The Breaking Point: Vegas Pitching Inflation and the Collapse of NFBC Auctions

Welcome to the NFBC Auction Podcast. This is a new feed, so I want to recap what we've learned over the last five years on the DraftJampians podcast. We've got real actionable stuff to cover, and this is the difference between this pod and the mainstream ones. They're trying to kill time, and I had to cut what I wanted to say by about 15 minutes. Those shows will burn two full episodes talking about catchers, just to fill a feed, because they don't have a fucking original thought in their head. I don't need to manufacture tags to hit an upload schedule. If I'm talking about something, it's because I want to, not because I need to fill 60 minutes pretending I want to talk about something. Okay, mind as well go here, too. Fucking sick of people dragging some local fan and calling them an expert because they live in a city and root for a team. That's not analysis. That's just geography. Fans are the fucking worst possible analysts for their own teams. You're not getting information, you're just getting cope. It's fake authority, no edge, no content, at all that is, at all relevant to NFBC, just bias, depth chart, regurgitation, and camp buzz, sorry, but I'd rather listen to Ariel Cohen cite his career softball stats and listen to Jason Collette pretend he's an expert on the park factors of Trump kind of field. Okay, I admit it, he just jealous of Baba. He invited Joe Arrico instead of me, so I'm just jealous, sorry, all that. I didn't mean any of that. I do want to, let's start off, I do have a ran here, let's start off a little bit light, so we'll ease into things, so just listen up. I think what I hope is like the most slept on prospect all things in city right now, I'm a prospect guy. I'm like, I have, but what I hope I will admit it, I'm not a prospect guy, I don't, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's not good for a disaster to admit they've never heard. All right, all right, let's start with the, I'm not a prospect guy thing, and who are right? If you're positioning yourself as a fantasy expert and you say I'm not a prospect guy, what you're really saying is, there's a whole third of the player pool, I just don't feel like understanding. Cool, you're not an expert, you're a guy who reacts late and just calls it prudence. Okay, next, we're talking about podcast. Pa, let's, and I don't know, we heard the recent Mount Rushmore podcast and you know what, like sipping to the NFPC guys isn't as bad as sipping for grown men, other analysts, other, I've been guilty of this, but Mark new rule, there'll be no sucking off on our opponents anymore. Unless it was like a really good reason to suck them off, and okay. Every episode is the same nonsense, shout out to the go, absolute legend, no one does it better, catch your expert. This whole community has turned into podcasters putting a pussy on a pedestal, shout out to four-year versions, two double puns there, but it's not respect, it's career networking disguised as analysis. Dirty secret, no one wants to admit, the average NFPC player is better than most podcasters. Meanwhile, half these pods are just useless victory laps from five years ago, like Cedric Mullins and Taylor Ward, guess praising hosts who praise guests, a closed loop circle jerk of great point, great point, oh, I love this, yeah, thousand percent. You know who the real goats are, the anonymous NFPC players finishing top five every time. They don't tweet, they don't podcast, they don't need applause, they're not getting shout-outs, they're just taking your money in old Seattle Mariner and Milwaukee Brewer hats. Why does this, why does this sucking up happen? Because saying most podcasters aren't that good gets you frozen out, I'll say it, most podcasts fucking suck. Because challenging consensus loses you invites, I've been invited on a podcast in a year probably. Loses you route tweets, loses you access, so instead we get fake humility over the top praise and this bizarre hierarchy where podcasters pretend they're smarter than the player pool that actually funds the fucking contest. Okay, next, I don't know if I'll long this is good, but we're gonna keep going. Let's talk about draft guides and subscriptions. Draft guides are a fucking scam, you're not buying an edge, you're paying for friends. You're paying to feel included, you're paying for a discord or community and people telling you that your takes are good, you're paying to send dog pictures to other men, it's fantasy Facebook the pay version. What do you actually get from these draft guides? Player blurbs that say could take a step forward, rankings that look like ADP, shaken but not stirred, targets who are already popular, avoids who already got hurt and a PDF that will go be wrong in about two days. Paywall's biggest joke of them all, this is what I've learned, information's everywhere, market corrects instantly now, and the second anything's written, it's priced in. Fantasy Analysts actually had a repeatable edge, they wouldn't sell it for a couple bucks. They wouldn't dilute it to thousands of subscribers, they wouldn't need to hype it on pods. Real edges are fragile and they're closely guarded. Have you ever really listened to a top NFC player on a podcast, an actually good NFC player? You think they're being candid, if you think that you've lost your mind, share their helpful insights and they're happy to answer the questions being asked, because 99% of these questions are the wrong questions. The second someone monetizes an edge, it stops being one, not an opinion, that's economics. Okay, we're talking about buying things, we can't not talk about this. I'd be remiss not to mention the mecca of useless paid content, a place where you can bust a nut over pitch design but remain flaccid when talking about actually winning a fantasy. This is the content mill. This is the fantasy baseball sweatshop. Hit your list, hires hundreds of people with no track record, no proven results, no demonstrated ability to beat the market, no references, anyone can verify it. They just unbork anyone with a pulse and a pronoun and then they pump out volume articles and articles and articles, rankings, blurbs, daily notes, Luis Araya's Hall of Fame propaganda, not because there's insight just because content density creates the illusion of expertise. Let's be clear what's happening. This is mostly 20 year old virgins living in their parents' basements writing articles for 30 year old virgins living in their parents' basements. It's not, I'm buying an edge, I'm buying friends. You're subscribing to analysis, you're not subscribing to analysis. You're subsidizing a social club. And the lifetime subscription part, disgusting. Lifetime for opinions from contributors who won't be there in two years, have improved a thing, replaceable tomorrow, and are writing under an editor, I don't even know if that exists, but whose job is to keep the content machine running and not protect quality. All right, you guys, guys still here with me? >> Go, go. >> No? >> No, everyone speaks us, of course, they don't want to say, they don't want to be part of this podcast anymore. So let's talk about posting draft boards on Twitter, sorry fish, you've got to talk about this. You post your full draft board on Twitter with names attached to your fucking mark. You're out of your self as someone who doesn't understand how the edge works. If you believed in your process, you protected, if you believed in your, you had an edge, you wouldn't broadcast it. Why? Because knowing who the best players are prioritizing is insanely valuable. If I know that, I know what elite players push up, what they fade, and where they're willing to reach. I can anticipate the runs, exploit the gaps, and draft against your personal tendencies. Here's the thing, no elite NFBC player posts a full board, post a full board publicly, none of them. No elite player. So I'll say that again, no elite player posts their full boards publicly. Because they understand something you don't. If you're posting your board on Twitter, you're farming engagement from people worse than you while quietly helping people better than you. The saddest part, the best players that you're trying to impress, they've already screen shot at it, and they're laughing. You think this might be true? I know it is. Okay. Here's what we want to really segue into. The Twitter show your board crowd. You posting your full draft board with names attached is not what you think it is. All right. Let's bury this argument completely because it's one of the dumbest cope narratives in fantasy. First, this is not hypocrisy, it's hierarchy. The best players share boards to compound advantage. That's how competitive domains work, poker, trading, DFS, politics. Even the odds is loser language. Public posting, evens the odds is what people say when they've already accepted they're behind and what the rules changed instead of getting better. Competition is not a democracy. Maybe that's all the people begging for draft boards voted for Kamala. Sorry Mark. Edges are not supposed to be seen. Kamala. Come on. All right. Whatever. This point still stands. No one owes you access. I'm glad Wardog is a New Jersey this year and I'm in Vegas because I don't want any problems with you. I don't want any problems. But here's what actually happens when boards are posted publicly. Bad players don't suddenly get smarter. Good players lose negligible edge. Elite players harvest the data silently. The only people who know how to use the information already didn't need it. You just handed ammunition to the enemy and called it fairness. The argument misunderstands why private sharing works. Private board sharing works because everyone involved is already skilled. Everyone contributes something unique. Like I said before, you bring something to the table. Everyone understands context and intent and everyone keeps your fucking mouth shut. Twitter has none of these things and it's infinite just clout chasing. The uncomfortable thing that no one wants to tell you, if you think public board sharing helps you, you are not one of those sharks. You're not even close and you're not being oppressed. You're simply just outside the circle and broadcasting your work won't get you invited in. That's what your goal is. And this includes posting the boards in the discord. I know maybe there's no name. Sorry. Joe McEw. But it will just mark you as someone who doesn't understand discretion. Srebro doesn't win because he hides his boards. He wins because his boards are better. His reasoning is deeper. He adjusts faster and he will make you question yourself and he knows when to shut the fuck up. Posting your board on Twitter doesn't make the game fair. It just tells everyone you don't understand how advantage works. So yeah, I guess this sort of goes into, we're just catching up from the last five years of the DC pod because this is a new feed. So let's just get into, we're almost done here. High profile analysts who get free NFPC entries in exchange for promotion, live streaming the draft. And they act like they have the right to broadcast every team every pick with real names attached. No, absolutely fucking not. Let's be crystal clear about this transaction and no knock on the NFPC. I'd be comping the entries if I were Greg too, like that's just good business. Here's what's happening. They get a free entry. They build their brand. They monetize the content. They grow followers. They sell ad sub guides, whatever. And what do you get? Your name, your draft picks, your strategic preferences, your edge sold without consent. So they farm engagement. You are not the public property just because you paid for an entry fee. You paid to compete, not to be cast as some extra in someone else's brand play. If I dissected their tendencies, clipped their mistakes and blasted it across Twitter, they'd scream and block me and say, this is bad faith. Trust me, I've done this. But when it's your name, suddenly, it's community. Let's call out the entitlement. These analysts act like the free entry makes them special. The live stream makes them important and their audience makes them immune from me making fun of them. It doesn't. You didn't earn the right to expose everyone else just because NFBC comped you to see, you're not adding value by naming teams. You're outsourced in the cost of your promotion onto paying players. That's weak. That's hypocrisy. They'll say, transparency is good for the game. Bullshit. If transparency were the goal, lower the names and focus on your decisions. But they don't, because names drive clicks and clicks are the point. So don't BS everyone. It's brand building on someone else's risk. Here's the line they never want crossed. You are not entitled to sell my participation to grow your platform. They don't want to hear that. You already got a free entry, expose your credibility. Now you want my identity attached to? Get fucked. You're not the gatekeepers of the NFBC. You're guests in a high-stakes contest paid for by people better than you. And the second you forget that, the second you treat other players as props, you reveal exactly what you are. Not analysts, not educated, not educators, not community leaders, just marketers who needed a free seat to stay relevant, a puppet with Greg's hand up your ass and Tom smiling in the corner. Sit down. Okay. Last one here. Curated draft champions, Rose. Sorry, Mike. Lastly, the people who create private D.C. leagues and cherry pick owners to compete against well, pretending that counts in the overall contest or should, let's be honest, this isn't a proving skill. It's padding to go and insulating from risk. And when you claim, oh, my room's full of sharks, it's harder to win that way. That's a lie you're telling yourself. You control the environment, you flatten competition, real grinders thrive and randomized chaos. They live in uncertainty. The uncertainty of Adam and a gemmy picking 15 straight hitters followed by Walker Bueller. You hide behind curated safety. So I'm done. Let's put a ball on this. Hopefully that… I don't think that was too long. The edges of fragile, they're earned through experienced risk, adaptation and accountability. Ignoring prospects, lazy, podcaster, worship, insecure, draft guides, cucks, pitcherless pro, bigger cucks, public draft boards, sheep, free entry, live stream analysts, entitled, curated draft champions, rooms, possees. So I guess you think I'm an asshole for saying that. You're going to hate the rest of this because this is going to precede the best podcast of the year. What's up, boys? You got it. What's that? What was that? What was that? How we doing? Fish. Depond. I don't know how long was that. I need to check. I don't know, but it's going to be a top-back to follow. That's for sure. Yeah. Is there an Emmy for… Oh, no, I can't suck your dick. Sorry. Well, what are those words called, the podcaster words? The Poddies. Who knows? Oh, you mean the FSWA. FSWA, do you think I'll get an FSWA for that? Yeah. Are you a registered member? Yeah, you got to pay the fee, I think, to be eligible. The FSWA didn't get hit by the rant. They probably should have. Actually, let's save that for next pod. OK, so we've got Jason DuPont here, everyone knows who that is. Ultimate Auction winner. Among other accolades. We've got Mark Winoker. Three times Mike the Melchman Night Madness Champion in a row is four. Is it four? Four. One for the ring this year, going for number five this year. I'm back with my only non auction. Let's do it. And we've got John Fish. The only word to describe him is legend. Total legend. Yeah, absolutely. I just identified this, broke the rules. Yeah, you did. Yeah. That's true. Let's show. I'm going to keep you honest this year on this pod, which is, you know, by the way, and this is not I'm just saying I've always wanted there to be an NFC auction pod. So the fact that you named it NFC auction pod is perfect. So. Yeah, you guys the perfect guys to be the first guest on it. But like, you know, the draft champions podcast, we barely talked about draft champions. So, you know what? Like I said at the start, I'll do what I want. But let's auction. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, fab, you know, that that'll all remain that's part of the game and that's part of auctions too. So, I mean, I think it's mostly relevant. Well, whatever you talk to will definitely relate to auctions and other leagues too. Yeah. So we're going to be talking about auctions and we will break for our big fish in a small pond segment that we, uh, he's done the last episode, but we're going to sandwich that into a little bit of actual content in on this episode, and now we've made an agenda. I thought it's, I think it's pretty good. So every NFC auction has a moment where you can feel before anyone says that we're when it's about to break. I don't know. We're going to try and describe what it means when the auction breaks, but every auction has a breaking point. And I thought about this and I've looked at some of the off them to already this year. Budget's compressed position stall prices spike, um, not because of value because of fear. And we'll talk about all this. Uh, we're going to talk about the end game and get into the end game and it's about the flexibility. And I don't want to get into too much details right now, um, but basically we're going to be talking about nomination strategy end game and then discuss an idea I've never really heard discuss before. It's the SB two everyone talks about the Vegas price inflation and it's really the SP two tier. And really, I think that's sort of like the ugly cousin of price enforcing and we're going to talk about that. See if you guys disagree or agree with with that concept. So we're going to get into auctions here, um, anything else to go over before we start off? You know, just that, you know, this is going to be a much deeper dive than kind of basic auction strategy. This is going to be an advance. This is, um, um, a master class, if I could say that we're about to have here, I hope it's. I hope to talk about things that you don't really hear talked about before. So like, like I said, the moment the auction breaks and we're going to get into like the breaking point of an auction where it, it tips from projections or, um, player targets to, um, just flexibility and what, what, what can your opponent do and what can't your opponent do? And then the end game strategy, um, how to target specific categories in auctions, like steep categories versus scarce categories, talk about nomination strategy and then price enforcing topic that I discussed. So first, I want to get into, um, just like the overarching sort of, I guess mindset that I had when I was great, um, putting this agenda together is, uh, in an auction, you don't really think, like, think in terms of players, um, I guess in snakes, you just want your targets and you have targets and you want to hit your, your percentile ranks or whatever, right? But in auctions, you think in dollars, um, but dollars per roster spot and, uh, the dollar per roster spot with the positional context, um, and you want to drain the other players liquidity. So like mid auction, like it, like it's all relative and I guess the, uh, one of the big themes of this that I want to talk about is relative value is greater than or equal to absolute bargain. So people always want to get like below the AAV and like, oh, I got fucking Christopher Sanchez for 21 dollars. Oh my god. But that's, and that's been me, that's really been me and then I started taking into this and I'm like, no, uh, winners don't chase absolute bargains that, that ruins your team sometimes. But I think it's all relative value and the relative value really only gets uncovered in the end game. Um, so Jay, do you have any thoughts on that? Um, I mean, you're using a lot of big fancy terms here, but I, I definitely, I definitely feel auctions, uh, you know, I have different phases in terms of, with the pricing and it's part of the reason that auctions are the absolute greatest is the, uh, rush of between the breaks and changes with the pricing, the environment. And if you're, you know, a player who spends early and often, you know, you have to chill out. If you're someone who kind of starts and tries to get values and be quiet, you know, you can put the pedal down and be aggressive when it's quiet. So, you know, you just constantly have to recalibrate during the auction and, um, also be flexible there. So now that I did not answer your questions back. Well, it wasn't really a question. Just, this is just what I was sort of what my mindset was entering this podcast. I know it's being, I know it's sort of vague at first and abstract, but I just, yeah, maybe it's a bad, bad lead to this podcast. But, um, I, no, I think it's good. Uh, you know, I'll, I'll say a few things. Um, I think liquidity, I don't know if you create that with purchasing power. I mean, I think it has a couple, like I always want to retain my purchasing power throughout an auction. So I'm, I'm eligible to get those smaller bargains, those relative bargains. I agree with you. The absolute bargains. That's when you, I know we're talking about price enforcing later, but that's when you get, you, that's when you can get yourself in big trouble. Um, when you're looking at average auction value coming in, it's a player that you're kind of ambivalent on all of a sudden he's $6 below. You, you make a bid. You get stuck with him because the room has soured on him and you didn't, and you should have been realizing that. And then you have a big ticket player, potentially that was not, you know, your intention or doesn't feel fit to build. So I think, I think those are good points. Um, you know, I think, I think Jason's right. That, that end of the first break into the second break, there's a definite shift in mindset, in kind of panic and fear. And if you are poised to take advantage of it, um, you could really, uh, clean up in that next, you know, hour, hour and a half, you know, uh, kind of middle part of the auction. So you know, that's where you have to have some discipline. And listen, there are plenty of great stars and scrubs players and they, they just, they dominate the endgame like they, they dominate the first third and the last third, the middle third, they just sit out. So, you know, that's one way to play it. Another way is to, you know, strike a little in the first, in the first third, dominate the second third and just kind of hang on the third. Um, so, you know, any, I don't say any strategy draft, uh, auctioning five catchers is not a strategy that I think can win as what that was just done in an O lack, um, that's not a strategy you should be trying to do. Uh, that, you know, it's just a mini ramp. But let's just spend the podcast talking about that. Well, can I try a minute? I disagree at Mark on that, actually, rice is going to get, no, rice is going to get first baked eligibility, right? He moves over 40, once one, he bat. I don't think it's, I don't think it's that bad of a move, guys. Yeah. He already has first base eligibility. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I just had a catcher. No, you already have. No, he has to. Now, this is going to auction him. I had to put it up. I'm sorry, I, I delete, um, players like him and Salvi, I just think of him as catcher. So I lost sight of that. I didn't take him earlier now. Okay. 27. I was just, I have a question on that mark. So like, you're, if you're in that auction and some guy does that, um, takes five catchers, are you trying to make sure that you get like the, like one of the better catchers then as well? Are you, uh, sitting back and, um, letting, letting the catcher, like, you know, kind of fading catcher at that point? Well, I don't know what Zach did. We're, you know, we're now competitors, you know, football. We weren't any leagues together. So we were more liberal in our kind of discussions on, on, on, on strategy. But I don't know what he did, what would I do? Um, I would be looking to clean up in probably all the other areas, you know, where there was an opportunity. Um, if I end up having two weaker catchers, it's certainly not optimal. Um, and I'm not sure, but maybe it's covered by the rest of the, of the, of the edge and the other positions. I would try to sneak in a decent first catcher if I could, you know, if, if, you know, one came and there just wasn't the, the pressure and you could get them for a reasonable price. I would probably do that. But I would not be chasing them up the auction board. I wouldn't be paying $14 for an eight dollar catcher. No way. Uh, I would never do that. Um, well, this is a hopeful segment to the community because, uh, there's so many instances in the future where people listening will be in a draft room where somebody drafts five, uh, well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. There, there will be extreme strategies. Maybe not that one. But I think, I think it's not an unreasonable thing to talk about. How do you deal when someone's throwing an extreme strategy? I know the, uh, the high stakes, bros, the guys who play in the, uh, the nose bleeds, you know, standalones, they talk about that. Jason's legendary at punting saves and forcing other people to adapt to his strategy. So I think, I think extreme strategies, if you're not prepared or experience could throw you off completely. And these old laughs, let's be honest, Zach are a little wild west. I mean, there's definitely not, you know, I'm not saying five catchers, but two D H's maybe, you know, you never know what you might get out of these. So it's good to least, it's good to, you know, um, you know, going, it's paying $140 on pitching, you know, it, it happens. And you have to know how to kind of adjust. Yeah. The, the thing with the, the options is, and I'm trying to find the, I was trying to think of the word as you were talking, but it's sort of like static. Like you, like, you can only, the, the 15 teams can only draft so many players, right? So, um, I'll give you where I was trying to get to with this. And what I, when I was in the draft, um, I didn't, I was really calm because it happened quickly. So he drafted those five catchers really early in the draft. So I had time to, to, to adjust to it. And, um, I think I, I was able to, and, um, I knew that catch, the one thing that I knew, it catching was going to get really bad at the end. So he's got a surplus. Like, at the end of these drafts and J knows it from being in the Gladiators, you have, at the end, you had like Sean Murphy, Bonaylor, um, maybe the giant sky, which is named Bailey and like, Ruiz, the Ruiz, the bottom of the barrel. I knew right away, okay, this happened. And I knew half the room probably wasn't thinking this. You're going to be getting some real cocks. Like the last three are going to, now the last three aren't going to be Ruiz, Janssen and whatever. Um, they're going to be like backup players that should be on waivers. Um, and funny in that, in that auction where the guy drafted five catchers, Danny Janssen still made it to like around 29 and it was sort of somehow, which is like baffling. But I knew that like when I got down to the end, I played the end game. I said, I need $3 for Ryan Jeffers. I was saving $3 for Ryan Jeffers. I would have gone five on Jt Ruiz, too. I got, I got outbid on real Muto. He went for a little bit higher than I thought because people were thinking the same thing as me. But that's, that's what I was adjusting. I didn't want to get, I didn't want to get shut out. I figured I might as well spend three on Jeffers because I don't want to spend two on any of the other bad ones. I know they're all going to go for two or, I don't know what they actually did, but like that's what I expected. The other thing that I was planning for is because that player, um, everything so rigid in these auctions. I think that's the word I want to use. I knew that he had Sal at corner and Ben Rice at first. I knew that the end game for the corners and first baseman are going to be easier to buy players because everyone, not everyone's going to be compete like that. The opposite's going to happen with first base. And you saw, when I saw Alec Ball moved into the reserve rounds, like the fourth round of the reserves. So I was able in that auction to get, um, two pretty good corner infielders for $1 for each. So that's why I, that's why I just didn't in that auction. It's like two players that I figured that should be two or three dollars. I was able to get them for a dollar and, um, yeah. And that's, that's the tough sell for, uh, for new auction players because honestly, it takes a lot of reps. You have to get in there, right? I mean, you got to do dozens and dozens of auctions to really get good enough to do what Zach's just saying, that ability to kind of understand the nuance, know where to go. But you know what? If you don't start, if you don't start, you never got there. So you just, you know, jump in and all of us started as newbies. And, you know, I'm sure I was not good at all starting and, you know, you just get better over time if you keep at it. Couldn't, couldn't agree more on that. I don't care how good your rankings are. If you have the best system, you will screw up the money and not build that team, seen it a million times. With that being said, someone like Phil, I think his first live auction, even though he, uh, phoned into Rob doing it one the overall auction championship. So, you know, you can, you can also win right away. So stop being a whimp, join no reason to keep waiting on these auctions. Yeah. Phil is a live one. Phil is an absolute legend. I'd love to more suck to deck some more, but I was sort of joking when I said, like, oh, this is not helpful. But I can't think of any other instant, like obviously the catcher thing was an extreme strategy. Are there any other instances? Like, I know Jay, Mark, like from you guys have done a ton of auctions. Like, are there any other examples of that? Like, I know in the auction that we were in in Vegas last year, there was a new employer that took three catchers, right? He took Adley and the two Contreras brothers and he spent a lot of money on them, sort of did something similar, but not that extreme. Like he didn't, he just put one out of his utility and he ended up finishing last in the lead. Yeah, I've seen three catchers a lot actually over the NFVC history. I've seen that one in live events before as well. I don't think I've ever seen a team catch, but I think the five catchers might be the way to go grab a couple more. Ben Rice is a lead winner. Well, didn't someone take two UTs? Yeah, that's where Jay was alluding to. He's like, you could be the best at projection, projecting things. You can write a book on the process and you can still screw up your roster construction. Yeah, it just takes one wrong word out of your mouth and you could just kill your team in an instant and that's like the worst feeling and we've all done it. My favorite was me and Andy Saxton back in New York. I don't know if you were in this one Jay, but you know, it was it was Tanaka and we're like, all right. So I don't know if it's like a bit, it was like eight or 10 and he's like 20. I'm like, Oh my God. Why'd you say that? Total crickets, you know, that's just kind of like, you know, that's just an example. And he's a great auction player. He's won the overall. But just one little word out of your mouth all of a sudden, you kind of like screwed. So you have to have so much confidence, self control, discipline and focus. I even though I can get loud and rowdy, I'm actually pretty disciplined, I have one story and it killed me when it happened in New York, ballroom, multiple auctions going on. And I think I bid 25 and then I heard the I won the player and that I heard him say Carlos Gonzalez. The problem was I was bidding on Carlos Gomez. So, but, but, you know what? I took it like a champ didn't say a word wrote down Gonzalez who was not on my board at all. Total fade and I said, fuck it. But it was one of those misunderstanding because they're lazy, facilitator there, but not walking around in a ballroom, you know. And I messed up the Carlos's. That's a pretty close one. Gomez and Gonzalez. But that one killed me all year. I was thinking about it and I think Gomez went bananas that year in particular. But otherwise, the best players make mistakes with their money, taking the wrong position, realizing late with the money. I remember Jeff Dobie's who won the overall had 21 bucks for his last player, dollar player and took Starlin Marte and Marte blew up that year and he fucked up so bad. I fell into shit and I think won the overall that year. I think you want a couple overalls with Andy, of course. So, you know, you can also get pretty lucky on that. Now in the live auctions, have you guys ever had an instance where somebody bid on a player that they could not bid for? Oh, yeah, that's all right. I was able to bid on Otani and because he, Otani had pitch eligibility. If Otani didn't have a pitch eligibility, then the auction would have been like, oh, well, sorry, Jeff, you couldn't bid on him. You're in luck. Is that ever happened, you guys? I've never made the mistake, but it's happened in multiple auctions. Yeah. How many times does a player win a bid? Then they're like, no, you weren't supposed to, you know, bid on them or call them out and shit. We have to redo it. So, the one thing they should do at the start of the auction or in an email, whatever, everyone should have the auction room up on their laptop because you can go in in a live auction on your own laptop and move your guys into the appropriate positions because if not yet, to stop the auction, ask the facilitator, hey, move so and so to, you know, third and move him to whatever, which is annoying. You could do it yourself. And then that way, you end up not screwing yourself by getting a guy you weren't able to because that's what happens. A lot of people didn't technically they could have, but they have in the wrong spot. So, you know, it's a little little pro tip. Make sure you have your laptop and you can manipulate your own positional placement during the auction and save everyone the hassle of having you have to stop the auction and do it. I agree 100%. Only promise on a couple of my leagues and they're fine gentlemen. I play against a couple like 85 girls sometimes. That's going to be our computers. You know, and God bless those guys. Don Warner. God bless. Don Warner. This guy comes out every year and he fucking competes. He's great. I mean, it's amazing. If I'm sitting in my seven late seventies and still coming to Vegas, I will be that's life if you can make it out. If I'm not, I'm going to be pissed. That's right. All right, let's talk about close. I'm still like closer than that to you. I'm like five years away from being 80. So I'm just going very close. Well, it's y'all that you've almost made it. That's good. You're that much closer to doing it than I am. You got a better chance. I know. Domination sequencing is greater than nomination strategy. And what the fuck did I mean by that when I wrote that down? I guess some. No, I didn't nominate someone is more important than who you're nominating, right? Because I never nominate the stars. For me, I feel like I'm one of the only people that does that. At least in the old lacks. Maybe I guess it's different when we get to Vegas. I forget what happens there. But I'm never nominating the guys like to fund the top of your queue because they're going to get nominated. Anyways, I want to nominate the people that I don't want. So like what like when to nominate is important. So for me, I wrote down some notes here. What nominate who you don't want? I'm most of the time. I do like 95% of time. I'm nominating who I don't want. So when I don't want someone, I when it's, but it's also just don't just nominate some guy you don't want just because I try to nominate when many people need that position. So like an obvious point is don't nominate some shit catcher you don't want when you and only like two other managers need like a like your second catcher. Like when three players are left, when you when only three teams need to catcher, say like 12 teams of both catchers and three teams still need to buy their second catcher, don't nominate one of the catchers you don't want because that's the time you can easily get stuck with them. And you want to nominate the players you don't want when there's a lot of cash out in the room. So like don't nominate a player, but you don't want that has like an average auction value of five. So I don't know who that would like an example. That would be like maybe like Brian Reynolds. So you don't want Brian Reynolds and there's a lot there's not a lot of there's not a lot of money left in the room. So he might go for like a deal there. Like you don't want to nominate some you don't want to you don't want to nominate a player you don't want when he's not going to get bit up. And then also you want to nominate players that you don't want when scarcity is the highest. So like say only two solid closures remain and you already have two good relievers then perfect time. Like once once I get if I have two relievers, I'm always just throwing out the closures. So you want to just drain obvious like I guess this is more of an obvious point. We'll get into more nuanced points, but anything to add here just on when to nominate and just like how to like drain drain your opponents. Well Jason loves to drain his opponents, but Jason I'm very curious on your strategy because you are a very unique nominate. There will be judge Rudon. That's a strategy, right? Just only. Yeah. I like to nominate my favorite players at the beginning. That's what we're saying here without being specific. Now part of that is just respect for everyone while they're sharp on their game in the room not smoking sigs, taking pisses. I want to call out studs like judge and rice. So no I get them off the board, but I think in this topic comes up number one, I'm actually and I'm not saying I do it the right way because obviously I put fun even before sometimes what's most strategic in these auctions, but I feel like half the room doesn't take it really serious with nominations. And it's kind of this is one of the really fun cool parts about it. I think of nominations like in the off season, just that's where my head goes, but yeah, I mean everyone says right you're supposed to mix it up. We all know that don't throw out the studs right away, but it's still amazing where people just kind of don't have a strategy on it, but I think the key part is you have to be laser focused on everybody else with your nominations. To me, it's like you're trying to, you know, trying to screw over people, right? I've had people after auctions come up to me and they're like, yeah, we called them out because we saw you didn't have whatever. So, you know, the smart people are doing that. So that's not rocket science, you know, if you have two short stops and there's a bunch of quality ones, you keep calling them out. But, you know, mixing it up is a good idea. I think you have to mix up your game somehow. It's either with the nominations or the bidding and I think that's where people screw up. You have the people who only bid when they want people and, you know, or you have people who either call out people they want or call out people they don't want. And I think you want chaos in between all around, especially on the bidding. Everybody should have that mouth open starting from one dollar, of course. Well, that's the bit. You made a bunch. I mean, that the nomination point is great. I would say nine of the maybe nine or 10 and the 15 aren't utilizing nominations properly. They are either telegraphing or they're gaining they're gaining no information or they are basically doing everyone's job by just getting, you know, getting rid of top players who are going to go for the same amount no matter when they're nominated. That's that's really the key. So I think that's a big leak for a lot of players and the best players are the best in nominating. I think there's a direct relationship. My, I mean, just I've said this before, but I like to nominate the sex pigs. The sex pigs are the ones I want to get out because in my probably on on my file, they're $5, $10 over what I'm willing to pay. So, oh, actually, can you define it? Because I don't, I don't even know, I just say because you say it. I don't even know what the hell it is. The fish doesn't talk for a while. The fish should define the second. Yeah, what's the sex pig fish? Well, I'm not sure I'm equipped to talk about it. That should be Rick Pondstone. What? Unfortunately, Rick is MIA, but we'll get him back at some point. The sex pig is basically like a younger guy who is, is all of a sudden on the hype train. There's 100 and stack casts. You gotta, if you have both those combos, you are once the top 100 and you have a good stack cast page. You are officially a qualified sex pig at some point. Yeah, good stuff plus or good stuff plus. Yes. So, I like to nominate the sex pigs because I'm usually off them. People, if it's early, people are not gonna let them go. They will go for, you know, what I think, you know, what I think, not what they're worth, but what they, you know, what they're, what the market's demanding. Kelly Euganski loves them. I know that. Well, I will jot that down. Well, many people do and a lot of these guys end up being good. I, I tried it on you a couple of years ago, Zach. I'm totally blanking on who I kept nominating and no, no, someone who actually did good. Like it was, it was a guy that you were, I don't think it was true. It was true. Yeah. Yes. I kept, I'm like, I'm gonna get Zach and you kept, and you kept buying him and he was freaking awesome. So, you don't, you don't always, always get that right, but at least that's the strategy. The strategy is I want to get money off the board when it really shouldn't be off the board. You know, these guys should not go for 20. They should be going for 12. If I, if I wait too long, they'll go for 15. You know, they'll still go over, but I won't get the full benefit of people overpaying for players. I don't, that, that I don't think are worth it. Again, that's your own assessment of the player. You could very, very well be wrong. The last thing I'll say is I always want to get information with my first nomination. I mean, every, every, every knob gives you some information, but you can get garnered the most information on that first knob, and it could be about your own plan A. Hey, this is a cornerstone of my plan A. I need to know if I'm going to get them. It could be what's the temperature of the room going to be on starting pitching, on closures, on, you know, on, on catches, whatever. You can get information on that first. That could set you up for the rest of the auction. So, you should, that's, I don't think about in the summer, like, I mean, in the winter like Jay, but I do think about for any auction, who is my first knob going to be? That's something I, I do actually spend time on, and I usually go in with maybe one or two options dependent, it depends if you're picking, uh, numbing first or 15th, too. Sometimes if you're numbing 15th, you've already gotten the information that you were hoping to get, then you could do a more advantageous, um, type of nomination. So, you know, num positioning also plays a little bit into it. No, I think that's a great point on the early one. I've even kind of changed, uh, or opened up a little bit with a range of player because of that, you know, let's say a scubaal came out for like 37, you thought he's a 41 dollar player, then you're, you're thinking, wow, schemes are crochet might be a deal. I might have to jump in even though I was looking for a 30 dollar guy. So, um, and there's, it's, it's not just that first one. I think the first round in general, because a lot of people are 10 at the first round, they only want deals. Um, so, you know, it's, um, that's a, that's a great point you bring up. I'll throw out something else. Um, I, like I said that I normally throw up players I don't want, but there are times where like, say, for example, um, I'm in the market for a closer and I say, let's say I want, um, um, Josh Hader just throwing a name on there. Say I want Josh Hader. See his average cost is 18 bucks. Like, you never know what's going to go in the auction. He's a target. I don't want to end up in a spot where I'm paying $22 for Josh Hader. Say we're early in the auction. We got Andrus Munoz. This got thrown out. Andrus Munoz goes for 19 20 bucks. I'm like, okay, if haters might target, now's the perfect time to throw him, because right after, if Munoz went for 19 20, I know that haters, people, people are rigid. People are smart. That it needs NFBC options. They know they're not going to go rogue here. They're not going to pay, they're not going to push Hader over Munoz right after he got hit on. Yeah. Yeah. Most, yeah. There's definitely an anchoring effect that you need to be paying attention to. And that is, if you knew who the, like, the top two or three of a tier or at the position rarely is a guy below that going to jump them. It does occasionally happen. If you get a real, you know, any one player could have two guys going crazy for the end of it. Like, I mean, Ben Rice this year, I could see 35 at some point, because people are just not going to want to give up. So, but you're generally right. I think, look for the anchoring effect. Use that to your edge. If you know, because you can, I think you're right, people are more rational in that, in the pricing. You can anticipate the next price within a dollar or two. And if it fits your budget and what you were expecting to pay, that's a good time to try to go in there and grab it. If you wait that player, just, you know, by less, less supply later, it could go for more than, and more than you were expecting. Yeah. I saw it happen in that option that, that just occurred with Ben Rice and, and, and the guy played, I think he got Rally too. Ben Rice went, was one of the first purchases he went for 27 as, as he should. And then you saw Cal Rally get nominated. And I was in both the first auction. Cal Rally, I think went for less than $27 in the first auction. I think he went for like 25. So I'm like, holy shit, Ben Rice went for 27 in the second auction. I wonder what Cal Rally is going to go for. Then Cal Rally gets nominated. Do you see 24, slow, 25? I'm like, he's not going to stop it, stop at 25. And then you see, like, almost counts down to zero. Somebody goes 26. And I'm like, he can't still be below Ben Rice's early in the auction. So, so, so people don't want to let that happen. And that's a, that's a, that's a type of price enforcement. And you see it, but you can, you can, you can feel the room is reluctant to do it because Ben Rice was, I don't want to say an outlier at his, that's $27 because Ben Rice is worth every penny of that. But, um, you know what I mean? What kind of Ben Rice is X-Pig? Oh, yeah, look at his, look at his, um, he's a local guy. So true, true story. He's the local guy from Massachusetts. So, um, I am kind of an expert on Ben Rice by means of that. And um, his stat cast page is outrageous. And, um, no, I, I, I, I think, uh, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. Uh, him and Raleigh, what, what he has that Raleigh doesn't is the short porch, that little league ballpark. They're going to be an auction is pretty close, I think. Couple of interesting. I'm excited to see what the valuations are and where I land on those particular. I have, I have a feeling I'm going to know who I'm going to like better, but we'll wait and see. All right, um, anything else on nomination sequencing. I know I just, the notes are brief here, but, um, when to nominate players, have I missed anything? This has been talked about on pods before. So this is nothing groundbreaking, but I think we've had some pretty good discussion on it so far. Yeah, I, I think, and this maybe I'm just shoehorning this in, because I think you may be talk about it later, but, uh, again, I, something that I don't think is understood very well is, um, knowing where the money is in the auction. No, and, and, and, and tax, tax making good points. It's about, you know, because like a few of an average of six dollars per position left, or, you know, um, three dollars, not really mad. Like you have to know where, where people are at because if you're, you could then think, Oh, you know, this guy's got AAV a six. I'm, I'm going to throw, he might go for eight, and then all of a sudden it goes for three. Like that happens a lot. If you're missed, if you're misjudging people's budget and purchasing power, and you can make a mistake there where you're given someone a pretty big bargain, uh, that you really did not need. So you, you just made a, you, you're one of your nominations and it completely backfired. And I think that's not understanding, um, how much money's left? Who has the money? So I'm always looking at the top of the auction board. I want to know where I stand in relation to everybody. I, I also want to know who's pretty much out of it until the end game, who is underspent and is going to be, you know, just throwing money around like crazy. And then who else is kind of like me just waiting to pounce. And then I look at those couple teams that are in the same boat. And then I just do a quick glance at their roster and just know, hey, are we going to be in the same market for the rest of our players or are we kind of on a different plane? And I, I should have it easier time. So there's a lot, you should be, there's really shouldn't be a second of the auction. You're not looking, thinking, um, you know, um, writing that, whatever. Like there shouldn't be any wasted moments in an auction. If, if you lose focus and you just, you know, like in a snake drive, you can sit there for 15 minutes and listen to Duran Duran, you know, like it doesn't matter. But in these auctions, man, you can't let your guard down for a second, especially the big ones. Yep. Um, I actually wanted to talk about his price enforcing. Yeah, we sort of already mentioned it a little bit, but um, the note I have here is auctions are about fairness. Um, sometimes you want to like, like, you know, that you know everyone in the doxions, your friends with like, I'm friends with you, Mark and I'm like, I don't like, I don't want Winocard to get fucking this guy for like $3 under AAV. I'm, I'm going to price it for us, right? But I think I, I mentioned this before. I have this written down letting someone else get an absolute bargain, meaning like below AAV is worse than you missing out on relative value later on. So relative value means like, um, getting someone that you need on your team, um, cheaper. So like it's, I'd much rather have say, I need a catcher and I'm able to get, say, Adley Rushman for $5 at the end of the auction because just people ran out of money and the people that needed catchers were really broke. And then I'd get a really good relative value at catcher at the end then getting say like Christopher Sanchez for $22 instead of $25. That's what I mean by that. So do you guys do you guys try to stay away from price enforcing? I'm assuming yes. Yeah, I was asked, I was asked, Jay, like, what's your experience with that and the big ones are, are there price enforcers usually or is everyone never never ever never happens. That's like, tell me that's like a local man thing that does is the game thing. Yeah, you know, sometimes it gets personal, people try to challenge me. I'll call out a couple of them because I got the names written down from this year. Matt Shepard in particular knew I was going to pay whatever and I did and I won the player and he was worth more than what he pushed me to. And AJ tried to pull it a quick one Monday, 10 a.m. on one of my favorite players and made me pay four or five dollars more and that didn't work out. So he's not any of my leagues for revenge, but these are things you don't forget. You like this. It is personal. Make it personal. That was that, especially on like a Monday, the Monday one, you're not going to beat me with a player that I want. Now we're going to be making the gif of DuPont with Steve Buschemi on the couch with lipstick and crossing off OG's name. I'll never forget it. No, I think I might have stood up for that too and make sure I did I paid whatever. It just it got personal at that point, but it was fun. But no, otherwise, no, I'm never going to get stuck with a player. You don't even remotely like is just so stupid. You're an idiot if that happens, right? So if you're trying to price and force, I hope you love the player and then it's not really price enforcement then. Yeah, yeah, but well, yeah, completely agree. I do not price and force, you know, people like, well, you know, I can get a read on the guy. I know he's going to go a dollar more. So what? So what? Let him get him for a dollar less. It's not the end of the world. I mean, unless to be more to be worried about one team like that on that level. One team and one dollar on one team. Like, I'm just going to, yeah, I'm just going to go nine here and it's like, yeah, if your valuation is 12 and nine is good and it stalls at eight, yeah, that's not price enforcing. That's that's making a bid on a guy that, you know, fits, you know, that looks to be a bargain. You're not doing it. You're so off any good. It does not matter. As I say, don't make a personal. If someone gets a $2 bargain, you'll get a $4 bargain later. Don't worry about it. Like, it's not a big deal. But if you end up going the extra dollar and they stiff you, then you've just completely messed up your team. And auctions, man, it's a deliq. It's like a, it's a tapestry, man. You pull one string and the whole thing falls apart. It's not like a snake trap. You can't, I mean, can you really fuck up a snake trap with one pick? I mean, but with an auction, if you make one bad mistake on like a $10 dollar player, that can completely tank your team. I mean, that's how, that's how precise you have to be. So there's no advantage to going that extra dollar. And a lot of people tell you, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm reading the room or I'm, you know, manipulating, you're not manipulating anyone. Stop it. I mean, except for Jason, he's manipulating you with the constant $1 knobs. That's, that's making your, that's making you go a little crazy. But, right, say it. I mean, you're not mean, if you just, just, just bid like, don't worry about yourself. Worry about yourself. Exactly. You need to read, you need to look at other people's money for. Yes. You can do nominations in beddings, but it's absolutely absurd to have a strategy against one player. No, I couldn't agree more. But yeah, no, back to the point, I think that's, it's just basically a myth, price enforcement. Almost should be pulled out of the, the glossary for fantasy baseball. The auctions. How are the, how are the lights things? I like it. I like it. I like it. Um, what if you price and force yourself on, uh, Shoei Otani and, uh, Cosrobra. Hey, you put one a picture, um, two thirds through the year. Um, yeah. So I, I think pricing forcing is, um, like suboptimal, obviously at first, but it's like disastrous later in the draft. Would you agree with that? Like at first, you can, you can sort of have it, but yeah, I mean, yeah, yes, you could, you could still recover, but you have, you're likely have a higher price mistake than later, but if you have six bucks left, yeah, and you end up going for, you know, you could really, that could take away two guys that you were probably going to get for two if, you know, if you hadn't done that. So yeah, I mean, think, think of it as the percentage of the bid of how much you have left. If you have six dollars left and you do a four bid, that's six to six percent, you know, mistake there, you know, that you're really going to limit yourself. So yeah, I agree. Later is worse. The margin of error, um, reduces as the auction goes on and, um, the more, as you get later in the auction, the more danger it is to price it for us. And early in the auction, the less benefit you get, there is to do it. Pricing and forcing and making somebody pay one or two dollars more for Jose Ramirez is going to be marginal in the long term. So it's really, like Jay said, it's not worth it really ever. You know, one thing I was thinking of, not on the agenda, all this sort of pop in my head now is like, at the end, I know we're skipping a little bit to the end game, but like there's oftentimes the end game where one player has too much money, right? And we're going to get it like to, we're going to get into that. Doesn't really happen too much in Vegas, like in the high stakes. Everyone's pretty much knows what they're doing for the most part, but there are times where somebody just ended up saving too much money and they have 20 dollars when everyone else has like five or six, right? And you see that person, they're still nominated one dollar players. It should be one dollar players to sort of like get the money out the board. Everyone sort of does that. Oh, like, like, they're nominated at one dollar outfielder. But really, it's kind of like in poker when somebody a short stack goes all in and then like a couple of people call and then it's sort of etiquette that if no one has a big hand, then everyone else checks it down, right? And then just so it's just sort of collusion. We're like, everyone else checks to get the short stack knocked out when when a big stack like with a $20 and they have way too much money when they nominated a sort of a shitty player, even if you kind of do want that player and it kind of fits your team, if he's a one or two dollar player, everyone's just let him have it. Yeah, let it. Mark, do you want to say something? Yeah, no, yeah, sorry, go ahead Jay. Now it's almost like a tragedy to watch from afar because even in the high-stake leagues, I will say there's always like two teams that screw up the money and what's kind of fun is you identify early on, they can't spend the money, they screw it up and then you watch them and you say, why aren't you hitting a gas pedal winning every player in there getting either ship players or not going the extra mile? And it's very rare because, you know, quite frankly, every player I think at some element has been caught in that situation, but if you hit the gas pedal and just gets super aggressive for like four or five players in a row and overpay for a couple of bucks, you can clean up that mess. So most people who get into that shit show never get out of it, but it's very entertaining to watch. That's why I can't do an online auction. You can't watch their face when they realize at the end they're spending $11 on Jordan Leisure. Yeah, that's one of the, you recognize that from that one of the old acts. Another thing is, and we sort of, this sort of, Parla is off of the previous podcast that Jay, you were on. We talked about how like players values become dynamic throughout the auction and like when you get when you have two closures, that third closer is like there's diminishing returns to that third closer, obviously, and same goes for speed. So I don't really answer this question, but I just throw it out there like player like Chandler Simpson nominating him early. He is now very about, he would be very valuable to all teams given that no one is overloaded on stolen bases yet. So if you don't want him, and I'm not saying I don't want him, but I'm not saying that he's a bad pick or anything, but just he has an extreme category skill. Would it nominating players with extreme category skills early be in your best interest? Or do people not understand? Yes, call him out early, because a player like Simpson, I think there's only like five guys in the room that have a plan to how to build around him, and they want to be clever. And just whenever he comes out, they go nuts and they overpay. I've seen it a million times. So to blow up other people, I think everybody should be doing this. Those one trick ponies like that guy who wants a dog is batting average and grab a Lewis Arias. You call him out very early. So I think there's a lot of merit to that. You can sniff, you can sniff out strategies and unique builds by getting those players out early because they're their key to someone's plan, maybe not yours. And I go sort of along the same lines as what I was saying before when somebody has too much money. When somebody, let's say somebody is short on home runs and I don't, I'm not skilled enough to track other people's teams, but if you see somebody that nominate Simpson that's really that has like an Orion and a Jacob Wilson on their team already, and they throw a Chandler Simpson and they somebody bids two e-comes three just to sort of push up the price. Same thing. Same like poker, check them down strategy. Letting no one realizes that letting that letting a player get a player with that like an extreme profile like that is kryptonite for that team. If he if he ended up with that player, there's been times where I nominate Chandler Simpson and like, dude, if no one bids on this, my team is actually fucked. No one really looks at that. I don't think I think because it's hard. I can't do it. I'm not I there's just too much that too many things to do. And this might be a tell, but if I'm doing that, that's where I might go for a nom of one because I don't know where the market is. And as you said, if I say five and all of a sudden I have them, I totally screwed myself. So, you know, I'll I'll be more liberal with, you know, how much I how much I nom if I know the guy's going to go for more, you know, whatever it is. But, you know, that's just another little one. Just be I've seen a bunch of crickets, man. You see a lot of crickets out there. People just all of a sudden just make a mistake. They say a number of $4 too high and no one says a word. And so they they tell you don't just bid one, but you can bid one. I mean, if everyone did it, it would be really a long auction. Although Jason will jump right up. So, you can't you can't question his nom. But yeah, I think what other extreme profile though we're talking about is it just average and steals. Is there another category where where this would apply to or is it just really those two categories? Saves like gas. Everyone needs saves or everyone's doing that. I guess I wouldn't apply there. Yeah. I mean, like, stand like a Jean Carles. Yeah, I mean, yeah, 50 home run bats, you know, maybe there's two or three 50 plus steel guys. Maybe there's two or three 300 hitters. Maybe there's two or three. I guess, I guess that's where you're looking for a profile that is going to set someone's team. So you want to get it out. I really like I think Jamie an amazing point there about sniffing out other people's strategies by throwing guys out. That's that's way next level. And back to that. And this is not a unique concept. And you do see it a lot, but I find a lot of humor in for nominations. People the utility players should be right at the beginning too. Let's lock them up. And then if you're a player who plans to go to the end game and fight the players that are deals, lock up other people so they can't challenge you there with that shit. So, you know, this, this, I think five guys or whatever, how many utility players this year that are drafted, you know, will easily go over a buck. I'm not looking at it. And locking most people up early is always good. And there's always a philosophy with utility players. Some players have a blind eye and just will not have them on their board, basically, and will not take them. And some people will. So I've seen some amazing bargains with utility where it's, I think, Gecko years ago, throughout a utility player and went for just an amazing bargain, he didn't get him, but he was trying to just stick, stick some on utility, you know. So I think that's a fun one as well. I think you've got Tony, you definitely throw him to pitcher. Do a, do the Zedos, do the Zedos strategy in front of pitcher. And then you throw a yard on, Yelik, every time. You're gonna have to. Yeah. And I think having that utility spot clogged really hurts you as well, because if you want to stash a player like see last year, Royce Lewis was hurt heading into the season. And if you dropped it out, Tony, you'd have to draft, or if you want to Royce Lewis to stash on your bench, you're not getting him in the reserve round. You've got to draft him and then you've got to put him in one of the spots and it makes it so much harder to backfill that team. Because if you draft, if you draft an injured player or sort of a stash, say you dropped a counter-griff in, it was obviously not going to make the opening day roster. You got to, it'd be so much easier to draft him in an auction in your utility spot because when you get in the reserve's rounds, it's tough to find that playing time. And you don't want to be pigeonholed to get a certain like one position in that auction to fill up that stash. Another reason why utility sort of fucks you in auctions. So don't draft or tell me. All right. We're talking about price enforcing. We sort of got into a great tangent there. But let's talk about this. And I've never heard this discuss specifically before. NFBC starting picture inflation. Everyone talks about starting pitching inflation. But no one discusses this. But this is the cousin of price enforcement. SP types climb from like $17 in these Olax up to 24 in Vegas because they are quote unquote safe. Safety is probably like not real. Like volatility is like universal across all the starting picture landscape, but people don't think so. They think this tier, like this year, it's going to be schemes, crochet, scuba, scuba, and then the rest in, yeah, well, in the rest. But then you look at last you got Bryce Miller glass now strider frame around is a little bit Pablo like injuries bad performance like volumes replaceable like the ratios aren't. So they're like the irreversible mistake is to pay for a floor, which is the SP with that inflation that disappears with an injury. So like in Vegas, the way I think about it, like there's the tier one, I said it like the tier one is the aces. If you want to include like the like the Yamamoto tier like with that, you can I guess it's really personal preference, but like this is skills volume lease ratios. You got you got everything tier two. This is this is where you see the inflation in Vegas. I think and Jay, Mark, you guys have way more experience in me. You can you can correct this sort of like list, but this is good projections, clean rolls, and everyone knows the name, so the name value not like like a Nolan McLean would fall out of that tier because he's not like a name value yet. He's sort of like in the tier three volatile upside. Some I'm not saying Nolan McLean has workload risk because guilds will tell you that he's going to throw 180 meetings this year, but there's sort of those three tiers. So tier two is where it gets insane in Vegas. It's psychological and not like projection based at all. No one wants to miss everyone like watch one or two of these guys if they didn't get an ace and also no one wants them to go cheap. If you're not if you're not buying them. So everyone's enforcing basically someone you're enforcing someone else's projection, not your own plan. So why is this crazy? Because starting pictures with near like identical projections are going like $6 to $10 a part in price because these SP tier two tier projects closer to the SP three tier, but they're just going way more hot, more expensive. So this creates a huge opportunity for you. That's really my assessment. So I'll stop it there and I'll let you guys comment on like whether or not you agree with these tierings and whether like white one do you agree with the tiering? Two, do you think there is that you think this is a price enforcement scenario? And three, why do you think this happens? I do agree with that tier. I don't think it's price enforcement. I think it's because all the data we have with these Olax, the AAVs are horrible. It's either the biggest advantage or disadvantage how you use it. And I shouldn't say this. We might happen to delete this, but those prices are just absolutely terrible because people mess around with those leagues. They try different builds. Then when they get the vagus monies on the line, they want the balance approach. They want the couple aces or one twos and they don't mess around. So the prices shift, the volume shifts, people get caught shot and they panic absolutely. Not saying that's the right move to panic because they'll obviously be deals later on other tiers of pictures. So it's not necessarily a good move, but there's always that tier. And what ends up happening is the highest price tier of those toppings is usually go for decent prices or good prices. I hope I was hoping you weren't going to say that, but you're right. I think that's where you're overpaying the least at that top end. The next tier, I don't know if it's fear or like intention, meaning a lot of people say I'm going to spend 90 on pitching 80, whatever, 85. So I can't afford a $35 picture. So I know my, you know, so they're intentionally targeting that tier. I just looked up my file from last year and the relative value of the second tier is, isn't any better than the first tier, meaning the first tier guys are better bargains or better buys in my opinion, the second tier. But it really opens up past SP 30, like the SP 3 tier green all day. That's where, because everyone fought over those other 15 guys, everyone got at least one, maybe two. And now you could swoop in on that under $15 price point, maybe the $9 to $14 price point. There you're getting guys who are worth just a couple dollars less than the second tier guys and you're getting them for a third of the price. So, or 2/3 of the price. So I think that's exactly right. That's where AAV comes in handy. If you're just playing Olex, you know, you know, you should know that going in. So when you're making your strategy, and you know, if you use any kind of, you know, valuation system, whether it's just pulling the values from somewhere, doing yourself, whatever, you should have a sense of where you should be shopping and let other people make the mistake. Let them over shop in in a, in a tier that you, and you can come in just right behind them, not lose too much. And you're getting a major discount that you could use elsewhere. So do you mark what I gather is you don't want to shop in that overvalued SP 2 tier? I mean, you'd rather shop in the SP 3 tier. Is that what you're saying? Well, I'd rather shop in the SP 1 tier. Like, I'm going to have an anchor in that top tier. I mean, that's just how I play people people play with me. They know that I'm going to get a top picture. And I've talked about that before. I'm to me, if you look at the first round prices, those top two or three starting pictures are the best price in that first round for what they're worth and just, you know, relative to the other $40 plus hitters that are there. So I want to get a first rounder. I just want to pay the least amount possible. And that's usually the top starting picture. And as Jay was saying, they're not that far off what they should be producing. So I don't mind taking that. Of course, there's risk of, you know, if scoobles, keens or crochet goes down, you're, you're, you're, you're, what I was saying, you're in some trouble in some trouble, easily overcomable. You know, I agree with what you were saying on the other pod. If you, if you cry about losing your top player, that's, that's weak. You just got to go in and fight. No one, it's not going to help your team put the losing, but you can, you can recover. But to finish the answer, Zach, I'll shop in that second tier if I'm getting a good price. So they won't all go over what I think they're worth. So I'll, I'll hunt in the second tier. I'll try to get an sp2 as long as I can get them for a price that I like. If not, I'll just skip it. You know, I'll go sp1 and then a bunch of sp3s, something like that. And that's basically what Jay did in your ultimate auction that you won this year. You shopped in that sp2 tier, but you didn't, but you said your, your highest paid player was like Pablo Lopez for 18. Was it? Yes. I had hunter, hunter, a brown 17 after that. And I had a envelope. The $20 player last year. So Jay getting for 18 is what have been, I would have been thrilled with that at the moment. I would have been like, yes, that is the perfect sp1 because he, I had him, he was sp 11 on my board. You're getting the cheapest sp1 on the board under his a av. I would have been thrilled with that. But as you said, you know, all these guys have some risk. You know, he got hurt unfortunately. So did that, did that, did that answer, did Jay, did I answer your question for you? Yeah. Yeah. And, and Zach, I mean, I got Luis Castillo and, um, uh, sunny gray last year in that tier for like, this was way early in the first few old laps when they're going for like 14. And that those two teams did very well. Um, and that's just an example. I'll, if I can get a bargain, I'll shop in there. That's it. Um, Mark, question for you here. Um, you said, and this is totally off the agenda. I just thought of this right now. Um, you said you tend to go for another lead pitcher. You want to drop in the sp1 range is, and you're a very project. You're all of us. I'd say you're the most projection driven. And you actually said you had a rebuttal for rebuttal for me. If you want us to get into that for, I don't want to forget that from the last podcast. Um, but we'll park that for later. Um, don't let me forget. But, um, so what was the lead pitchers get you the ratios in the volume? Now, I don't know if you think this deep into projection, but like the, the tier three pitchers, like the elite guys with, like workload concerns, like your glass now strut, like strider last year, this year, you could say it's like a Yassavage or any of those like younger guys, um, I'm going to let Dolo footfall into that sort of tier. Um, those guys, like projections have a hard time. Um, understanding that you need replacement innings with them. So those, those players are overvalued because projections don't factor in the replacement innings, which are shit that you have to use with those pictures. But on the same side, those volume innings eater guys that you're going to bench sometimes because they have bad matchups also lose value. So projections are going to unovervalue the inning eater guys and the upside glass now types as well. So wouldn't that make your schemes, it's Google so much more valuable and you probably hate me saying this because it's going to potentially. Oh, we've already, I mean, this has been the most helpful one we've done in five years, or you've done this, this, we've already, this one, we can't release this. This might need to be shell, but anyway, let's just keep going and we can make a command decision. Maybe just keep fishes, fishes section. I think we'll probably just keep that. Um, well, I think there's a couple of missed, well, let me say one thing. I'm more of a valuation drafter than a projection drafter. Okay, I projections are a, uh, and are means to an end for me. And that's to get what I think the players likely to be worth for the season. And that's something I could just map to what the market thinks they're worth. And that's, that's what informs my strategy. I'll be honest, after I turn the projections into valuations, you could quiz me on almost any player and I'd have no idea what his actual projections are. I just know that he's worth $23. Um, I generally know what he contributes. I'm not an idiot, but, you know, I, I could not tell you the exact projections. So I think I just want to, I just want to clarify how I consider how I play. And then secondly, um, if you use projections, you know all the things you just said, like, it's not like people who use projections are like, oh, wow, that, uh, that undervalues him. It's like, we know this stuff. So we factor that in, like we, we understand that it's not a perfect math. And we have to, you know, uh, have to adjust for that. I don't use projections that much for pictures. So I'm sort of just thinking of this now. So I'm, what are the dumb people that didn't really notice until now? No, no, I mean, it, here's the thing. It's not like the projections overvalue them. It's that they end up costing more than what their value is. That's, that's the difference with those players. They're, they very well might be worth $12. Um, even given you the 120 innings, but the problem is you have to pay $16 for them. And now, and now you've really taken out any opportunity for that pick to make sense. So I think, I think the projections get these guys generally close to where they should be. It's just that, you know, the market sees them differently because they have the sexy ratios. They have that dream, you know, dream on 150 innings for Tyler glass, no type of thing. So they just go for more than they, than they should be going. So that's a dangerous tier to be in, um, those type of players. But in this year, it'll be interesting. There's a lot of those good rookies like McLean, uh, your savage. Uh, I'm curious to see where these guys end up and these big auctions in Vegas. I don't know, Jason. What do you think? Can they go? Be like $20 or pictures? Should, should, should, should, yeah, slitletters and other one, Louie's heels and other one. Throw them in there. Getler, uh, I could see him getting about 18 bucks, but, um, yeah, no, I think those guys go 18 to 20. This is a lot of New Yorker. Yeah. These coast bias, I don't know, but maybe I'm being light. I'm trying to be a little conservative for this podcast. I know Zach has put it out there as the biggest one yet. So I'm probably light and shitler, probably 22 is more realistic. Yeah, in the high snake leagues, because you got to talk about that. Well, it's part of the SP 2 tier and the SP 2 inflation tier, uh, Schiller. Another local, another, another local guy, I know, another local kid. True, true. Um, so yeah, we're, we're, um, um, Mark, you're saying, yeah, so yeah, no, that's, that's valid points. So, um, no, you're, listen, listen, okay. So quick, quick rebuttal to your previous pod, just, um, no, it's this feeling like, oh, SGP has some flaws, so just don't use it or projections, miss a few things. Don't use it. All these tools have flaws. You, you, you, you, you, you, you use them because they, if you use them, you think they have more strengths than flaws. Number one, and two, you this, you then just adjust for those flaws. You account for them and you, um, you know, have to mentally, you know, use that information because it's not in the spreadsheet. So, um, you know, people say a spreadsheet draft or it's like, that, that's just a tool I use. Like, I'm, you know, it's, it's a lot about creativity and using your mind, how much you want to compete, how bad you want it. And, you know, I'm using the projections and evaluations for that's kind of my language. That's how I use them. So I, nothing you said was wrong. I just think those critiques are totally valid and some people can get lost and just, I think some, if you're, if you're a newer player, you're just going to live and die by the spreadsheet, you're going to make a lot of mistakes, you're going to miss a lot of things. So I agree with that. I think advanced players kind of are able to account for that. So, um, but I didn't have a problem with really anything you said. I think all the points you made are valid. It's just if you know those, if you know those issues, you're able to fix them. So yeah, you got to know where the flaws are in the, in the, the tools that you're using. And I think Hoppy made a comment saying that he didn't want to talk about it because he didn't want to let you, he likes drafting against people that use these spreadsheets because they're predictable. Oh, sorry. Yes. That's, that's, I want, yes. Thank you. Let me, let me address Todd's. Oh, yeah. Let me just rephrase what he said just so people, uh, the didn't listen to the other one. So Hoppy said that he is glad that people use like SGP and projections and I'm, I'm paraphrasing. Maybe you can, maybe you want to talk about it. Maybe you remember better, but correct me from wrong. He said these glad that people use them because they become predictable and drafts. Is that right? If you use one projection system, yes, you can be seen as being fairly predictable. If you only use steamer and everyone's internalized what steamer has and you could, and you could, you could pick up quick on a player after two or three buys. Okay, he's just using steamer. Yeah, but again, what are you going to do with that information? I mean, are you going to, as Jason said, are you going to target one guy now because you know he's using steamer? No, that's not, that's not going to help you do general strategy. But, um, if you're using an aggregation, a mix of projections, listen, all the projections are basically the same. So let's, let's, let's be honest. So, and everyone to some degree has looked at projections and has a sense of where they, or made their own or has their mental model of what this guy's going to produce. So everyone's doing the same thing. So I don't think it makes anyone any more or less predictable really. And people who, um, how about the people who just use stat cast or the people just use stuff plus, I mean, you know, you could definitely tell people who, um, who are under the hood and they're looking, and to me, I mean, I could flip it and say, if I know someone like this, there are plenty of guys that under the hood look amazing that I think are IKB's and that is I know better players. So, I'll target the I know better players and auctions. I'll throw them out there. I want people getting those guys that they think the underlying skills are going to override five years of track record. That's the people that I, so, and those might not, those might not be project, those are not projection drafters. Those are stat cast drafters or subot drafters. So everyone has their thing, um, and anyone could be exploited. So I don't agree that that makes someone, and you're in a snake draft. What are you going to do? Like, yeah, you're picking 14th in their 15th and 16th. Yeah, maybe you know the guy will come back to you because he's not a projection darling fine. I mean, sure, you know, there might be a case in like a snake draft, but I don't know how you're going to use that information in an auction. And maybe he was only talking snake, snake anyway. Okay. Um, so my, my follow-up question, because you both had the same answer to the SP2 strategy. So, um, my follow-up question to that is on the agenda. So, doesn't this contradict that absolute bargains are worse than relative values? So, and you need to go with the room and pay up for the starting pictures. Do you think this is a contradiction? No, because what I was saying is those guys are relative values. That's, that's the whole point. Those top pictures are relative values there. I'm not talking about scheme scuba. Like, uh, oh, my bad. I mean, I mean, I'm talking to you too. I'm rooting to you too. And I'm sorry, I guess, Mark actually, Marky, we guess he, I guess he did my bad. You guys did have different answers. So, I think they'll throw this out to Jason first. Um, doesn't this contradict that, well, you can still have the same answer and, and agree that it contradicts it, but like, these are, you don't want to go for the absolute, um, like, this contradicts that absolute bargains are worse than relative values. And you need to just go with the room and, um, don't worry about the relative values. I, I, I think where that sometimes fails just with the timing of these players that come out. I mean, we're talking about how three pictures end up looking good at the end of the year and great values, but it's just, there's the pool is so much bigger below that that everyone's fighting for when they go in. Um, and, you know, Mark said it, uh, so it's his fault before, but there's a lot of people who just shut down going in. There's eight players that go in the room and say, I don't pay over $38 for a picture. So it's not as competitive as you think it is. That second tier everybody's on. Right. That's really right. That's actually, you're right. It's, there's probably five people considering those, those top pictures out of 15. So you can almost know the price going in where there's 13 out of 15 going for the next, you know, that next, you know, 10 or 15 guys. Yeah. Nice. I'm going to be paying $75 for crochet now because of what I just said. You know what? I don't know. Wait, there's a cat man. People are not going to, I, we've already seen it for the first few Olex. These guys are coming in under 40. Uh, people don't, you know, I don't think they realize the impact these these these top few pictures can have. Um, I, I think, I don't know. I don't know. Obviously I'm not as experienced as you guys, but I don't think any of those guys are going over 40. We saw, we saw the strider year, what was it two years ago? He was the guy going over 40 and I forget. I don't know. I don't even remember who the next guy was. Maybe it was Garrett Cole. I don't know, but I forget. Um, but he was like in the 30s, but Garrett, but like, I remember the first Olex, I was in the first Olex out of your strider went for 35 bucks. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to get him for 35. And then that was the biggest, that was the biggest bargain of the year. He was always over 40 dollars because, because sheep will be sheep. Um, this year, you got three of them. Basically, you got skiing, scoobal crochet. So I think the fact that the supply is increasing is going to draw the economics. Drafts going to drive the price down. So I think you're going to see definitely those guys go less for what strider went for. I don't know. I don't know where they're going to fall and snake drafts in the main events. Like they could, they're all going to get pushed up. Obviously in the main events, but in auctions, I don't think any of them go over 40 bucks. No, I think it'll be 35 to 38. I think that's a little right in there. That's what I'm doing. I don't know. I don't, I don't see them going over 40 bucks. I wouldn't be 40. I agree with Jason to a, to a degree that the Olaq AVs you can't really use for the live events. Um, however, there are a few exceptions. And I think that starting pitching tier is one of them. I just think people are just not going to come in and start blowing 40 bucks on starting pitcher. There's just no way. So that's one way you could, you could confidently have an idea. I think they're going to sit in that range because like you see in Vegas or in the big live drafts, you see the SP inflation. But I think it's more in that SP, like there's more inflation in the SP2 range as more so than like the SP one range where you might see couple bucks. But in general, the tie-in players like they on the hitter side go cheaper in Vegas. Like you'll see like the Otonis and the Whits and the J-Ram Akuna, they'll be cheaper in Vegas. That's historically what I've seen. So, I don't know, I think it's just two forces going in different directions. But yeah, I agree. I think they're going to be high 30s. And I, you know, let's just be honest here. Any, you know, you can, you can get AV. Any, any Vegas player can get the New York auction values. They can use the site to get it or, you know, um, networks, discords, friends. It, Matt, I don't know, but, you know, a tasting, you're usually out east, so you have to set the market, right? But the Vegas drafts just got a little bit of an edge just having a sense of what the high stakes auction, you know, prices look like. Um, honestly, an edge, but it's just good information. No, absolutely. I used to think those, and I hated it because when I was going to New York regularly, those auction values, I thought were gold heading to Vegas, but obviously they were shared everywhere. So when you had to Vegas, not specifically for me, I'm just saying those were so much better than the AVs. Like you, uh, you know, you know, you knew who the hype guys were, you knew who the hot guys were, and you knew the people that in Vegas, you, you're not going to get right or you have a chance to get. So you could always recalibrate. So I do think that's valuable information. Definitely I can shit on the AV, but the, uh, big, let's, let's be fair though, the Godfather games, right? The Godfather games data is very valuable. Yes, definitely. Feed me that intel. All right. Last, last, um, topic before we're going to go to the big fish in a small pond segment. Sorry, um, we've got, it's been a big tease. This fish has been a big cop tease today. Um, but I want to talk about this. This is how people are still paying attention. They're waiting for this. This, this is the ultimate, uh, way to do program. And this is perfect. Please. All right. So another big fancy words that I'm using here, um, uh, category slope awareness is even more important in options. And we talked about that in the last podcast, that slip awareness, then how sort of SGP moves, whatever, right? So, um, what I would, uh, slip awareness is like the categories which are harder to gain at the top. So saves, home run, stolen bases are like more steep. So, um, they're, you want a bargain hunt for flat slope? You want to, like, I think the theory could be bargain hunt for the flat slope players. Like, wins are flat. Like, it's sort of like, it's uniform how you move up in like your one through 15 points in that category, whereas like the saves, home runs, stolen bases are more steep at the top, um, especially saves. Um, so you want a bargain hunt for flat categories, which I guess, whatever, that's the theory. I'm not really, I don't really get, I want to get into that too much here, but, um, I think it's sort of like, um, what do you call it? Uh, double edge sword, maybe, where like, I don't know if you disagree because average is flat slope, but it's so scarce, right? So do you disagree that average is flat or like, flat or steep slope? But I don't want to confuse with, I don't want to confuse scarcity with the slope of it. So should scare, I guess, the question, well, after all that rambling, um, should, that should the fact that average is scarce? Trump, the fact that it's a flat slope thing. So, um, the, the scarcity is an average. It's the average plus volume plus line of splot. So like, like a Vladie is scarce, but like, uh, and Araya's is not because he's just average. He's not really the rest. Um, Vlad is not the same as like two, two 70 hitters because vault, like he's an anchor with that. So if you plan on draft, drafting like risky profile, it's later like the stolen lace home run guys, then that average becomes more valuable, and, um, average looks flat when you look at it, like in, like when you map it out, but in the draft room, it's one of the hardest things to replace. So all that said, how do you target average? In an auction. Is it important to you? Start with Jay. I think I'm going to, I think I know, Mark Samson. Yeah. It's my worst, uh, I go back. One thing I do track every year is how many points I get in each category historically. And average is always my, um, worst. And a lot of that makes sense because I'm usually not buying first-round bats. So I'm missing out on a truly elite, you know, superstar player. But, um, I, my strategy, I'm not probably looking at it as depth is just to try to avoid landlines. So, you know, you're trying to trim that type of player that can absolutely sink, sink you, kill you. Obviously having a couple, uh, a good catching crew helps you, um, you know, if you're doing poor an average and you're punting the position, then you kind of deserve it as well. But, uh, yeah, for me, it's just trying not to drop landmines for batting average, um, but it's a very volatile category. Yeah, yeah, that gave me chills because it's exactly the same way I think, uh, why I always struggle on average. I usually check them like average like eight points per team in average. Like that's, that's usually where I end up. And that's, that's costly. I mean, that cost you a league that cost you an overall right there. Um, and it's because I don't buy the first round bats. And those are, that's what you're saying. That's what you're saying. It's that, it's a scare stack. And you're right, it's not just high average is high average, plus volume, plus the top of the order, plus other categorical skills or, or production. And that's the top 15 bats that give you all that. If you don't want to swim in those waters, you end up your top average guys like 278 or something. You know, I mean like you, you've lost all chance to have that anchor. And then if you do run into an average landmine, which I at least do once on every team, uh, then all of a sudden you're at like 254, which is kind of where I, you know, where I sit. Um, so I, I don't think, so I would say that is, that is scarce. It's not steep slope, but it's, it's scarce in the top end. So I say you can pay for that if you want to. I think, I think certainly that will bolster your, your offense at, at what cost you're pitching, that's, that's to be determined. Um, you know, I, I just saw, it was a tweet about which categories are most related to success or, you know, winning leagues or overalls and it's the counting stats. Um, so I just think you should have a plan of attack on how you're going to fill the categories. Where can you buy those stats and what's it going to cost you and try to piece it together where you're getting enough of all categories, unless you're in a, you know, in a standalone and you're punting a one and doing it for the amount of money that they give you. So to me, it's just kind of a, you know, a puzzler on a math equation to figure out where are the stats, where they cost, and how to, you know, how can you piece it all together and that's something you can look at. You could definitely figure out, um, what people want to pay up for. And so just, let's just talk about saves real quick since you have it here, Zach. This is the most interesting one to me already in seeing the first couple boards for, I think I've always been one board, actually. Um, it looks like closer prices are high again. They were really high last year. They look really high again. And I think that's, you better know what you're going to do in an auction with saves going in. Jay, do you agree with that? Like you, you have to have a, a saves plan with how, absolutely. That auction prices are. Yeah. That was the most shocking. Um, you brought it up first, but every Vegas auction is kind of a theme of like, you know, what, what the trend was. And it used to just be like the pitching tier story, but the relief story that you brought up a couple of weeks ago on a pod or a month ago was so true about that tier. And we all got stuck in it. If you wanted a safe closer, and it was a $5 swing up, and it was awful. And obviously looking back, it looked really terrible because you should have spent less and gotten Carlos Estevez. Right. Although who's going for, who went for 17 in the first auction this year, first, oh, like, so if Carlos Estevez is going for 17, what are we doing here? Like how the hell are you going to, you better, you better know what you're going to do this year? I mean, I think Miller went for 26. I mean, that's insane. You would never ever see that. There are multiple guys over 20 and a lot more that are 17 plus. So you have to have a strategy. Are you going to, are you going to, so that's, that's just about what you're saying, uh, slope and scarcity saves is a huge one this year. Uh, the one thing that doesn't take it to consideration, or maybe you did, uh, I could just didn't verbalize it is, how do you factor in fab for those, um, for those steep slope categories, um, saves and steals, for example, where you have a chance to pick that up. Does that affect how you look at them in auction? For me, it's, yeah, I think it would affect that. I think I'm just not going to, um, price and force or overpay. Like, even if I'm getting boxed at a save and save the tops, like, I think I have this in the agenda. If the top closes should go save, just say for $20, just to throw out a number. And then they start going for like, like you said, Miller went for 26. I see Diaz goes for 26. I'm not going to price and force that because I'm going to force somebody else to do that. And then they're going to have to, they're going to have to get elite saves and elite ratios from that roster spot all year. And I, I'll just, I can, I can fab that problem. Same with stolen bases, same with the Chandler Simpson argument. Right. Okay. Yeah. No, I think that's a good, I mean, it's a little abstract, but I think if you think about it in, where do you, you know, where are the stats exist? Where do they cost and how much money do you have to purchase them? And how can you put it all together where you're getting? If you're overpaying for a stat in one area, you're going to end up under, you know, not having enough money to pay for it somewhere else. And that's, that's where you get out of balance. And that's where you fall behind. And you can fall behind quick in these auctions. That's the one thing people maybe don't realize. There's quite a bit of, there's more separation quicker in auctions as far as in the standings. Now, I thought you can't come from behind. You can, you can definitely build a team, but Jason, do you agree with that? Like, there's just some maybe three to five teams completely botched the auction or even at the higher stage and it's basically a 10 team race right from the, right from the week one. Like, like you said, about, you know, shit on snake traps again, which I've retired. So I was about 54 gladiators and, you know, the fun ones that we won team on auto and the team on auto was like a mid-pack team at the end of the draft. No duds. You can literally draft the mid-pack team off ADP. You're not going to win money. And in the auctions, chaos ensues and there's always three, four teams that are so unbalanced and look so bad right off the bat and just can't recover. I mean, you can shoot them dead right at the auction. It's fun. You know, you remember, you on the road, you go, you go back to your room, you look at your team, you know, you look up the board and you're just like dead, dead, dead. You can do that in auctions. Snake traps, you can't do that. So I can't agree more. I think that's so boring. I think I agree. You always seems like, oh yeah, there's three teams that are just dead, but I remember flying into Vegas last year and you met with Mark, I think at the airport and then somebody sent me the Thursday auction that I wasn't in and the DOM was in the, I think it was at the end. No, that wasn't the nap time. That was the might have been, it might have been. Yeah, it could have been the nap time auction. But like, there's a couple of teams that I thought were just like fucking dead and they weren't like, I think I, I think I thought the silver team was dead and the slack team dead and the slack team ended up being really good. But I thought that team was dead and the auction ended up being really, really good. Like, I think other teams are dead that you didn't think. So the bottom line is still three dead teams whether you, whether you figure them out or not, I just suck at identifying them. Yeah. No, you know, I mean, it just changed. The reason I had a, I mean, I ended up with a winning season for football, but the reason it wasn't a really good season is because I'm like, this guy's team's horrible and I checked first place, first place, first place. So I was, I was the one who had no idea what I was doing and just, you know, had a bail myself out with one big one. So yeah, I'm not saying I'm right there. I'm not checking after the season if these teams are dead. They just appear to be, but now there's some pretty unbalanced teams that have huge holes, much bigger than snake traps in auction. I love shooting another point. I love shooting on other people's teams. That's one of my favorite things to do. So I agree. I think the point though is, Jason's right. You in a snake, if you're a mid-level team, you're not going to cash. If you come out of an auction mid-level, that's not bad because you've already passed three to five teams. So you're already in the top 10. And if you just did, you know, if you had a solid auction, nothing spectacular, no great, you know, no great moves, but no big mistakes, you're in a solid team, you know, as long as you play it right with Fab and get lucky with injury, right? So you can draft an average, an average, and you know, people always say, do you get $260 if you draft $260, you're not going to win. Yeah, that's probably true, but some guys are drafting $220 of value for $260. So $260, you're in a decent spot in a snake draft, you're pretty much in trouble there if you're just a total mid-team. All right, are we ready for this? Is this, is the fish sandwich about to happen here? What are we doing here? Yeah, we do, but yeah, we are, but I did have one more thing to close. Just to just to answer your, you sort of mentioned that closes are going really high this year. Yes. I think it's because there's less specs right now. Like I think or the specs like the one or two dollar players are just a lot worse this year than they were last year. Like last year you and Chapman, not to say that you knew it was going to happen, but Chapman asked it as Finnegan, all those guys that were going kind of cheap. And I'm like, there was a lot more like like 60 to 75% chance situations this year. Now you've got a lot of like after you're fucking like, I don't like what do you already want to cut it off like at the Toronto Guy Hawkman. Well, after him, it's like nothing. You got like that teams. I agree. There's like 10 teams that are unsettled. And there's maybe a 33% chance guy on, you know, like on each team, right? There's not 75% chance. So there's only like 20 locked in closures and the specs are shit right now. So that's probably driving it. It'll probably mitigate a little bit of if a few of these resolve and a few guys punch up, you might get a dollar to less later in the auction season. But right now this panic and also everyone's just hearing all the content is about draft champions and second and third round closures. So people internalize that and they think they have to pay up in an auction format. And I think that's what's happening also. It's cheap. It's the answer is cheap. But I think last last year you had a lot more like players go like the reliever is going five or six. And I think if people if the auction collectively has a budget for relief pitchers, you see the Finnegan's, the Estabes, the Jansons go like five six seven eight. And you had Bednar go kind of cheap too. This year that those equivalent specs are like your Robert Garcia and leisure and they're all like two bucks. They or they should be two bucks. So if the those spec guys are shitier and they're going cheaper, your more expensive guys are going to be more expensive. Right. And it does make it challenging because if your strategy is to not pay up, then you might need your RP to might be one of those two dollar guys just to kind of give yourself a little bit of shot and then you take a couple and reserve round, you know, to back it up. Maybe you take two of these crappy guys out of three on a team. And yet maybe have a decent 50 50 shot. So yeah, you have a strategy this year. It's going to be interesting. Yeah, we say auctions are driven by fear, but snake traps are also driven by fear in certain circumstances where the runs close out like catch your closer and closer in particular, like to say there's more fear. I'd say there's more fear in snakes because they're just like this mass of like energy going towards this position. Everyone that doesn't you don't usually see like 10 closures in a row in an auction as far as being nominated like that that rarely happens. So I think there's more fear in snake traps actually. Yeah, well then the closer start to run out, that's when you see people getting into bidding wars. But I sure sure this year. You already punted them. Yeah. Well, if you compare the cost of a closer in a snake trap, it's usually going to be higher than the cost of the slow closer in an auction. This year, not so much because of I think the reasons we said. Big fish in a small pond. That's what we've been waiting for. Here he is. He's been waiting patiently given the floor. So I got only three topics. This has all been fantastic information. I've been just listening the whole time. Love it all. If you have not joined auctions yet and you don't have the juices blown a little bit to join an auction. I don't know. I don't know. Tell you I am actually joining my first auction in Vegas. Live auction. I've done some all acts before, but it's my first live auction in Vegas. The auction championship. So I'm looking forward to it. So and I'm actually in Mark's league. So I've been taking notes and now I got a nice scouting plan. I feel exactly. I don't like that. You finished high up in the overall last year in the old act. Yeah, but that wasn't because of me. That was because of the league. It was literally the most league I've ever played in. Really? Ever. Ever. Yeah. All right. Hey. Yeah. It was bad. I could manage it. Zach, Zach, remember, I got on a call after the draft and I was laughing trying to tell him what these players like what was going on. I was so jealous of you in that league. And even you were telling me about the fact that you got like Brian to bring you when he was like a hot fat pickup for like nothing. Yeah. There's either no backup bid or as one dollar backup bid after he had heard. I have major major overbid on everybody because I was like, uh, why has nobody been here? But anyway, nice. All right. So this week, um, I'm sorry. For tonight, we're going to discuss a couple topics and the first one is going to be this week on Twitter. As most people know, I love some good Twitter battles. So we've, uh, we've, we've had a nice, uh, we've been blessed so far here in 2026 with a few. Not a ton, nothing major, but, uh, you know, it's been good. So, uh, I'm going to start off right away with the first one that just happened, uh, today actually, um, our good, good buddy Dave Patrosiello, who is on my Mount Rushmore, um, of Twitter battles, um, raise a little bit of hell with a, an ESPN, uh, you know, not an analyst, but like a sports center ESPN girl. And he says, um, he firstly tags her on Twitter, which is awesome. Like, that's a good start. If she responded, I mean, we would be, it would be an emergency podcast immediately on that, but she has not responded yet, uh, as far as I know, but he says that her tags are, how does it feel to know that you only have your job because you're an attractive woman because you have ESPN's preferred politics? Did your bosses instruct you to take that unprofessional shot at Notre Dame to run cover for ESPN, purposely screwing them for Bama OU? Okay. So, yeah, a lot to digest here. So the backstory is Dave is a major Notre Dame fan. He's been raising hell ever since they were left out of the college football playoff. Personally, I loved it because they didn't play anybody all year. They don't join a conference. So fuck them. But anyways, so he's mad that they didn't join, uh, then, uh, get into the, the college football playoff. And then on a sports center last night, right at the beginning, um, I can't, I don't know if they ever name her name is Nicole Brisco on ESPN opened up by saying something like mentioning Notre Dame, basically. So Dave was all fired up, which is always great. So, yeah, he raised hell and then he had some other people chime in on it and it's been a nice little back and forth. So it's, uh, it's going to fizz a lot. Unfortunately, but, you know, it was, it was great. Well, it lasted. Um, we'll go to the next thing. Now, this is where things get really interesting. Um, Bobby Big, uh, great guy. I love Bobby Big Bucks. Me, him and, uh, the baby, the rapper, we're going to hang out at some point. Charlotte, when I go down to visit, but, um, he made the ultimate mistake when it comes to running the burner. Uh, he, uh, Hans Gruber, um, it is now 100% in the books that he was running Hans Gruber, uh, a wonderful burner who was raising hell over the last couple of years. Um, which is great. Like I, I love the burners as everybody knows. Uh, Zach loves the burners. We all love the burners. Zach, I'm pretty sure runs a couple burners. I don't know. I don't have any stone cold evidence like this for Bobby Big Bucks where he posted a picture, the exact same picture as his, um, is back. I cared for this pool in a beautiful TV and everything. He's got going on out there in his backyard. Exactly a picture on Hans, but one was at night. One was during the day with Bobby Big Bucks. Uh, he's, um, it was, it was a huge slip up. And that was the end of it. Um, and the best part about it is that said it was Bobby Big Bucks multiple years ago. And all signs did point that way, but now we have some cold evidence. He's just too nice of a guy. Yeah, it is. Yeah, too much evidence now. He respected his game for that. And he, and he, and he, and he came out and he admitted it. He did say that, um, he runs it with someone else, which I don't know like that, but yeah, there was, yeah, he was, um, he didn't admit it, but how do you not admit it? Like, I mean, I guess somebody technically, if somebody else was running Hans, they could have taken a picture, turned it into a night or something with AI and whatever. But, um, it's, uh, it's in the books. No, Hans Gruber was Bobby Big Bucks. So that's, that's done that we can put that one to bed. Now we got to worry about what happened to chat. We lost chat, which is disappointing. Rune has been gone multiple times. It's been back. Rupert has been gone. And now it's back. There's, there's a lot going on here. So the burners, we're still, uh, we're still investigating the burners. And, uh, domes, domes on the case. Yeah, lead detective, uh, the dominator is, um, is investigating it, and we'll, um, we'll provide everybody with updates when we get them. Um, okay. Now here's, this is the big one. Um, I think it was a couple days ago. Dr. Dave shot up the Dr. Dave who recently received the Hellraiser of the year award for 2025 is off to a wonderful start here in 2026, as expected. Um, Dr. Dave, uh, is going hard at fan tracks. Um, really raising hell of fan tracks. I guess fan, you can't play fan tracks in Ohio. And it is quite the issue, um, apparently for, for Dr. Dave. Um, he was unfollowed by fan tracks. Um, and I think that's what set it off. And I'm not going to read it because we'll sit here for an hour reading this, uh, tweet. Um, so yeah, so I, I don't know, Zach, you have, uh, you, I know you have some thoughts on this, but basically Dr. Dave is upset that, uh, he's upset that fan, you can't play fan tracks there. He thinks that it's, um, it's because of them, they won't pay for the licensing fees for the state, which is probably correct, but, um, the licensing fees also aren't, aren't just like 20 bucks. Hey, I'll bend more you 20 bucks and it's, it's good to go. Like there's thousands and thousands of dollars on this. I'm sure there's some research behind it. Um, I know Dave was all fired up. They weren't filling leagues, which yeah, I mean, sometimes you got to go on on Twitter and, uh, promote the leagues to get filled. Uh, don't want to, I know about that. But anyways, uh, Zach, I'll let you, uh, give your thoughts on this. Okay, yeah, I didn't want to interrupt you, but I do have some, I did, I didn't, I prepared an introduction or I also did prepare our response to the Dr. Dave, um, saga on Twitter. Uh, first of all, um, this is absolutely tremendous. As you said, this is tremendous news. Um, here's the truth. Dr. Dave should never have played on fan tracks, expecting VIP service. Fan tracks is a mid stakes mass market product with no baby sitters like Derek. They don't fill leagues manually. They don't cure eight drafts. They don't allow private DCs. They don't chase high stakes whales. They don't even know that you're a doctor, expecting them to do all that and then rage tweeting when they don't is absolutely bonkers. But let's not write off the good doctor yet. Let's get into licensing. Let's do the math. Take Ohio, shout out to Hans Gruber, lives in Ohio. Top tier fantasy contest license out there in Ohio is 30 grand a year. I looked it up. Um, one, uh, $1,000, $12 team league, uh, Dave's 12 team leagues, generates 12 grand in buy-ins, fan tracks rate, nine percent. That's $1,080 per league. Uh, you know, to cover that license, um, bear in mind, that's just one of the variable costs. So there's probably some fixed costly kind of factor in anyways, well, overcomplicated, overcomplicating it. You need to go 28 leagues. So $28,000 leagues in prime, if prime draft season's like four months, that's seven leagues a month. So okay, you got to fill seven of those $1,000 leagues a month to cover your 30, 30 grand. Step it down to $250 buy-ins four times the amount. You got to fill 112 leagues. Labor, league filling, follow-up, fan tracks isn't paying for that. That's why they bowed out. The math is right there. It's not a customer service issue. It's a return on investment equation. Dave is right that it is an illegal barricade. If Ohio wanted to do it and lean into it, it can make sense, but if that was their strategic decision. Okay, and Dave's defense, if there's less than 5,000 players in Ohio playing fan tracks, which might be the case, I don't fucking know, um, the license is like only three grand, get three grand. In that case, you need to fill $3,000 leagues in Ohio, which seems pretty easy. They also leagues from cross, leagues cross state lines. So they're scaled to this, um, on top of this, so it might be more in fan tracks favor. So maybe fan tracks is run by a bunch of idiots and Dr. Dave is right as usual. On popular opinion, Dr. Dave is probably right, but I'm not sure he knows why based on his fucking rampage with fan tracks. But here's the tangent I'll spin to you guys. NFBC separates itself from fan tracks and every other platform. About 5 to 10% of NFBC players are whales. Carrying over 50% of the revenue from the whales. Lose one whale, quick math conservatively, they do a main a couple for honey's and OCE, other shit, realistic long term value of a whale, five grand. That's the difference between life and death in NFBC. So Greg does what any smart business owner would do. He bends over backwards for the whales. They used to curate, they used to curate leagues. So whales don't face each other in the main event in Vegas. Light bulbs going off here. The only reason this change is because they needed another whale to complain. That's where I come in. Think about that. Two amazing top level players never face each other in a critical matchup. Not because they aren't skilled or they are skilled, but because the system is designed to protect the whales for the sake of the contest ecosystem. It's almost anti-competitive. And let's be honest, it's not exactly fair for the rest of the field. Penny Jockies get to watch the top care players dodge each other in the NFBC while the whales are happy. But that's the price you got to pay. Well, I guess they found a workaround for that. Look, this is a totally pro NFBC rant, even though part of it is hard truths. Like the NFBC, they answer emails, they nudge drafts, they correct misclicks of Jose Ferrer, they correct incorrect drops of Leo Di Tveras. Thank you very much. They manually fill leagues, Brian both spending 20 minutes filling in 12 TMOC generates $630 in rake at 15%. Easily covering Brian's labor costs like 20 times over. That's not a premium service. That's a fucking gravy train for NFBC. Greg has actually done a brilliant job with his business model. And he'll never brag about it in public because it will upset the Penny Jockies and his action speak louder than words to the whales. This is an accreticism where me trying to blow up his spot is mad respect to Greg as an entrepreneur. And honestly, he's rectified most, if not all of my, we'll call it polite constructive criticisms. Here's a spin. Most whales are like Jason who play like five or six high-stakes drafts. His binds are more than mine, but I do meet the monetary criteria. I also fill leagues with my volume. I promote their contests on a podcast. I even invented a widely popular competition called the Gladiator, which I won. NFBC can treat me like a whale and incentivize me in dozens of ways. So discounts volume. I don't get any special treatment, but there's early bird specials and volume discounts everyone gets. Whale only perks. They don't have like VIP rooms or anything like that, but essentially the live events are subsidized by the online drafts like the food and drink and stuff like that. This is a strategic decision to cater to the whales. Greg knows this is key. The live events are the lifeblood of the business. Those need to go on. The exclusive competitions they give the whales. Like they give them whatever they want, CLQ. Sure, Toby. Have a CLQ. The mic them out of ultimate. Have an ultimate mic. Have it at your house. Fuck it. Who cares? Listener leagues. Go nuts. Why do you think they let the private DCs be part of the overall contest? Nah, whales. Recognition. Forums, emails, podcasts, Hall of Fame. Greg did this from the get go. Absolutely brilliant. The Hall of Fame isn't just an honor. It's a whale magnet rewarding scale and buy-ins alike while keeping the biggest spenders fully engaged. Do you think Frank Amorante is a fan tracks Hall of Famer? Trick question asshole. No one gives a fuck. So spend a few hundred bucks on me, retain my 10k and long term equity. The Matthew can't argue with. What I'm suggesting is instead of giving these whales separate tables in the main event and publicly piss everyone off, take all the volume discounts and the early bird deals are handing out to these fucking penny jockeys like he had to eat and funnel that money into your whales instead. Losing one whale is worse than losing, worse than, sorry, we're worse than 25 penny jockeys. Losing their $25 off at DC, they aren't going to fucking play anyways because they only do one. Meanwhile, fan tracks, they don't know who the whales are. One league needs one more two, one or two more players. Tough luck. Fuck them. One whale leaves poof. See you later. Adam DeGemi complaining that someone's calling him names on the lobby. It's like my fucking dick. That's why Dr. Dave's crash out isn't a fan tracks failure. It's an entitlement versus, um, uh, operational reality. So yes, fan tracks bound out of out of the states because the math makes sense for them. NFBC treats whales like gods because the math makes sense for them. NFBC curated matchups protects high value players and keeps their ecosystem alive. Dr. Dave complaining about licenses while expecting white glove service off on a mid stakes platform, hilarious. The take away here is simple. There's even a couple whales lurking on fan tracks. If I ran the NFBC, my number one ROI activity would be to find those whales at fan tracks right now. Jason, I'm curious. This maybe think of some, that was, that was very good. Uh, this makes me think of something though. What do you think about these leagues that are right of first refusal? So it's a certain number. It's 15 and they all get to determine are they in that league and if they all want to come back, nobody else could get in. What do you think about that is that is that related to Zach as far as whale servicing that we allow the highest the high stakes to be to the same people year after year with the only your only hope is a wait list that maybe somebody has like a stroke or something and then you get to, you get to play like what, what do you think about that? Do you think that's right or do you think that it should be first come for servers like lottery? Like how would you handle the mid like the limited number of seats in these nose bleed leagues? I, um, you know, this is a long-term business. There's been a lot of businesses going out of business in this space and I think it's a good idea what Greg does for his biggest players, but the reality is no one's ever been blocked out of those leagues. If you want to join you can because just because you have the right to refusal, I've never seen 15 out of 15 actually come back. There is always spots. There is always multiple spots. So if you want to be in those leagues right now, you can put your name on a wait list for them. So it's that prohibitive. There is always multiple spots in those leagues to get in. Otherwise, yeah, that would probably be unfair if it was the same 15 people every year. I agree with that. I just don't think it was an advantage because at the end of the day, it ended up being where those leagues were not selling out by that deadline, which is 1231 that Greg has. They were always falling in. They needed more players to play and I never saw 15 out of 15 ever come back once ever. So it was just a waiting list that you could get on very easily. So you could get on that league if you want to get on that league. And there's a lot obviously a lot out of demand and Greg even said something about them. I don't know but open up a second diamond league, which I don't like. I want that money flowing into the auctions. Well, this is the this is a perfect segue into my second topic here on the big fish on the small ponds like many of it. We got a state of the NFBC Vegas graphs. Jason, you just mentioned the diamond. Diamond's bond. It's filled. So it's already filled. Platinum's filled. Diamond auctions at 13 of 15. The high dollar leagues are already filling. We see what titanium titanium do. Well, we need check back unfortunately. You can revive them. That would be great. But the diamond. So I didn't know about this, Jason. So the diamond they're thinking about opening up a second one. I don't that's great. They should also open up a second platinum because there we have multiple people on the waiting list. And if you did a second platinum, don't run at the same time because then you probably going to have some of those players do two of them. That's the problem though is the time slots. It really is. It's very difficult. It's easy to say and it makes a total lot of sense. But Euro is undercutting and it's going to blow something up. I actually personally because I'm not in the CLQ feel the impact of that auction the time it is because it screws with the leagues I play on with Friday for signups where like 2500s at risk. The ultimate slower. I got moved to 10 a.m. And it's because there's a lot of good players and people interested in other stuff on that particular day. So you know, if people, you know, I think from if people want to put that much money up for that type of league, they're probably going to end up joining other leagues and putting money in anyway. So I don't know. I just want the money selfishly to flow into our auctions. I agree. Yeah, I would like that too. But you know, obviously, you have some people that that play both snake and auctions, but we need a platinum auction before any of that stuff offering. Is there a super auction? I guess they're part of the overall. You call 2500 the part of the overall. Yeah, that's never been a standalone. That's part of the overall. Jason makes a really good point though. There's only so many hours in those Vegas days and these leagues take a long time. So there's only so many you could fit in. They're the space probably, but it's not just the time. And you know, when you make a slight tweak like in a CLQ auction, that's how that's how the lot of ripple effects. I think that's a really good point. That's taking several people maybe out of the auction pool or an extra auction. And you know, I'm, I don't know, Jason, I'm looking at ours. We have six out of 15. It's been six for a while. I mean, we like, is that in jeopardy? You think that's an easy fill? It's just. Well, I always think the the mark is always after the Super Bowl when people actually wake up and sign up. So, okay, fair. It's a good point. That's when I would get concerned. But yes, no, it's, you know, I think there's a lot of people lurking. And I don't want to be Debbie Downer because I'm probably more optimistic than anyone I've said this before. But I just think if you think next year is actually at risk for baseball, like what are you doing? Like you should be signing up for more leagues and going buck wild this year. So what are you doing? Like sign up right now. Let's fill these leagues. Because I feel like they kill them. Here's the risk. And I've been in these leagues like this where as the weeks progress, like they will shut these down like very early, very early and not let them last. That's the problem. You think you're going to just wait and slide in the 2,500 at the end last minute. No, like Greg will literally shut that down in a couple of weeks if we don't get a couple more. And Greg, the, in my informational for Greg, which I've never gotten to discount a league in my life, by the way. And I joined the second year. So I join early in leagues and I don't want to be Greg. But my information for Greg and why people need to sign up is he's so flat there. Number one, you're on the pay right now. So just sign up. But another number two, he's so flexible with people getting out of leagues. He really is. You know, life shit happens like last minute stuff chaos. It's obviously not ideal for him. So just sign up for the auctions, not the snake traps, not the 12 team events. They should be canceled. Just the auction that sign up for all of the auctions. We expect big numbers tomorrow. Those auctions are honestly the most fun thing ever. Like I, I go there and I'm going to make the trip. I sign up for every, I have an option in every time slot because it's, they're just a blast. There's so much fun. I don't even care about doing the mains. If there was an auction during the Saturday main, I'd do it. They need that. That annoys me that we don't have one during that. I'm going to bring that up this year for next year. I know it's obviously needed a facilitator and everything. But there's certain people. Listen, a lot of people do the main Saturday morning and it's super cool. I walk around. I'm not doing it. But, you know, it's a cool event. I even get up to watch a little bit of it. But I want to go do an auction at that time. So speaking of that big main, so as fast as like the platinum field, the diamond field. So a muster is already one that filled sometime in Vegas. The super is at one of 15. There's been one on sign up for this live super there. Again, maybe there was one that was already filled or something that I don't know about, but the super in Vegas is at one of 15. So I don't know what's going on with that. And then also, I think that's common fish, meaning that's kind of a random thing where there is really, to me, there's no culture of super drafts, snake drafts in really Vegas. So that'll end up being a bunch of people online connected and one person can be in Vegas type things. So they'll never be a room of 15 people for that. But probably I saw that one as well. But that'll just be mostly online people. They will never have a room of 15 people for that. Why is that just the price point thing? Like people that are going to do a snake, they're going to do the diamond. They're not going to do the diamond. I think that's more of the times the time slide. I don't know when that time is an end date. But like Mark said, not everybody goes for as many days as other people. So basically a lot of people go for three days and everyone's doing that main event on Saturday. Some people don't like doubling up with multiple leagues in a day. And there's just limited time unless you're going for a bunch of days. So it kills off some of these leagues like that. Hey, quick question. Now that Greg loves me again, do you think you'd let me do the roller skate thing in the main event, do two Vegas mains and just roll their skate from table to table. Or would that throw off the randomizer that they're probably not. If I was in a main event league and I had someone that wanted to do that and be in two leagues, sign me up. The more chaos, the better. Wow, that sounds difficult to do. So I would love that. I would anyone who wants to put that much more shit on their plate to do a high-stakes draft, go for it. Hey, last year I did a did the auction live while doing an online auction at the same time. That was and honestly, I'd like to say that I was successful, but that online auction I fucked up. Well, the last point is, you know, like those, those live snakes, you can get seven, eight people and get seven online and you can still, you know, be drafting live and do that. But the auctions, you have to be there. I mean, yeah, the occasionally I like a proxy where Greg's in the room for a guy that happens occasionally if someone, you know, gets their flights delayed or something, but that that that's basically auctions tough already have to be there. Yeah. So that's super that's that one, one of 15 is on that set out of that 4 p.m. Which you have. So you have at the same price point, you have the auction 2500, which is like six, about a 15. I'm saying that without looking right now. So you have that right there. I'm just trying. And then you had the main, again, think about it. The main event 11 a.m. A lot of people only will do one league. They don't want to do two. So I don't know what else is going on there or people have social gatherings going out to restaurants and stuff. It's, you know, it would it would be fun if it if it failed. But actually, it's a snake trap. So who cares? Well, we put as much time on the agenda. Yeah, fish. This is an auction podcast. Why are we talking about a snake draft? Listen, this is the big fish in a small tunnel. We don't we don't we're not even going to talk all baseball in this segment. That's true. My bad, I got my bad. I have one last thing on this state of the end of the V.C. Vegas dress. That big main on Saturday is currently at 64 teams, which is a little over four leagues filled. I would have thought that would have filled a little quicker by now, but obviously not. So how many leagues they trying to do this year on that seven morning main eight? Okay. All right. So we got a little over three and a half leagues ago. So I think they'll get there. They always get there. It's just amazing. They put a dish on on prior to January 1st. You would think everybody would sign up. It depends on your 1099. I mean, if you were trying to shed shed some profit, if you had a losing season, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be spending before the year. So that, but the thing is, I thought there'd be a little little flirty here in the first week of the New Year because of that. I haven't really seen much. And I don't know about the football thing, Jason. I don't know if that's true. I mean, are people that like they literally can't sign up for a baseball league because it's still I don't know. I always think of that after that point. That's like price enforcing. That's a much more way like price enforcing. That's how it was 20 years ago. That's basically you're right. Well, the thing is, what was the early bird discount? 75 bucks off the main. Yeah. But the two pack discounts can still be here. You get a hundred bucks off if you buy two of them anytime, right? Yeah. And that's what, 85 bucks. And if you do like the two, like if you're going to do two, you get that 5%, you know, code for five minutes or whatever. So that's the, I mean, the two pack and that might be the same. But they're tightening up all their, like they're all their fucking discount loopholes that like you could take advantage of. They tighten up a lot of them this year. I noticed that because I was for like to sign up for a 17 and a 25 or 16 and a 25 auction. It wasn't like I could apply. I got any kind of like they didn't offer a 5% off on the next yes. They go action. I did. Yeah, because they were the main and an auction. It gives you a hundred off. Yeah. But like like I did, I did two auctions that got a hundred off earlier, you know, last year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They'll give you a two, like they'll give you a hundred bucks off or something like that for the two auctions or a main and an auction or two main or something that that discount I think is evergreen. But I remember like they have all these five percent, you five percent codes. The one year I was buying gladiators one by one because there's no, like there's no discount for multiple gladiators. Like there is for a DC. I think you buy three DCs at 25% off. But then I kept getting the five percent code. And then same with Olax. And then Greg goes to me like right after all this scandal was happening. He's like he was like skeptic was like why are you buying all these things separately? You're the only one that's doing that. I'm like well because I get five percent off and I get two bucks of all I get I pay two dollars less. I'm paying like 48 bucks instead of 50 for all these adiators. He's like, oh, that's right. And then they they changed it. Yeah. So yeah, the five percent is on and everything. Here's where I don't get there. Think of the market for fancy baseball content. You have all these companies out there, right? They're all they all must be surviving somehow, you know, all the patrons. Where are these people? Like why aren't you playing the NFPC like what or is it all the I mean, I guess you have to build a bank for all it's easy for me to stay here and say, you know, I stay, but I don't know. Well, we're going to fill fish. I think we're good. I think we're good. Yeah, I'm not worried about that Saturday, man. It always does feel just surprising that it has gone a little bit further yet. But our last topic before we get back to the auction talk, which is obviously much better than this kind of stuff. But all right, Jason, let's start with you. You're on death row times up. You got one meal left. What do you got? What are you ordering? I love the question, Fish. I actually thought about the death row meal question many times. Not that I have crazy ideas in my head where I'd be there, but I, for my drink, I am definitely going with egg nog. I love egg nog. I don't need booze because they're going to put you down a second later. So I want something that's absolutely delicious. So put original egg nog, the OG of it. If you don't know, you don't know, that's the drink. And I'm going to go with cheese pizza. Besides the red socks to me. So I will do a cheese pizza. And I will also have lobster, but I want that broken up and cleaned up with butter. Make it easy for me. And that's about it. No dessert. You know what dessert? Give me a brownie. Let's go boring with a little ice cream. That's a good, that's a good thing there. That is the funniest. That's the best list ever. That is freaking out. That's so, that's so pretty and good. Ignite through me. Through me. Yeah. That is, that's true. Big, favorite drink my whole life. I know you feel terrible when you drink it. It's so thick. But what a, that probably sounds fucking terrible what I just said. But what a, what a fantastic drink. Brazing. This is the weird combination. I mean, I nod with pizza. Yeah, I don't know. I can't see it. But Mark, what, what do you got here? Well, I'm glad you set the table, so to speak with that. Because I, I was trying to like have a thematic meal that you would think. But I would, if this is my last meal, I would just want all of my favorites. You know, like I, it doesn't have to necessarily all go together as long as I can have each one independently. And enjoy. I, um, so for my appetizer, it's like some amazing clam chowder, uh, clam chowda, some clam chowder. I love freaking new, I love, uh, doing clam chowder. That's like my favorite, like soup. So I would, some kind of seafood soup, some kind of, um, some kind of chowder, uh, to start. I'm, I'm going spaghetti and meatballs, man. That's, uh, you know, that's my, that's my thing. If I can get an amazing spaghetti and meatballs, uh, that would make me very happy right before death. Um, that's something I could eat really any time and, and usually do, uh, unfortunately for my figure. But spilling meatballs, um, uh, I would, um, man, drink is tough for me. I, I, I, I, I don't know. I don't, I don't really drink. So I don't, I don't know that I'd have an alcoholic. I mean, maybe a Moscow mule. That's, that's kind of my go-to drink. So I, maybe, yeah, a mule would go good with that. And then I don't deserve, God, there's so many, you can go so many directions. It's, uh, I call a seven layer cake and it's, uh, in the Jewish holidays, we used to get these unbelievable seven layer cakes. Um, and I just thought those were the best. So it was seven layer cake, spaghetti, meatballs, uh, Moscow mule and some chowda. There we go. I like it. Zach, what do you got? All right. Um, I had some time to think, drink to do a Coke or if we're gonna add alcohol, I do Ryan Coke. But well, it depends on how I'm feeling that day, I guess. Um, uh, how am I going to feel a day, but a die? How am I feeling? I'm really good today. So I want to want to add alcohol to this. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Um, I hope I'm not in that situation, but um, well, that's, that's for damn sure. Well, I won't be, um, but if I was, I don't know how I'll feel, but that's those are the, those are the two. I'll give you an alcohol version or not, not alcohol version. Um, I like, but I like Mark's, uh, clam chowda idea is like, uh, as an api. Um, but, um, I'd probably do, um, surf and turf medium rare New York steak with lobster tail. And then instead of the, uh, here's a whole three through a loop here for the side, I'm not going to get mashed potatoes or french fries. I'm going to get a little mini chicken swarm as a side in that with my, uh, surf and turf. And then I don't know, dessert. I'm not a big dessert guy, probably like some sort of brownie or as my vice. Okay, fish. Can I just interject real quick? Um, because I had, this was a rant I wanted to, uh, I'm glad I remember you just remind me of this. What is the fascination with people telling other people how they should order their steak? Where, where is this indignancy that someone has to, to, to say to somebody, what an insult to the chef or to the cat? Like, why can't people order what the fuck they want? Why does somebody care if someone orders their steak medium or medium well? Well, how does that affect you? Are you the fucking, are you the farmer with the, okay, if you're the farmer and you're giving up your cow, sure, fine, you could be upset, but uh, sort of being a farmer, shut the fuck up. Nobody cares that you think you're so cool because you're like medium rare steak. Whatever, enjoy it. I think it's disgusting. I would never do that, but I'm not telling you don't do it. I'm just saying I'm going to order a steak. I want it. So anyway, rant over. I think Jason was involved in this on Twitter too. Well, also, also dipping, uh, dipping your steak in ketchup or a one or whatever. That's very fun to find. That's a perfect corollary to that exactly right. Like, you know, I'm going to jump in on Mark's side and I'm the pickiest either ever. So I'm the guy, people make fun of me with this, but I think it's like a bravado thing when people are ordering it as rare as possible, too. There's like a slide. Some people actually truly enjoy it, but other people, it's, uh, it's, it's a little bit of a cult, but uh, no, I've been on the assault side of that many times, Mark, because I have no problem ordering a medium well steak and I love it. I love it. So uh, go pound, stand and enjoy, but we do take a lot of heat on that side, but there's way more people who are getting the medium and the medium rare. So they're just shitting on us. But um, anyways, I couldn't agree more. That was a fantastic rant. Hey, I just like it. I like the medium rare. Oh, yeah, no, I was. Yeah, good. Don't just don't tell me how to order mine. That's all. That's all like that's all like. Yeah, I like, uh, I like my steak medium rare as well. I don't like the inside of my steak, how I like my women black. So, Hey, now, yeah, I like my, I'll take my steak medium rare. Um, so anyway, so that brings me what's the taste it on now? I will, I will actually you do have that we do have fun in the seam style and steak or fish. That's about there we go. Yeah. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a steak medium rare. Um, a little pig in the middle. All right, I'm gonna say anyways. Um, yeah, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do, I actually, I'm gonna do mashed potatoes. Um, that's good with that gravy. Um, gravy. Is there gravy in there or not? Um, I'm okay with gravy, honestly, or corn. I'll just take, uh, corn. Interesting. I don't know. No gravy. Okay, okay. Uh, yeah, that or corn, gravy or corn, uh, one of two, not both. Uh, just one of the two. Um, and then I'm actually with you, Mark, right, for, um, I would not do a salad with that. I would do a, uh, clam charter soup. So I'm right there with you with that. Um, that also, I'm not, I'm not a big, uh, dessert guy. So I wouldn't get anything for dessert, but I would do a beautiful glass of Italian red wine, um, to go with that. So that would be, uh, mine, very boring, not a whole lot going on there, but that's just, uh, that's what I would do. So I, I would assume in those final moments, you just want some comfort, something that you've loved your whole life that will make you feel good one last time. So you get, you get too fancy. It's not like that's not you. Like it's, yeah, I would just skip the food, throw on the, uh, 2004 ALCS. So I was thinking along the same lines. Like I would skip the food and just play me some banks or some young Bob game bond. Give me my bang. This isn't put me out of my misery. Yeah, I would have James Bond on, uh, uh, uh, Jason or, or the, uh, judge ball drop on loop, either one of those. Exactly. Go out on a high. Yeah, put that on my headstone too. The picture him dropping it. What do you see? I'm going to come, I'm going to, I'll come visit you there. All the judge ball drive that each year. I'll bring a picture of each year. Oh, I still can't believe it. I'm going off memory that that ball only went for, uh, $43,000. Like that is a very historic important baseball for a lot of people, not just me, a lot of people. I think it's honestly an amazing collectible to whoever has it. I need to know him, uh, find him, meet him. Um, but, uh, anyway, what, what, what a night. Don't get mad, but seriously, don't, this is not, I'm not taking a shot, but I'm actually curious, is, was the Bill Buckner ball ever sold? Do you know? Like, where, who has the Bill Buckner ball? Yeah, didn't, uh, Charlie Sheen have that? It was a celebrity you had that, I believe. Yeah, definitely. It's, uh, I'm going from memory, but that there was definitely high profile ownership of that baseball, but absolutely, absolutely. That's, that's definitely been, uh, auction. You've gotten the last laugh. You've gotten the last laugh after that one. So you're, you're all good. Yeah, I mean, that one just didn't hurt as much, uh, for me, just based on, you know, where, where I was in life. So I've gotten a lot of a lot of laughs. I, I, I like met fans, uh, I like your passion and you guys hate the Yankees. So we've common goals. That is true. We get along. We get along. We get along, we get along very well. So Charlie Sheen bought the ball in 1992 from $93,000. Okay. So, there we get for a loss. And then anonymous buyer later, uh, sold an auction for 418,000, the anonymous buyer was Steve Cohen. Oh, that's right. Cohen owns it. That's right. That's going to go right in the casino. It's going to go right to the front of the casino. All right. Let's get back to the auction talk. Is that, are we good to go? Yeah. Good job. All those fish. That segment exceeded expectations. Yes. What, what a, what a banger that section was $3 over AAB. Yeah. That was, that was really good. So now we're going to talk about the end game and the auctions. This is the, I find this most interesting. So, uh, I said the $1 player is a feature, but not a bug of the auction. So getting, ending up with these $1 players are actually something you should plan for. As I know, some people say otherwise, but, uh, plan for multiple of them. Um, these could be platoon bats, elite closers and waiting like you're Brian, a brave, um, easy fab fixes and dumps of players that are easy to just drop. Um, know who goes in the reserve rounds is another thing. So is it my first question for you guys? Is an auction spot in the end game worth sacrificing? Say you like two players that historically in the old acts have been going in the reserve rounds. You like those two players? Um, more than market. Is it worthwhile to trade a roster spot for like obviously, if you're going to do this, you like it better than the player is still available in the auction. Um, uh, asking this question seems kind of stupid. So you should do it if you like it more, right? But do you often, would you ever go against the market and buy a player that's going in the reserves in the auction just to make sure you get that player and, I guess, maybe it would depend on where you're drafting from. If you're not, if you're not drafting early, you'll have less a chance of getting. I mean, I think it's interesting because that's one thing is have a sense of who's getting auction and who's going in the reserve round. That's, that's, that's the first point. Know that. And if you, you know, if you're 60% or higher, confident that both guys will be there and will be there when you're actually picking the reserve round, then you could use that last roster spot, maybe more, maybe it's an upside shot. If you know you're going to get two solid guys in those first two rounds of the snake. So you take, take the upside shot. So I, you know, I think that last pick is usually, I don't say it's a throw away, but everyone's getting tired. It's like four hours in and you're just like, uh, whatever. But that last, that last spot could be really important if you, if you understand what the, what the reserve round might look like. And you don't know what's going to end up in the $1 range. You, you could, I think trading off one of those reserve players with a marginal one, the $1 player, but sometimes in these auctions, you could be getting a $3 or $4 player for $1. So you never know, you never know what you're going to get. So I think to answer my own question, I don't think I would do it. I think I, I would, I wouldn't want to risk losing out on that potential value in the auction. Like I think you just be kicking yourself too much if like a $4 player that you liked ended up being in $1 value and then you ended up taking this other reserve type player just because you thought it was going to break out. Yeah. What do you think, Jason? How do you handle it? Yeah. No, I think Zach nailed it. If you, you, you, you, if you're pulling up this player that you think is a $1 player, but there's always, if you're playing the $1 space guys that are, you're going to value that, you have more profit at that level. So it just makes sense to, uh, avoid that if possible. I, I, I, I don't recall ever. I guess if you're that, uh, you know, excited about a player that's going that late and giddy, you want to grab him for a buck, but every auction's so different and you were always surprised at what happens. So I, I just don't over react like that. Right. How many $1 players do you usually end up at, Jason? Do you like, do you have some kind of feel for that? Is it really different or you stay away from it? It does differ, but I'm very flexible in, uh, changing during the draft and, and, um, I kind of fail at living up to that. I, I've actually in the last couple of years wanted more $1 players and not gotten them, but I'm fine with that as long as I know how to spend the money towards the end. But I, I have very few $1 players, uh, usually, uh, generally, but Jason, sorry, you, Mark, you guys are both balanced. Yeah. You go ahead with good players. But I'm not, I'm not saying that's the right thing, meaning I have, I have, I have, I have mismanaged money where I, you know, I've gotten these $2, $3 guys that probably should have been, uh, $1 guys or whatever, but I generally don't have a lot of, uh, $1 guys. I don't, I don't mind having kind of the room average, you know, like if there are $61 players and I got four or five, three, three to five, I'm okay with that because I think it's actually, it's a feature not a bug. Um, you could be paying $2 for a $3 player or you could pay $1 for a $3 player, you know, oftentimes that $2 and $3 players, you, you kind of convince yourself that they're, you know, they're really worth it, but I think oftentimes they're not. And you would have been better off spending five or six earlier on a guy that really could be a difference maker and just left yourself with, with the three or four $1 spots instead of, because then you're like, oh, I'll go two in this guy and it's a $1 player, like you, you just, you just had the hammer. That's another thing that should go out of the fucking lexicon as the hammer. Um, that's also, that's perceived as being like, oh, I got the hammer. It's like, yeah, but your team sucks. Like you, you didn't spend up right the whole, you know, the last five minutes of the auction. Yeah, you got a couple nice $2 guys that are worth a dollar anyway. Do you guys ever think about what your sort of plan to look for in the $1 players? For example, um, if, if you're in $1 day, you literally have a max of $1 a bid. Are you come, where are you comfortable getting your positions? Do you want to be balanced? So you're just getting a balanced player or, or are you comfortable needing, say, 20 stolen bases from your last player? And you're sort of pigeonholed by position and it is really, if you get out bid for those, say, four or five players that are, would fit your team, you're in real trouble. Like where do you want, where do you want to be? Where do you want to be deficient heading into your $1 days in terms of categories and positions? I guess you can vary, but like in general, what, where do you want to be deficient, Jason? Um, uh, off fence, off fence, off fence number one, that, that, that, that's the easy, easy answer there. And otherwise, um, I'm okay, I guess being deficient in stolen bases or, um, the counting stats, not, not home runs. Home runs is kind of precious to me as well, but runs in our BIs, I can also, but, uh, stolen bases, I guess, I can, I can rest a little bit. Do you want to make sure you lock down judge and stand? I, I, I, ideally, ideally. Right. Um, Mark, I don't want to come out with any deficiencies to be honest. I mean, and that's just, if I'm deficient with four guys to go, uh, that's, I think I'd been doing a good job, but, well, I always want to be balanced. And that's just how I play, but I think what I especially want at the end are some balanced players for a dollar because those guys could be worth more, they have more paths to profit with those guys. So even if it's like a 20, 60, 60, five kind of guy, it was like 250, like, that could be a valuable dollar fifth outfielder or, you know, or corner or UT, um, where I'm comfortable spending a dollar, but I don't want to have to like, I gotta get Andrew Vaughn here for 25 homers and then you end up getting Andrew Vaughnny, you know, and being the year, you totally killed you. So I think you're right. You could force yourself, if you're looking at benchmarks, you could force yourself in a little bit of a corner. And I think if you can do a good job up until then, you can then just get some guys that have, you know, you can get a, not going to do a Chris Basset, you know, like a, like a solid starting pitcher for your, for a dollar at the end there. I don't want to have to get like, just totally guess on a rookie who might not even break camp and waste a dollar doing that. So I think you want to leave yourself as many outs for the dollar players as possible. I think that's what you're getting at, but that's what I want to do. Well, I'm not, yeah, I'm not really getting anything. I just want to know what you guys are. I know. It wasn't an insult. I was just, I know, I'm just not getting, yeah, no, I'm not getting anything. I wanted to just, I didn't know what you're going to say. Didn't, didn't really have an expectation on an answer there, but I guess it would be like, what, what players do you think, are going to be similar in the reserve rounds? And like, that's the first thing that comes to my mind and it's sort of aligned with Jason's answer that he doesn't want any one dollar pictures is, I don't want to be drafting one dollar players that I can get in the reserve rounds. And a lot of starting pictures, I feel you can get in the first two rounds of the reserves are very similar to the one dollar pictures. And I don't think you have that. Well, definitely not catchers. Like your catchers, you're going to get the reserve rounds are not existed. So I would definitely want to spend two dollars on a catcher, rather than having one dollar for a catcher. But pitching would be something that's very, I guess, uniform at the end of the auction versus the beginning of the reserves. Another thing that I had thought about was this, no matter what players are worth, you have to bid one dollar on every player. So the auction software or the draft doesn't allow you to bid less than once. You need to, it forces you to save one dollar for every one of your 23 draws response. So I haven't really, I haven't really thought about how to frame this, but I'll throw it out to you guys and maybe you guys have some, maybe this spurs an idea in your head that you want to talk about. But a two dollar player is infinitely more valuable than a one dollar player because one dollar is forced. And in turn, a three dollar player is not just three versus two. It's actually double is double as valuable or should be double as valuable as a two dollar player because you must spend one. So two dollar player is one dollar of like marginal value. Whereas a three dollar player is two dollars of marginal value. So you think about it in sort of relative value. A three dollar player is really a two dollar player. And a two dollar player is really a one dollar player. So a three dollar player is double, you're paying double the cost in a three dollar player as a two dollar player. So what's the implication of the year? You really got to make sure A that when you're bidding two dollars on a player and you have your down to dollar days, that two dollar player better be a lot more valuable than a player you can get for one dollar. I think a lot of people spend too freely when they have that extra dollar left. They're like, oh, I like that player. I'm going to buy him. But I think when I look at him, like this, if I'm spending two dollars on a player and going from one to two in an auction, that player better be double as valuable as the players that I'm going to get for a dollar. And I don't think people really think of it that way. Or I don't know. Maybe I maybe I I'm glad you're a couple hours into this podcast because I no one hopefully hears this and hopefully can delete that. But that might be the most valuable thing that you talked about. And I can't break it down, but it's just from an eyeball test. Like the two three dollar players just blow away the one dollar players when you're in an auction, not with your AAV, which is fake when people are making stupid building stupid builds in the offseason on these online auction software. In the real drafts, there's a major difference exponentially with the two three four five dollar players. There's so much better than those players at the bottom. Delete all of that. Okay. Yeah, I'm sure the the last meal thing just got everyone out of the way for that. But just for example of an auction that I just did, I I was in an auction and I was Matt Shepard was in a two and I had a two dollar max. So I had I had two dollar I had three dollars. So I could spend I had two spots left. I could spend two dollars in one player and then the other player would have to be one dollar. And he was the only one. I needed a corner in fielder and a first basement. That's what I needed left. This is this is the catcher auction where I waited on corner because I knew corner would be I know actually this was sorry. This was the other this was a different draft. Doesn't matter. But I had three dollars left. So I had two dollars to spend on a player and one dollar to spend the other player. Everyone else had one dollar except Shepard was the only one that could go two on me. And he was the only other player that could outbid me on a player. So I had a choice. There's two players I wanted. I'd wanted the player that I thought would go for more. I needed less because I needed stolen bases. So I wanted I wanted a corner that got me stolen bases but I also needed a first basement. In the draft room I figured the first basement would go for more. So I had two options. I could either nominate the first basement for two dollars and just win them outright and then hope that it would come back around to me and no one would bid one dollar on that other player. Or I could bid one dollar on the player that I thought was less valuable and hope that Shepard wouldn't go two on me for that player. What would you do in that situation? Would you bid the one dollar on the lesser player or would you bid and then have the potential to just go over the top and bid two dollars on the player that was the average option value or would you bid the two dollars on the player that you thought was more valuable and just win them and then hope you can get the other player for a dollar that hoping that he wouldn't nominate of it. Can I talk first? Yep. So I walked away and I apologize. I missed a little bit of it but I heard you needed a corner, you needed stolen bases. What was that caveat? He's long gone. He was like seven dollars. So he wasn't out of it. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I did what he was hearing there. I missed that. All I heard is I was looking at stolen bases at corner. So I naturally went to-- No, I think he's led the league two years in row. Yeah. Can I buy aero one for seven? Volpe went for nine. No, too much. They wasn't there where they were long gone. So basically at three bucks, only one guy could open me. He needed corner two. Do I bid two dollars and just max out my two dollars? It means I let leave two dollars for the corner. You're saying two dollars for a corner. Yeah, it doesn't matter which one. Yeah, it doesn't matter a little bit, doesn't it? Doesn't it matter? Yeah, the corner. Let me say if you both need a corner and you have an edge on them two to one and it's up to you, you-- Yeah, so yeah, I'm saying position does matter because it determines what the other guy's going to do. That's all I'm saying. Well, he could buy either one of my-- either one of my players fit his mold. He has-- he has a corner open. So he could go-- If you numb the corner for two, you get him. Yeah, he's out. Yep. The other option is to numb a non-corner for one. So you're saying I could numb a stolen base guy for one. Yep. And then you're just hoping he doesn't-- and it still fits his team too. Yeah. Speed guy fits his team, okay. Both these guys fit his team. So I could either numb the stolen base guy that I think's kind of like a cheaper version. I would numb the stolen base guy for one, hoping he doesn't go to. And then if he doesn't go to, I'm automatically going to get the guy, the other guy that I want for two. Or I could just get the guy that I think's going to cost more for two and just spend my-- like throw him out for two. He can't go over the top of me because he's nice. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I automatically win. Then I got a hope that the other stolen base guy, no one else nominates him. Like, there's a bunch of other guys that have one dollar. Any of those one dollar guys could nominate him. And I got a wait for him to come back, but he's sort of more buried in ADP. Well, speed is a more preferred commodity there. So almost anyone after you, as a dollar, has a space left, speed would probably be beneficial to their team. No one's going to be like, oh, I have enough speed. So the likelihood is the speed guy's not going to be there on the way back. You figure Matt will save his two for a corner. I mean, I would guess he would use it on the corner. And then if he-- but that if he doms two, then you can't beat him. So I don't know, man, I was just fucking do one or the two. No. I'm over complicating it. It's like 50/50. No, no. I mean, it's a good-- it's a good theoretical exercise because you are faced with that decision right at the end. You need two spots. Who do I nom? I think it's the only base thing that over complicates things. So like, let's say you have a player you want and then you player you want a little more. So do you nominate the player that you want more for two dollars and secure that player? First, knowing that he can't outbid you or do you nominate the player that you want a little less, but he's your second choice for one dollar, giving Matt the opportunity to go two dollars. And then in turn will guarantee you the other player either what you're guarantee the other, you're guarantee the other player either way. You have to know the percentages of each decision and you know determine, you know, I mean, I'm not sure it's noble. I probably just take my preferred two dollar guy. I lock him in. If I don't get the steals, I don't get the steals. I'll find them later. I'm not that worried about it. Take it for a preferred guy. You're going to cut the other guy or shit's going to happen anyway or someone drops in your lap that you don't expect. I mean, if I'm playing game with two bucks, like pushing to that level, I'm just going to get the guy I want. Because you're always surprised in auctions that someone falls in your lap. So I read the rest of that. I got to push I got to push back on that because nice. First of all, because it's the opposite. This I'm not I'm not going to say, yeah, 1000%. I agree with you. You're the goat. I'm going to say that I get the guy I want either way. So either I nominate him for two and I get him or I nominate the player that I don't want as much for one and Matt goes over top of me and then he's left with only one dollar. Right. But why is he going to go for a mid-level player when there's a better $2 corner out there that he needs? Why the hell is he going to spend two on your shit player? He's going to wait for it. Well, what happened is I nominated the guy that I wanted. What I actually did was I nominated the guy that I wanted a little bit less for one dollar. And I'm like, what are the odds that this is the one player that he wants and he did take him. He did go over the top of me with that player. So he did get my second choice for one dollar. And I still got the player that I wanted more for two. But he's backfired because I don't know if I had not. But you only got one of the two. So it backfired on you. Yeah. Yeah, it did. I only I so I if I I don't know what would have happened. If I so I lost the player that I that I wanted to say, but I got the player that I wanted the most. But if I did the opposite, let's say I did nominate the player that I wanted the most for two, I was down to one dollar. So I could I'm helpless. So fun. I get that player. Now the question is, do I get the other player? I have to wait for like eight other players with the dollar to not nominate him. And I have to wait for Matt to not nominate him to or not think about it. Because sometimes you just nominate a player and a player goes to and he would have nominated someone else if like if he didn't come out, right? So that was painful. That was a painful exercise. Definitely. That's super deep. That's a super, super deep. I thought I just throw out a real world example. No, I think it's good. No, I think those are the kind of things you're faced with for sure. So I mean, I think you know, you know, it's it's a tie just, you know, I don't know. Grab the guy like more and just that way, you know, you have them for sure. And then maybe get lucky on the other guy. I'll do that next time, because obviously it backfired on me. Yeah. So the end game, it's one by constraints, not the absolute bargains we were talking about at the beginning, just getting values. So you got to track the position needs of you and your opponents and like sort of what you need, what your opponents need and target the players, target players on like in the end game that other teams can't roster like they they are full of this position. So throw like if it's like the player with more money than you, save three and there's players, players that can outbid you, nominate the players that they can't roster like if they're full on catcher, nominate catchers and try to get those cheap. Yep. Like at the end, you shouldn't be asking if a player, like it's not about the money, it's not about projections, you shouldn't be asking if the players were five, asking if you fit your team. Or just get a really good player, you know, I think sometimes I'm trying a little too hard, who like, you know, like I kind of know where I stand, you know, projection wise and sometimes you should get too cute. Oh, he got me 60 runs. Well, you pass up a better player just for some random projection of a run. So just just get, you know, sometimes you try to play around a little too much with fit. You should just get the bet, you know, the player that could produce the most and you'll figure out balance after that. Right. So we've teased the breaking point of auctions and we're gonna describe it. And if you've been in auctions, you know, the auctions sort of have a moment in time where they just sort of break and things change. But before we do that, I think Depond's the best person to have on for this topic because he's probably the loudest guy in the NFC and the auctions is silence is an edge unless you can control the room. So I think maybe Jason doesn't better than anyone else, not being silent and still controlling the room. But I have a couple of like things that I don't want to do. And then Jason can sort of, I want Jason to sort of describe how you how and when you can break these rules. So I'm going to say, don't comment on pricing unless you're lying about it. Saying, oh, that was a bargain or overpay gives the other player some information. So do you ever do that? Okay. No, no. No, I agree with you on that front. I don't think there's any reason to comment on the price I know the player because you might wake up the room a little bit for some reason too. Yeah. And I want to see when I can wake you up when you're going to when you're going to disagree because I want to see when I can get you to open your mouth in an auction. So I'm going to say don't react emotionally unless you're lying again saying you would have gone X here tells your opponents how much you're willing to spend not only on that player, but on that position. You're not into that. You're just into you're just into yelling and judge. No, I'm not. Here's one that's like not really about being loud, but like telegraphing your needs. So like let's say you have one relief pitcher and you need another one and you're sort of like strapped for money. And you keep nominating like the Hoffman's, the Fairbanks, the Janssen's and you keep nominating them and you're aggressively bidding on them and you're sort of bidding to a point where you can, but people are out bidding and you keep doing that. So I guess that's a question I could throw to all you guys. Like that's something that I'm saying you don't want to do. You don't want to telegraph like what you need because that becomes very obvious when you keep nominating the same position and you keep aggressively bidding it, but you don't really have a lot of money to to go to the AAV even. I agree, but I don't think people are thinking that hard in the room. For the most part, you know, everyone is needs saves and needs relief pictures and you hear a lot of the same voices. So, but yeah, there's going to be always people that you know are going the same number on a certain player like I've done that before too for like closures in particular where I'm bidding into same, there's like four of us and we go up to the same number all the time until we all get one. That happens. So, yeah, that's that's kind of where I am on that. Okay. All right, let's get one of the options. Oh, sorry. Can I say one thing? I do think your tone of voice and this isn't, you know, this isn't talking about hypnotizing anyone, but this is just, it's your persona. I think it's like your voice is kind of like like how you how you express your persona and I think you need to have a different, not say different, but you have to have some kind of persona in the auction. You have to have some kind of way you present yourself and you have and it just takes some time to find what is a good that fits your style and you're able to be articulate enough in the auction be heard. There's a lot of nuances to live auctions, right? The auctioneer responds differently to positioning and voice and just kind of your general. So, I think I'm not sure it's about controlling the room. It's about controlling yourself, you know, like it puts you in the right, like Jason's a very gregarious, fun persona, but underneath he's a total skimmer and he's got it all figured out and he's, you know, he's using that to an advantage. So, um, but emotional control, I think is really important because I've been guilty of this more than like football. This just happened in Vegas this year when you like like six quarterbacks and they start going and you're down like the last couple and people just keep bidding, keep bidding, you know, you're telegraphing that you want that quarterback and people are definitely going to could dig into you. So, the more you could obfuscate your true intentions, the better, but I agree with Jason, I don't think people are thinking that hard about it. Everyone's kind of drinking their eating, they're looking at their thing, you know, I don't think it's quite like a poker table. There's more going on than at a poker table, not saying mentally, but just physically like there's computers and papers and an auctioneer. You know, there's just a bunch more going on. So, I don't think people are really picking up as much as you might think on somebody's cues. Exactly. I mean, there is so much going on. I am chaotic. They're in an auction and I think there's also some players that just aren't really, you know, five players in the room that aren't paying attention to these dynamics as well. So, it's why auctions are so great. General theme of this podcast is snake grabs are so boring. Yeah. Showing more auctions. Where you just can continuously talk during an auction hungover and have Ken Manier just want to punch you in the face. That's another strategy. Or you can be like the consortium and have one of them draft and have all four of them there, just like talking so you can't even hear anything and you can just like completely get fucked up by that. That's a nice strategy by them. Invite all of your friends and talk and just throw everyone off. Are we ready to get into really auction breaks? Yeah, let's bring it home with the break. This is going to bring it home with this one. Never heard anyone talking about the breaking point of an auction. I think anyone that's been in it, been in it, been in one knows it. So, talk about the auction life cycle first. One, phase one. That's at the beginning. Everyone's liquid and everyone has as much money as each other. Money is abundant. People have patience. Big money on stars. Mistakes. Like I said, like the price enforcing mistakes, they're still flexible. The edge is don't price enforce, but keep your money edge. So, that's pretty standard. Then phase two, the mark talks about always taking the temperature of the room and the temperature is locked by this point. So, you know whether it's like a hot or cold room. This is where you see the SP2 inflation. Positions are closest to all, but haven't yet. And I think managers stop chasing their targets. I think at first people have their targets, and then they start using a calculator, meaning like they start looking at how many counting stats they have in each category, what categories they're deficient in. It's more of a categorical chasing rather than I want Pete Crow Armstrong type thing. The edge there is knowing the temperature of the room and don't over focus on your board at this point, knowing just don't over focus on like your positions at this point when everyone else is. Now phase three is when the draft breaks. This is what I want to talk about the breaking point. So, just to frame it, most teams are at about $2 per slot. So, if you have 23 players on your team, you got like 23 times two, that is 46 bucks. So, you're looking at, most teams are around like a $30 something in max bid. That's when the auction starts to break. The edge here is not the bit amounts, but who your nominations matter more than the amounts at this point. And okay, let's go back to the breaking point. So, I've been there, you can feel it. I'm like, okay, this is where your projection stop working and you're in my role now. So, like the projection guys, that doesn't matter anymore based on what I just said. You got to know when it's going to happen. So, about like 60 percent of the teams have less than like two or three dollars per slot. Most of the teams are at that point. Mid-tier starters are now going for like under AAV or position stalls. What I mean by that, the top tier of the position is gone. The room knows, there's no, the next tier is way worse, but no one wants to admit this. Bidding starts stalling. So, what you'll see here, and I'll give you examples, you'll see this a lot with catcher. So, like the Salvador Perez tier is now gone. He's like the last, he's gone. Middle infield. Swanson just went. Ken Lee is the last closer in that tier. He's sort of gone. He evolved the sort of the SP 4 or 5. That's when the position starts to stall. So, all the sudden, the player that usually goes for nine goes for like four blocks. The value isn't driving the bids anymore. Furious because people have the mindset that they feel they feel the need positionally and categorically. You're thinking, is this player going to lock me in? What if someone better falls to me? Like, I don't need this yet. So, the hesitation creates two ways you can go about it. You can lean in. You can take that discount and lock it in. So, lock in your, say like middle, like a middle infield that would normally be nine or eight bucks. You can lock him in for four dollars if you need that on your team, if you have let yourself flexible like that. Or you can weaponize it. It doesn't, if it doesn't fit your team, keep those nominations flowing force others to sort of make unforced errors. So, that's the frame of when the auction breaks. So, what do you want to be liquid? You want to have purchasing power when the auction breaks. So, nominate players of force choices that are difficult for players. So, for example, you know a player with leverage needs a corner infielder and there's two best options left. So, this is an example that I remember vividly from last year. I was in a Vegas auction and Weimer was in there and we both needed a corner infielder. And in this case, the two players that I wanted were probably the two players that everyone wanted. It was Christian and Karnasano strand and Andrew Vaughn. And those are the two, my two top corner targets. So, I said I had that point I wanted strand more because everyone was horned for strand at that point and turned out to be a bust. So, I said to myself, do I want to nominate Andrew Vaughn and force him because he had more purchasing power than me. Do I want to force him to make the decision? Do I want to go and buy Vaughn and leave CES for maybe me to see what he would go for. So, you want to force players to make those decisions. Obviously, you don't want to chase values you don't need. So, I know I set a lot there. How do you prepare for this break in the auction and how do you know when it's happening, Mark? That's on the first. This is a great topic because no one's ever talked about this really. I've kind of mentioned a little bit about Evan Flow and that I'm not sure if this is the same as a breaking point. It's when your purchasing power is at its peak and typically you're getting guys either at your valuation or under. So, that's what I'm always looking at. Yeah, the auction dynamic is fascinating how the finite amount of money, the finite amount of players and just how it all plays out. But there is going to be a time when people have just kind of overpaid and they are now kind of impotent and this is where you strike. This is exactly how you win these auctions. I don't know, Zach, we're talking like a 30 minute period here. Do you think the break or is it like a 20 like, is it like a 1 or 2 round? No, like just that the time the time to take advantage. Obviously, after the break, it's up until the end of the auction. We definitely have to last break here. No, I didn't mean the break. I meant how long do you think this dynamic exists in the auction? It's like a 20 minute thing where you think it's longer than that as far as how. Yeah, maybe half an hour I think. Yeah, because I wouldn't consider dollar days part of it. That's a whole other part of the dynamic. No, yes, it's about 30 minute period where you could make your whole team. If you're sitting in the right position, positionally, statistically, dollar wise and just recognition that a bunch of players are about to come out that you're going to be able to get for cheaper than they should be going because of the economics and the room that necessarily people's like or dislike of the player. And if you're sitting perfect there and that's it and Jay is ready. Just one more thing. That's why I struggle with stars and scrubs because what you see in the stars and scrubs players is they basically sit out this break period unless they're like super freaking good and they could somehow make it work, but they typically miss this break and they're just relying on that first rush and then they got to win the end game. I don't know, Jason. That might be the best point in this podcast is that the stars and scrubs approach makes you a price taker in the break. Yeah, I have nothing riveting to say. I agree with what Mark said there, but definitely this is where I think these auctions are one. I mean, I typically leave these and feel very confident with what I've done at the very end of the auction. Along with the reserves as well, but those load hour players because like I said before, three people are blowing this auction up horribly because they mismanaged money. How they were in their team. So Yoza, some pleasant surprises. The only issue though, Zach, I think this is true, but if there's multiple people with like a hundred left when everyone has 30, do you think that like delays the break a little bit because they're you know, they're they're they're not letting those those values aren't happening, quote unquote, like the $9 guys not going for four when you have two or three people with a hundred left, right? They're they're probably going six or seven on that guy. Yeah, I just to keep an eye out for that. Absolutely. That's what you see. That's what you see in like like non like NFBC Vegas drafts. You see that a lot more where it takes a lot longer for it to break and the break isn't as the break isn't as abrupt when there's a lot of players like that because they just keep they they have all this purchasing power and they just buy it's the draft really breaks when you have less when they're done spending yet you have to wait them out just be like I hope they don't pick the guys I want it delays the break. And that goes back to your nomination thing. If the if you're caught in that situation and you're and you're needing the break to come, you should not be nominating the guys here hoping to get in that break. Take advantage of the three guys who have underspent and make them buy guys you don't want because they're ultimately not going to let these guys go. I mean, occasionally it happens like a random guy gets numbed and goes for $3. But usually you can get some money from you got you got to expedite those guys spending their that down from a hundred to twenty quickly. You have to somehow get enough guys out there that are going to accomplish that for you. Yeah, and that goes down to why these break. So the break because like the finite budget roster rosters are rigid. You can only buy so many you can't buy four middle infielders. Positions are scarce categories are scarce and then people are risk averse or risk takers. NFBC like what we're talking about the breakage is like I've done the Yahoo auctions and the breakage is like on steroids in the NFBC because there's no trades deeper rosters best player in the best players play there the best of the best as we know. And everyone's doing the same thing. So all these players are acting very similarly they're all like NFBC players playing that style. So the sharp for the room the more abrupt the break is going to be whereas like a Yahoo draft where like three of these guys still have a hundred bucks left it's going to be very gradual breaking you won't really see a break until it's sort of like too late. And you got to recognize that in some rooms where people hoard money they're going to you're not going to you're not going to have that advantage because you here's the best way to put it and it wasn't prepared for this but like in a room where players have mismanaged their money and you have several people that have not spent enough money and they're going to be left you have like a bunch of people that are going to be left with too much money on the table at the end. The break is really if it is really happened earlier before the break the break happened before those players realized they had too much money. So so at that point you didn't know it was a break you were sort of like the phrase like I wish I knew I was in the good old days when I was there because you don't know there was a good old days until it's gone that was basically that the break was that happened that makes the break like sort of undetectable I think. And and all the values occurred on those mid-level players before those players with too much spending power realized they had too much spending power. And I think you have to realize I think I've been in auctions where I've realized this and I've been in auctions where I've missed this and I regretted I've regretted it where I didn't realize the break was I guess like it was sort of a good invisible break where you were able to get some value. It's almost a double break there's a break and then then it spikes then it breaks after but you have to you're better off to get into the first break because that's where the better players are going to be and the better the better deals. So that's a good point you could just be like well I'm waiting for them to spend their money down but some of these people if they're home too much money they're not they're not having a good auction. So they're going to miss some value. Well that's what Jason was saying you're like how are you not bidding like that I don't know why I get insanely annoyed by that I shouldn't it shouldn't be bothering me at all right but I mean I'm just like oh my god how did you not go nine there like you need that position you have a hundred dollars this is like a twelve dollar player what are you doing but that's what happens people are just like freeze or they you know they you could choke in an auction you could absolutely choke in an auction away. Well I mean and that's where yeah yeah yeah I think the like in the symptoms are not only that the pricing is stalling and you can get some values it's also it pricing becomes erratic we're like pricing can spike in a break too when we have like in this situation or you see just like like no one's bidding and and players not players are one for a dollar but players are sort of thrown out at four and then they could just know there could be no bit so like that would be another symptom of knowing that you're where the auction's breaking we're say like you said somebody throws out Brian Reynolds for four dollars and then Crickets he just goes for four dollars that's okay the auction broke here this is this is a time to realize what what you need to do here and how you need to prepare and I think it's tracking what other teams need I think it's letting others price and force during that break don't price and force what do you what do you think what do you like now that we've sort of outline what it is when the draft breaks what do you want to do during it like I say I don't you don't want a price and force players you don't need that's sort of an obvious thing what other things would you would you say don't chase values you don't need like if you're good on stolen bases if you're if you have like 160 stolen bases projected don't don't chase stolen bases I guess those are obvious things I don't like Jason what do you think again I don't think I'm typically always falling into the spot and auctions the way I played but I'm not getting too strategic there I'm looking for you know the best values to round out my team so I don't really have a great answer to this question yeah that's the answer that was my answer I'm trying to get four or five dollars of quote-unquote value or profit from each from each from anyone I buy in this break period I want to get like five bucks yeah it happens oh yeah it happens you should just be smart magic happens at this point like you go in and you're so I'm always shocked or surprised if you're at this level like what you get for value you know it's dangerous you feel risky going there but then you're very surprised where something fell on your lap that you feel was a valuable asset it might you know not work out of course yeah I think at this point it's when the relative values are so different like yeah you're getting a player for like that's the same value for way different pricing so like maybe a snake draft rewards the preparation and projections more but there's a point in an auction where the the best projections don't matter anymore and that's when it breaks here so projections don't matter because there's such a there's such a disparity between the price you're paying and the valuation of that player right but I mean you couldn't know that going in I mean you know again the AV is going to differ between the Olex and the live events but it's not like a B by ten dollars a player you know what I mean like that's that's it's going to be in the ballpark and the relative value meaning how the players are ordered by their price their AV is going to be very similar from a you know an online to to a main so you you you should have some targets in that area you should you should know there's a bunch of guys that I think are nine dollar players are going to go for four here so I just want to make sure I know who they are and I'm not going to wait around like if one comes out and I could get for four I'm going to do it but you know I'm not going to necessarily chase it up to six or seven knowing that the next one's probably going to be three so I'm going to be pretty judicious but I'm also the if the guys I you know I can sometimes get like three or four guys in a row like if just those are the guys I was really eyeing they come out boom boom boom and I can get them for you know five four or five dollars under I'm just going to go right you know right away and then you know then I then I have no more purchasing power but I got four really good players so you know don't get too cute and I think the nomination is really important here and don't price and force here because you're let's say I hate Brian Reynolds and he comes out for three I have him for nine but if I don't like him I'm not going to say four like I can get another four dollar guy that for that's worth nine that I like better so don't just need your you know take the five dollars if it's a guy you really don't like you know for this season so that's that's where you can get in trouble right I'm out of notes I don't have anything else but I do but I was really interested when I started digging into like the breaking point of the auction so does anyone have any like even fish that I don't quite but Jay Jay Mark anything else on the breaking point of auctions or do you want to just bring it home I have a couple comments one is that there is seven spots left in the ultimate auction at the Rio on Friday March 20th at 10 a.m. that's a very fun league very prestigious then we have a 4 p.m. only four to 15 2500 that's part of the ultimate I mean I'm sorry part of the overall and then the day after now sign up for auctions guys obviously I think the theme of this podcast is they're amazing live events and that's all I just hope this format can attract some ears you know I think I think you know a bunch of us have made a concerted effort to try to grow the auction game and it's not just because we want other people to play against it's because we just really do actually like this format a lot and think it's you know all right let's say let's just throw let's just throw one last we got a little controversial one controversial question I have for you guys do you think you could be considered one of the best of the best if you don't play or win at auctions absolutely not I agree absolutely not I'll tell you one one time one four for four main events last year but he's never won an auction so he is in the CLQ though which is a nice feel I would love to see how he does now I wouldn't count him out whatsoever I think he could probably won't try it in but see how he does let's see this was a name that the guild this was just a general question I just think I just think a fantasy one of these players should be you know the top of the top should have an auction game in addition to a snake game that's that that's my feeling but did you guys have anything to end off on you agree I got no more in auctions I just have one more thing I want to just really really quick touch on I want to give a quick shout out to Netflix put a beautiful spotlight on edgene edgene is an absolute legend all right everybody knows first of all before he being go into the next person have to be afraid like who the hell is edgene well everybody knows Jeffrey Dahmer right okay Jeffrey Dahmer serial killer photos like oh Wisconsin not a whole lot of people know who edgene is um Netflix did a documentary kind of not really a documentary I guess it's kind of it was filled with bullshit but it is highlight it's a highlight of edgene which is fucking terrific because edgene is the goat serial killer in Wisconsin um anyways it's full shit um probably I don't even know what percent dr. Dave Desmos I would say 80% is full shit in there but at least they finally have put a spotlight on it so people can google the real facts about edgene um codel legend like I said and fish I'm assuming you know that the movie psycho is based on edgene story right yeah yeah so yes if you've ever seen psycho go see that and that is that is basically about edgene yeah exactly so mark knows who edgene is but the general public I guarantee Jeffrey Dahmer is way more popular than edgene and what it knows is Jeffrey Dahmer is um so edgene and I'm gonna just this is called foreshadowing but I will on the next podcast next time I'm on what's that I will tell an edgene story so that's all I got thanks that for having me on hey thanks thanks guys for joining me I know it went long but I think it was worth it and fish you're oh you're welcome to talk as long as you want but uh this is the tea this is a teaser for the next episode I have heard this edgene story from fish and it is absolutely incredible okay that's how I'm gonna say I would have to change the genre of genre of this podcast to like from fantasy baseball to like other stuff it's like a this is like a five tool podcast it's like you got fantasy baseball auctions you got the big fish in a small pond this is like this is big some good good rants yeah no that was a good that was a good comeback don't call it a comeback but uh you know the the dcn was a legendary podcast because you know it was started by new players in the nfbc when there really weren't any nfbc centric pods and honestly um I think the influence has changed you know since since the dcn was launched the amount of nfbc content has has exploded and I think I think Zach your pod had something to do with that for sure uh it gave nfc bc players you know a little forum and uh before that Jason knows this you go back in the day j it was the message board and that was basically it you see at the live events of some message board there was no social media there were no podcasts there was no content on nfbc like it was all just generic content and the fbc was kind of under the radar there for a long time unless you knew yeah absolutely it uh it all changed lots five years for the better everything so Zach Zach will be with mtm and the innovator wing of the nfbc hall of fame I'm I'm just gonna call it right now those two are in the hall of fame as innovators nope no dick riding on this podcast okay no no we snuck at we snuck in a little bit all right the end we're gonna renew your resolution or new podcast resolution no more no more dick riding save that I wonder if i'm gonna be in trouble for any of that i forget what i said i already but i'm probably gonna be in trouble for some people but well if this then stir up some controversy it would not be a a zack wax podcast i don't worry about it i'm not in you know what we don't apologize on that we don't apologize here that's not on the like the champion no apology this is podcast call the nfbc auction pod and i see auction podcast yeah kind of couldn't have thought about it by the better it's extremely but i was saying i was saying like the draft champions podcast is based off the draft champions name and we just talked about whatever we wanted to so yeah i think this one but i think having it relevant to auctions should be should be centrally i think we should just focus on things that are auctions you know specific with a mix of fun stuff and different yeah a reverency as we usually do so hope you enjoyed this you have a closing line like you did the the the fab podge and say well here's the hope you enjoyed um uh information that can't help you anymore um i don't know is there a closing line for these interesting plots if you don't auction you're a pussy is that is that yeah that's fine we should we should we should workshop that we should workshop that um okay you can you come back to me i'll let you i'll have one for next time you're doing the tagline you've replaced curlin you're the you're the new hr uh you're you're not allowing that as uh you're you're the new michelle curlond Michelle curlond oh boy do i miss michelle michelle curlond yeah so for the dcn i think we would be remiss if we you know you did a great job zack of recapping the last five years the one thing that was missing i think were some of the voices of the five years of the dcn and i think poundstone and bjorn should at least be mentioned here at the end as major contributors to the success of those podcasts and the question is will they make an appearance on this new one that's really the question i really hope they will um but yeah they're definitely in the innovator wing of the draft champions hall of the judge champions hall of paint all right that's it see you boys thank you