A FAAB budget for the whole season: a spend plan by week

The mistake a budget is for

Nobody loses a FAAB league by bidding too little in Week 12. They lose it in September, when a $100 budget meets a preseason rumor and $38 leaves the wallet for a back who plays 30 percent of the snaps. By the time the real openings arrive, and they arrive every year between Weeks 4 and 9, the manager with $62 is bidding against managers with $90, and losing every one.

A budget is a rule you set in advance so that September cannot talk you out of October. This is the one the Parlae bid model uses, expressed as a reserve you should still be holding at the start of each week. It is not a spend target. It is a floor.

The reserve curve

The model sets a target for how much of the original budget should remain, as a function of weeks left in the fantasy season. The formula is the weeks left over 17, raised to the power 1.35. That exponent is the whole design: it makes the curve steep at the start and flat at the end, so the plan spends slowly in September and lets you empty the wallet in December when there is nothing left to save for.

Weeks left, in the My Team claim builder, is 18 minus the current week. Here is the curve on a $100 budget.

Source: Parlae FAAB bid model, reserve curve (weeksLeft/17)^1.35.

Read the curve from the right. Between Weeks 15 and 17 the plan holds almost nothing back, because a claim made in Week 16 pays off for one or two games and there is no future to protect. Between Weeks 1 and 5 it releases only $30, because a claim made in September pays off for twelve or more games and the market for real openings has not even started.

How the model uses the curve

The curve does not set the bid. The bid ladder sets the bid, as a percentage of the original budget by tier: depth churn 1 to 3, speculative 3 to 8, emerging role 14 to 18, clear starter 24 to 35, league winner 35 to 60. The curve nudges the bid up or down depending on where your wallet sits against it.

The nudge is a multiplier the model calls budget urgency: one plus 0.75 times the gap between your remaining share and the target share, held between 0.8 and 1.4. If you enter Week 9 with $70 against a $42 target, you are 28 points above the curve, the multiplier is 1.21, and a 24 percent clear starter bid becomes 29. If you enter Week 9 with $20 against $42, you are 22 points below, the multiplier is 0.84, and the same bid becomes 20. The wallet that saved gets to swing; the wallet that spent early gets a discount it did not ask for.

A second multiplier shrinks every bid as the season shortens, since a player has fewer weeks to pay back a bid. Season utility is 0.8 plus 0.2 times weeks left over 17: 1.0 in Week 1, 0.91 in Week 9, 0.84 in Week 15.

The plan, week by week

Weeks 1 and 2. Preseason rules still bind the first run: with no snaps played and no opening on the depth chart, the model caps every bid at 2.5 percent of budget. Spend $2 or $3 a claim, at most, unless a starter is Out and the market has already moved his backup. On Sep 3 that case existed in Green Bay, where Josh Jacobs was listed Out and MarShawn Lloyd's price moved from 139.3 to 125.1 in a day. That is the one September claim worth a real bid. Everything else is a dollar.

Weeks 3 to 5. The budget releases $30. This is when Week 1 and Week 2 snap counts turn guesses into roles, and the plan expects one emerging role claim, 14 to 18 percent, and a handful of cheap ones. If you have not spent anything by Week 5, you are not behind. If you have spent $45, you have skipped ahead to the November part of the curve in September, and every bid from here is discounted.

Weeks 6 to 9. Byes start in Week 5 for Kansas City and run through the middle of the season, and injuries have accumulated. The curve drops from $62 to $42 across these four weeks, the steepest part of the plan, because this is where the season's real openings show up and where a clear starter claim, 24 to 35 percent, wins leagues. Hold for it. A manager entering Week 7 with $56 has exactly one such bid available plus change.

Weeks 10 to 13. The reserve falls from $36 to $19. The plan expects you to have made your big claim by now and to be filling bye and injury holes at speculative prices. If a second league winner shows up, the budget urgency multiplier rewards the wallet that is still above the curve.

Weeks 14 to 17. Spend it. The curve reaches $10 by Week 15 and $2 by Week 17, and unused budget does not roll over on Sleeper. A dollar you are holding on championship weekend is a dollar you never had.

Two brakes the plan keeps on

Autopilot, when it prepares claims for a synced league, adds two caps of its own: it will not spend more than 10 percent of remaining FAAB on a single name unless you raise the cap, and it files at most two claims a week. Both are there to stop a plan from being emptied by one hot Tuesday. If you run your own claims, borrow the second rule at least. Two claims a week, priced off the ladder and nudged by the curve, is a season's worth of discipline.

What to do with this

1. Write the reserve column into the notes field of your league on your phone, and check your remaining budget against it every Tuesday before bidding. Above the line, bid the ladder; below it, bid a rung lower.
2. Use the waiver wire page to find the week's real opening, the player behind a starter who is Out, and put the week's one serious bid there. Everything else is a dollar.
3. Sync your league on My Team so the prepared claims carry the bid and the budget after, then check the budget after against the curve before you confirm.