Quick Details:
- Style: Auction
- Budget: $500
- Minimum players drafted: 30
- Maximum players drafted: 30
- Minimum player bid: $1
- Player Pool: Determined prior to draft, must be 40-man roster eligible or voted into the active draft pool prior to draft by league.
- Draft order: Random
- Time: Live (via live video chat) It’ll be a long day.
- Trades: Trades are live during draft. Auction budget is an asset that can be traded.
- Dropping Players: Not allowed.
- Quirk(s): On top of the player pool, draft order of minor league snake draft will be auctioned off. They can be nominated just like any player. Leftover auction money is lost.
The auction draft occurs annually prior to the MLB Regular Season. The auction draft will always precede the annual minor league draft.
Leftover auction funds are lost.
Inaugural draft differences: There are two distinct differences that will be noticed from the inaugural auction draft compared to subsequent auction drafts.
- There are no keepers going into the inaugural draft, for obvious reasons.
- On top of being able to draft eligible players. The draft slots for the minor league snake draft will be auctioned off.
Future minor league drafts will be reverse order of the standings. Because the first draft doesn’t have that luxury, the first draft order will be auctioned off. When a owner’s turn to nominate a player occurs, they can have the option to instead nominate a draft slot position. This works because the first draft is more important because all the minor league players are available. The value you spend on the draft slot is immediately spent and will have no meaning after the draft order has been set.
FanTrax does not easily incorporate for this, so this will require some manual handling of the draft. But instead of nominating a player using the system. The nominating owner can ask for a pause in the draft, nominate a slot (say the 3rd pick) and start the bidding as they please. Once the pick is over, that same owner will then get to nominate another player as the draft is paused. The values of the money spent will need to be tracked manually.
Be aware that buying the first overall pick does not buy you the first pick in every round of the inaugural minor league draft, as this draft will be a serpentine draft order.