I have a few theories:
1. Many small bets are much more +EV than a few large bets. Not only do you get more ‘hits’, but your misses aren’t that detrimental to your chances of winning your league.
2. In the FPC scoring format, even within a ‘small bet’ framework, TEs and RBs required a premium price, then QBs. WR bets could be more moderate.
3. If I had do-overs in my league, I’d focus on staying within a budget of $100 for weeks 2-9 and $100 for the total of weeks 10, 11 and the two playoff weeks. Quality guys could be picked up for a song in those last weeks.

Some factors that might go into +EV small bet decisions:
How much breakout history is optimum? Too much history means that you need to bid far too much relative to your overall budget to get him. Too little break-out history (excluding situations caused by a starter injury (Vick, Tamme), and there is not enough predictive value in a 1st-week production spike to warrant the speculation at any price. I tried to look at two different FPC leagues and decide if there was enough evidence of successful future production to warrant bids as high as were placed by the winning bidder. I came up with kind of a ‘rational man theory’ and figured out in retrospect who I would have gotten within ‘small bet’ budgetary guidelines where I was somewhat confident of the chance of sustained future production. I was able to identify several opportunities based on an intuitive reasoning process, but could not establish criteria that I could apply any kind of general but clear-cut guidelines to.

Interesting subject – one that needs more work!

Try to come up with some early season waiver picks that made a big difference for teams all year, and the teams only got them because they had the 1st or 2nd waiver priority. Teams that won early lost out on having a chance at these players.

Since we know weekly fantasy results involve a lot of luck, the teams that lost early and got first dibs at key players via first come-first serve, aren’t even necessarily the teams that needed those players the most. They just happened to be the teams that lost at the right time and were lower in the standings.

We could look at Dave Stringer’s early Moving Up, Moving Down columns to get an idea of some of these players:

http://www.fftoday.com/blog/2010/09/14/moving-up-moving-down-week-2/

http://www.fftoday.com/blog/2010/09/21/moving-up-moving-down-week-3/

Looking at some of the replacement type players, like Mike Tolbert or Mike Vick, isn’t a blind-bid system more fair so the teams that really need those players (Mathews, Kolb owners) have a chance to get them?