rest of your drafts!