To keep or not to keep? That is the question for our new league.
Last week I introduced for examination our guinea pig fantasy league (please note it is not made up of actual guinea pigs). To summarize its post-season situation, it is a twelve-man head-to-head league, and while the most active managers rose to the top and the least active sank to the bottom, there is a group of managers in the middle who may be wavering in their interest in fantasy baseball. The current project is to figure out what league changes to make to reel these managers back in for next year.
The natural evolution for a league, it seems, is to progress to having keepers. It fits with the idea of playing fantasy baseball with the same group of friends every year–you get to run your own franchises and dynasties, and enjoy all the history of rivalries, trades, waivers, and free agent superstars from years before. And it’s where I want our league to go next year; to a five-player keeper system where keepers are held for three-year contracts. But it might not be where the middle managers want to go.
After talking to a couple of these managers, I have found that they share a certain superstar-envy frustration. What’s the point of having keepers, they think, if the best teams are just going to keep their best players? They see a keeper system as a way of ossifying the strongest rosters on the teams at the top of the league. And since the winning teams are also probably the ones that picked up the best players through the year, it’s like giving them five first-round draft picks in a row. Much better, these managers say, to level the playing field again and start with entirely new rosters.
Now, my opinion is that these fears are slightly overblown, because even the worst teams in our league could scrape together five keepers worth the term. What’s more, our middle managers may underestimate the weakening effects on the top teams of losing any players past their five keepers to the draft pool (where, of course, the weaker teams will get first chance at signing the same players). But I do share their concern over the prospect of top players being eternally locked down by the top teams. It’s just that I think keepers hold the solution to that same problem.
I may be blinded by my self-congratulatory sense of counter-intuition, but I would think that if you, as a manager, realize that a top player you want isn’t going to re-enter the draft pool next year, or even the year after, then you will realize that the only way to get that player is to trade for him. And as a commissioner, I like that, because trades are the aromatic spice that make for fantasy baseball addicts. The more you think you smell one in the air, the more you chew on them, the more you savor the best ones, then you become all the more invested in your league, the league becomes all the more competitive, and all the more fun for everyone.
So I will be pushing for a keeper system for next year, but I do wonder if there are times when it is more appropriate to not have keepers. Certainly, if you are starting over with an entirely new league of managers, it makes sense to clear every team’s roster. But are there situations in a continuing league when it is better to do away with keepers? Is it possible that some teams just get too strong otherwise? I hope you’ll share your thoughts with us below.
articleId=’17452′;
6 responses so far ↓
1 Patrick DiCaprio // Nov 2, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Andrew, I am in a fantasy football league where the best keepers are held forever. It is very tough for new teams. The best way to handle keepers in a non-auction/salary league is to limit the amount of time a keeper can be kept, so that everyone will have a shot at the best guys every few years. It greatly benefits the weaker teams since guys who are coming back into the pool will be drafted first, by the weaker teams.
2 Anonymous // Nov 4, 2007 at 1:34 pm
In a non-auction keeper league, the best way to encourage parity is to use a straight (not snake) draft in the reverse order of the previous year’s standings. Even if the winning owners have an edge for the first 5 rds in having better keepers, the worse owners will have an edge in every subsequent round.
3 Andrew C. // Nov 4, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I agree that the keepers should come with limits, which is why I think we will be imposing three-year “contracts” on our keepers next year.
And the point about draft order is a good one. We’re going by reverse order of standings, but I hadn’t considered the snake-order problem yet. Snake-order seems okay for a first-time draft without any keepers, but are there situations where it is really the best option?
4 geo // Nov 5, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Are you creating a keeper league out of a non-keeper league? If you add keeper rules without having one more re-draft, that seems tremendously unfair to change the terms of the draft. Owners need to know whether or not players can be kept in future years before they draft. If you want to rope owners in, say that future years will feature keeper rules. Make sure the rules are clearly stated before the draft to create the fairest situation possible.
-Geoff
5 Andrew C. // Nov 5, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Hi Geoff, thanks for your thoughts. We are indeed looking to create a keeper league out of a non-keeper league, in the sense that when we started this year (the first year of the league), none of us knew that we would have keepers. However, about halfway through the season, I thought it might be a good change to make for next year, and told all managers I was considering it, and asked for their input. This was about six or seven weeks before the end of the season, and before our trade deadline.
Most managers who responded liked the idea, especially if there were limits involved, and there are a couple of managers who are unsure about the prospect. That’s why I’m hoping to come to some consensus soon, so we all know where things stand well before we start any second-year draft.
6 Anonymous // Nov 26, 2007 at 3:51 pm
If a football draft league, we did it this way: One “franchise” player, keepable for 5 years, in the 1st round draft pick slot. Two “transition” players (more of each, most likely, for a baseball roster) in the 2nd and 3rd round slots. So a team could protect some lesser, but still strong, players without locking themselves out of the first round. Plus we allowed any team with an open “franchise” slot to grab any other team’s “transition” player for a small price. Worked beautifully in the NFL.
Leave a Comment