Fantasy baseball auction strategies are a lot like strip clubs -- variety is the spice of life. You want to pay top dollar for that Paris Hilton look-a-like? Go for it. Hell, if your wallet is fat enough, I’m sure Paris is willing to listen. But blow your wad early and you’ll find yourself sitting in the corner, drowning your sorrows in a $1 draft while your buddies have all the fun.

The fact is, there are no perfect auction strategies. A large part of being successful during an auction comes in being flexible, knowing your opponents and playing the Yin to their Yang (no, this is not another strip club reference). If you’re in a league where you see quality starting pitching going early for cheap, going all relievers isn’t playing towards the market inefficiencies. It doesn’t matter what all your spreadsheet geekdom said going into the auction, your strategy has to change on the fly.

With that in mind, here are some common auction strategies:

Stars and Scrubs

Pretty self explanatory and a lot of fun. Imagine an infield with Albert Pujols at first, Chase Utley as second, Hanley Ramirez at shortstop and A-Rod at third. You want to do that at auction, you can. Now imagine an outfield of Will Venable, Kyle Blanks and Scott Hairston. If you’re a Padres fan it’s not that hard to do. (And as any Padre fan will tell you, it’s not all that pretty to watch for 162 games.) The key to any good stars-and-scrubs squad is your ability to unearth sleepers. Find a couple of Ben Zobrists and you’re sitting pretty. Find too many Khalil Greenes and you’re looking at the 1962 Mets with envy. So, in the immortal words of Clint Eastwood ... do you feel lucky, punk?

Spread the Wealth

Are you the kind of guy who was looking into buying life insurance at 20? If so, spread the wealth may be for you. The idea is simple: don’t overpay for stars and instead fill your roster from top to bottom with solid talent. In an auction, Albert Pujols is never going to turn a profit. You’re paying for the security of a .330 batting average, 35-plus home runs, 100-plus RBIs and 100-plus runs. But when you pay $45 for Big Al, there’s no upside. If you spread the wealth, you can get solid growth stocks. Think Matt Kemp or Justin Upton last year -- guys who were decently priced heading into auction last year and outperformed their average draft position or auction prices with ease. The main issue to avoid is winding up with money left over at auction. This isn’t Chuck E. Cheese, so you can’t turn the extra $42 in fake money into a cheap plastic brontosaurus. You want to spend as close to your budget as possible.

F%$@ Pitching

Putting all your auction eggs into the fantasy pitching basket is like trusting your IRA with Bernie Madoff. No matter how safe you think investment is, there’s just too much risk. Almost every Roto Rag last year pegged Brandon Webb as the safest elite pitcher because he hadn’t had a blip on the injury radar during his entire career ... until, well, he missed most of the year with a shoulder injury. In 2008, big money was spent on Erik Bedard and Francisco Liriano, both of whom flamed out with injury. In 2009, Chris Carpenter was the consensus No. 2 preseason pitcher until The Ghost of Tommy John paid him a visit. The fantasy landscape is littered with examples of big budget pitchers who went bust. Pitching is an unnatural motion, and an elbow or shoulder can go kablooey at any time. As such, it’s become a common strategy to splurge on the more predictable hitters while looking for bargain pitchers. Something like 70/30 is a common split, but a more extreme strategy would be to fill your roster with star batters and scrub pitchers.

All Relievers

With starting pitching being the most volatile part of fantasy baseball, some people like to avoid starting pitchers all together. Instead of risking a single fake dollar on the fragile arms of millionaires, they load up on offense and go with a pitching staff of all relievers. Since elite middle relievers are cheap and top even elite starters in WHIP and ERA, the idea is to load up on $1 middle relievers and a dominant closer or two. You’ll take WHIP and ERA and assuming you find a Ryan Madson or Heath Bell, you’ll take saves. Of course, you’re punting wins and strikeouts, but that’s fine because even Elmo should be able to lock in a dominant offense by spending 90 percent of his budget on hitters.

Position Scarcity

Some experts believe chasing position scarcity is akin to hunting Big Foot. But I talked to Big Foot, and he’s kinda pissed about that analogy. Position scarcity does exist, and any fool can see the value of having an elite talent like Joe Mauer at catcher over replacement-level dudes like A.J. Pierzynski. (All bets are off in bar fight leagues.) But here’s the rub with this strategy in auction leagues: you have to think about potential replacements. Ask all those Jose Reyes owners last year how easy it was to replace that $45 player with a waiver-wire pickup? That’s not to say replacing Prince Fielder is a simple task, but there are a lot more Billy Butler waiver-wire types each year at first base. And when you’re entire strategy hinges on overpaying for elite talent at shallow positions, you’re screwed if an injury strikes. The odds of such injuries aren’t all that great, however, and the reward likely will outweigh the risk with this strategy.

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