2018 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: 12-team Head-to-Head points auction results

• More Auction results: 12-team Roto | 12-team AL-only | 12-team NL-only
• Auction Values: Roto | H2H Points

Our recent 12-team Head-to-Head points auction ended up being much more than that.

It became a study of diametrically opposed approaches and a third that attempted to find middle ground. And because the three owners at the center are the ones you may know from the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast, that makes it all the more fun.

Over the last couple years, targeting starting pitching early has become less of a no-no in Fantasy Baseball, and that's especially true in this format, where there are fewer hitter spots to fill and no need to balance a variety of categories, some scarcer than others. Overall production is all that matters, which greatly reduces the margin for error when selecting a hitter.

And in a power-laden environment where everybody who's anybody hits 20-plus home runs, that margin for error is even smaller. How small? You could argue it's virtually nil, and I have theorized such. This auction put it to the test, though.

Right away, it became clear Heath Cummings and I entered with the same strategy: go hard after the four super aces (which, for the uninitiated, are Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Corey Kluber and Chris Sale). When the bidding reached $40, the two of us went back and forth, and I blinked first in each instance, not wanting to blow out my prescribed budget. Heath wound up with three of the four (all but Sale). I wound up with none.

Undeterred, I decided to grab as many of the second-tier starting pitchers -- all aces in their own right -- as I could, knowing I could still steer clear of the scarcity at that position while also leaving myself with more money to fill out the rest of my starting lineup. Together, Heath and I purchased eight of the consensus top 17 starting pitchers, giving us a big advantage at the position where there's arguably the biggest advantage to be had. It's just that Heath's four (Kershaw, Scherzer, Kluber and Justin Verlander) ate up $180 of his $260 budget while my four (Madison Bumgarner, Zack Greinke, Noah Syndergaard and Dallas Keuchel) consumed only $124.

On the other side of the coin was Chris Towers, who forsook pitching for high-end hitting, investing 75 percent of his budget in Jose Altuve, Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, Gary Sanchez and Aaron Judge. He had to go the thrifty route at starting pitcher, and it shows, with his two most expensive both presenting major risk and the rest of his staff offering little to no possibility of high-end production. That's not to say Tanner Roark and Dinelson Lamet aren't useful or intriguing, but if they're among the best he has, his disadvantage is pretty much locked in.

I spent significantly less on hitting than Chris, but you know what? I think mine is pretty good. I still got top-two players at two of the scarcest positions, catcher and second base, and six hitters in all who would go off the board in the first eight rounds of any draft. My outfield is weak, but it's competitive enough. 

And then there's Heath, who left himself next to nothing to spend on hitting, and as you might expect, the hitter portion of his lineup is ... wait, what? 

H-how did he do that?

Don't get me wrong: It's the worst collection of hitters among the three teams, but more because of downside than upside. Every one of his starting nine belongs in a starting nine in this league, and only two cost him double-digit dollars. Not a one cost him as much as $15.

Sure, there are potential pitfalls, especially given the age of some of the hitters. But the 2018 season won't go wrong for all of them, and where it does go wrong, he has plenty of other places to turn. Shoot, I got Ryan Zimmerman and Mike Moustakas on my bench for a buck each just because it seemed crazy nobody wanted them after the numbers they just put up. But it's not like I have a place to play them. Could Heath make me an attractive offer if it came to that? Yeah, he probably could. And I'm probably not the only one with that sort of hitter excess, some of which (by the way) is sure to wind up on the waiver wire.

Bottom line is it'll take significantly less for his lineup to measure up to mine than my pitching to measure up to his -- and I say that even knowing my pitching is clearly the second best. And while Heath may have taken it a little too far with the $15 he spent on Jon Lester, I came away thinking I myself should have gone farther.

There's just too much interchangeability among all but the highest-end hitters to shrug off the massive advantages that can be gained from high-end starting pitchers. 

So who all had a front-row seat to this madness?

• Brant Chesser, Baseball HQ
  
• Heath Cummings, CBS Sports
  
• Kevin Jebens, Baseball Prospectus
  
• malamoney, Razzball
  
• Mike Kuchera, The Fantasy Man
  
• Ralph Lifshitz, Razzball
  
• George Maselli, CBS Sports
  
• John Russell, Friends with Fantasy Benefits
  
• Stan Son, Razzball
  
• Jeff Tobin, CBS Sports
  
• Chris Towers, CBS Sports
  
• Scott White, CBS Sports
  

And the scoring, if you need the reminder, is as follows: