So I was discussing a few problems with the current league set-up with a number of folks and thought it might be worthwhile to do a check-in. There are a lot of things to like but also a few nagging problems.
1) Mainly, the current keeper system induces too many "dump trades" and the trades themselves tend to be too one-sided. Because of this, there is a very binary "play for this year" vs "play for next year" which to some degree does happen in the real MLB - but in our league far too many teams will be dumpers - it also requires the teams that win to mortgage the future a bit to have a chance. Now all of this is part of normal keeper league play, but it just feels like the current set-up exacerbates this problem.
This can be solved by
a) More keepers (the more keepers you have, the less likely the dump trades are as prevalent or as entirely team-sell-off as mine with Luke was)
b) No keepers
Other league complaints would be no way to really incorporate prospects (they don't really fit into the current keeper guidelines which makes following them a bit less fun), no talent at all on the waiver wire (which exacerbates the negative impact of injuries since you can't even find anyone with playing time).
I could see an argument for switching to an annual auction draft with no keepers, adding more keepers or anywhere in between. How are other people feeling about the current league set-up?
42 comments:
This is my first time playing in a baseball keeper league, and I must say I prefer non-keeper leagues.
In addition to the problems Spencer mentioned, it's just less fun when some teams start the year with a head start on other teams. Everyone could see that Andrew and Bill had by far the best keepers going into the season, and look who's in first and second place.
When everyone starts from the same position, both winners and losers can feel more satisfied that their final position in the standings was deserved.
The way we have it now, there are 4 possible outcomes to an owner's season:
1) You win! But let's face it, you had a head-start and/or got a pretty ludicrous infusion of great players in a dump trade. I hope you're proud of yourself.
2) You had the benefit of a head start and/or dump trade, but you still didn't quite win. That's even less satisfying than #1.
3) Your team sucked early and you dumped all your good players for some keepers, in an effort to do better next year. Now this year feels totally wasted.
4) Your team is middle-of-the-road. If you make some good moves maybe you can scratch out a 3rd place finish. Pat yourself on the back, sucker, because by not dump-trading you've hurt your chance to win next season. No, you'd better just stop trying already and get in the loser line.
This just kind of sucks all around, no?
I admit it's fun to have some player continuity from year to year, and to feel like your building a team around certain players, but I'd much prefer a system where everyone starts the year on equal footing and everyone is motivated to try their hardest for the whole year.
I am going to say I have to agree with Taylor. Not sure if it was because we both came in at a disadvantage, but he makes some good points about winning not being as satisfying. If I punt the next 2 seasons I could probably be a contender year 3, but I would rather be invested in the entire season, every season.
I also understand that those with good keepers aren't necessarily going to want to start from scratch, but I would be interested in having no keepers next year if we are putting it to a vote.
I don't like how early the dump trades have gone down. This wasn't as big of an issue last year so I'm not sure which is more representative of the way things will be in the future. One possibility would be to have fewer keepers and eliminate draft pick compensation for them. The players that are really unbalancing are the guys like Longoria or Kinsler who put up 1st round stats for a 25th or 10th round pick. Of course, that totally screws Spencer who just traded away his best players for good value players.
But I don't really like how this season has gone down. Whoever does the best job looting the "dumping" teams is likely to win. Either we need to create more incentive not to dump the season or limit the long term advantages of keeping a player.
I totally agree. I don't feel like I have necessarily done a great job managing/drafting this year- my team is mostly fueled by punting the season in epic fashion last year. That said, I do believe I did a remarkable job with it. The two deals at the deadline basically are the reason I'm not punting again this year.
I am totally open to changing keeper rules , but to do that I think we will have to seriously consider "re-booting" the league. This would have the added advantage of leveling the playing field for expansion teams. I think a keeper league is interesting, and would prefer to have our league remain as a keeper league in some form, but I really want this league to last. The only way to do that is make sure everyone has fun- and if that means moving away from a keeper league, so be it. I'd rather have a great non-keeper league than a mediocre keeper league.
Hmm. For starters, I disagree with Taylor's four options. I won last season without the benefit of a dump trade - instead, I made a couple keeper-for-keeper trades or go for it now-for-go for it now trades with Spencer and Luke. It's also possible to draft well, trade well, and then lose all your players to injuries or the NL and end up losing, like Bill last season. Really, anything can happen...and if you DO benefit from a dump trade, that's not really anything to be ashamed of. Trading, after all, is an avenue open to everyone.
Yes, good keepers are a "head start," but at some point you drafted them or traded for them, and someone else didn't. You earned that head start. That's why this is a competition. Fantasy baseball, by its nature, is going to be frustrating, every single year, to the vast majority of its players. It's sisyphean to keep changing the league everytime we realize we can't win this year.
As I come down to the point where I'm pretty much deciding to play for next year, I find myself really looking forward to trying to put together a good crop of keepers. Right now, my keepers blow. So, I'll probably try to make some trades...I won't send 7 veterans off for one keeper, totally throwing off the balance of the league. That would be foolish for me, but I also don't think it's good for the league. Would changing the rules for allowing trades help things? They could require a league vote, although those tend to be really slow and annoying.
Eliminating keepers kind of eliminates the point of having a keeper league, and undoes all of the time and effort that I know quite a few of us have put into our teams. Adding more keepers seems counter-productive. It seems that reducing the number of keepers might be the best solution - you still have some continuity from year to year, but people's head starts are smaller. While I'm opposed to making major changes to the structure of the league after 2 1/2 seasons, that's something I'd probably suppport.
As for the other complaints you mentioned, Spencer, put me in the camp that feels there's not enough talent on the waiver wire. And I don't see how not being able to incorporate prospects makes it less fun to follow them. You're not gonna be able to play them any way, and let me tell you, there's nothing "fun" about having Clay Buchholz take up a roster spot all season.
I don't think Spencer won in the first season via dump trades either, though I can't remember for sure. I know I sent him A-Rod, which made a big difference, but that wasn't a dump trade.
I don't want to sound unsympathetic, though, especially to Taylor and Kate - in retrospect, we didn't handicap ourselves quite enough to bring in new teams. We probably should have all cut back by one more keeper, making us a little bit weaker and increasing your keeper pool a bit. Looking at the guys you were stuck keeping compared to the guys everyone else has, yeah, there's a problem there.
I don’t want to come off as if I’m not having fun- I absolutely am. And if we kept things as is, I would still play and wait it out until I am a contender (which may be never- lets be real), but obviously if there is an option for me NOT to be at a disadvantage I am going to take it. But If I had spent 2.5 years putting a team together, I wouldn’t be thrilled with new people screaming ‘not fair’. Caleb has a point when saying that good keepers ultimately come from drafting and trading well, it’s just that THIS year it seemed like the two favorites at the beginning of the season are now leading in the middle of the season…which …is kind of boring. But it is only the middle of the season. A lot can happen.
Most generally, I like the keeper aspect of the league. It is definitely different than an redraft league and certainly one difference is that everyone doesn't start out on equal footing at the start of the draft. Because of this, acquiring good keepers in the draft, through trades, or free agency is a crucial aspect - and major point of strategy - of this league. With that said, I think the draft and in season management should be as important - if not more important - than the keepers. Can anyone (bill, bill...) think about how to do some analysis that could quantify the overall impact of keepers vs draft vs free agent pickups team by team?
The problem with a redraft league is that at this point in the bottom teams have no incentive to do anything. In the 11 team redraft mixed league I do, I am in 8th place and 20 points out of first and it will be impossible for me to even place third. The prospect of finishing 5th instead of 8th isn't all that enticing. I still manage the team, but every day is a little less fun than the day before. In a keeper league I'd be trying to figure out what teams could benefit from my players and how I could potentially increase the value of my current keepers for next year. That would be far more interesting to me than the current situation where I am a dead team walking.
I would definitely be open to changing some of the keeper rules, but I don't think a keeper league is inferior to a redraft league simply b/c of dump trades or b/c it creates an uneven playing field at the start of the season.
I don't have a problem at all with the notion that some teams start off a year with an advantage - as has been said, that's the point of the keeper league and it's what maintains interest throughout the year, even on bottom placing teams. So I don't agree with Taylor on that point.
I do wonder whether increasing the number of keepers to 8 or 9 would go a long way towards changing the character of the dump trades. I know I wouldn't have unloaded my entire team they way I did if there had been more than 5 keeepers. Of course, the more keepers, the more the best teams have an advantage over the worst teams. Being a bottom team in a 8 or 9 keeper league would probably require a few years of rebuilding. But that's just like real baseball and I would have no problem with that. I do think that under the current rules, the dump trades are just a bit silly - if we see Kate, Mark, and Caleb all dump over the next month or so, are they all going to be dumping to Bill and Andrew? Their rosters will look pretty absurd by the end of the year, and nothing like the teams they drafted.
At first I agreed with Taylor's sentiments regarding keepers, but after digging into things, I don't feel that the keepers determined who would win the league.
So I ran some numbers pretty quickly, mostly using Yahoo's current rankings, so take the info with a grain of salt. Pitchers are terribly undervalued; for example, Jon Lester is currently ranked 287th, behind Jose Lopez (187) and Aubrey Huff (195). These rankings are also for a mixed league, so I coarsely adjusted them for our AL only league by simply dividing by 2.
I'm also looking at the keepers coming into the draft. Basically, that is the "head start" you had coming into the year and what you did with it is your business.
Andrew has the best overall keepers by average Yahoo rank. I have the most "value", which I calculated by converting the rank into a draft round and subtracting the keeper cost from that. Because of his strategy of going after undrafted players, Taylor actually has the 3rd highest "value" rating. If you exclude Kevin Slowey, who has been worth -27 rounds of value (which isn't really possible in a 25 round draft, but this is quick and dirty) Taylor easily has the highest "value" of keepers.
In that vein, everyone but Andrew and me "missed" on at least one keeper, some teams missed on several especially if you factor in to draft position.
Overall I think that keepers do influence the standings, but aren't the determining factor. My keepers haven't carried my team - only Kinsler is in the top 50 (14 overall) from my keepers. My offense is great because of Dye, Abreu, and Jason Bay, as well as getting an awful lot of production out of Paul Konerko (69 overall).
Andrew has 4 players in the overall top 52, but his offense isn't that impressive (23.5 out of 40 points). His pitching has carried this team with an astounding 35 out of a potential 40 points. He's never traded keepers for pitching, so I don't know how you can credit his success to keepers.
I do think there needs to be some kind of limit to dump trading though and some kind of incentive to play for a higher place.
One incentive that does exist in other leagues of course, is money. We've never bothered to gamble on our league, but if it was a $50 (just to throw out a number) entrance fee where 4th and 3rd place made a bit of cash, that would change the dynamic (although I'm not sure it would be in a good way).
I really don't want people to have to have "rebuilding" years, which I think would happen if we increased the number of keepers. No matter how bad your keepers are, you should still have a shot at winning given a good draft and a little luck. If the league were bigger, that wouldn't be as much of a problem, but if 2 teams are rebuilding every year it would kind of suck I think.
A few things that we may want to consider:
1. Make keepers only eligible to be kept for 2 years instead of 3.
2. Increase the inflation on keeper's draft values
3. Decrease the round value of keepers acquired via free agency
4. Impose a rule that players can only be kept as keepers if they are acquired prior to July 31st (unless they are acquired via free agency) This may cut down on late season dump trading and still allow teams to make trades later in the season.
Hmm, that last one is an interesting idea. What about taking it even further, and disallowing keeping players that you traded for? That solves the dump trades problem, and I'm not sure if it will really hurt the trading situation that much. Sure, nobody will trade potential keepers, but each team will have a good 10 players or so that they're still willing to trade, which seems enough to keep the market active.
For the record, I still vote to eliminate keepers entirely. If people don't want to go to that extreme, I'll support pretty much any watering-down of the keeper system, along the lines of Mark's suggestions.
If you eliminate the ability to keep any traded player then aren't you going to hurt teams trying to "rebuild"?
That doesn't make much sense to me either. If my team sucks and I want to try to get new keepers the only way I could get a better team is through the draft next year? That would basically mean I'd have to forfeit this season as well as next season... and then HOPE a few of my draft picks turn out to be good keepers.
Shouldn't we add one option to Mark's list - decrease, but not eliminate, the number of keepers? 3 keepers would still keep it interesting and would decrease team's head starts.
I do think this season is a bit flukey, and I'm not yet convinced that we need to do anything at all. We had quite a bit of competition at this point in the season the last two years. I don't want us to make rash decisions based on frustration.
Wait, do you want everyone to have a roughly equal chance at the start of the year or not? You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Assuming that we want everyone to have a chance to win the league each year, the central issue is how a bad team can quickly rebound into a good team. Keeper leagues naturally discourage this, since bad players tend to stay bad.
Right now the dump trade is the primary mechanism that a bad team can use for such a rebound, but it's not a very good mechanism because it screws with the rest of the league. The question is, what mechanism wouldn't?
No keepers is the best solution, but seems off the table. Fewer keepers helps, since fewer keepers means more emphasis on the draft where everyone has equal footing. But what other options are there?
How about this: When you keep a player, you lose a draft pick commensurate with his value, instead of where he was drafted in a previous year. That way we can still have keepers and team continuity, but we get much better parity at the beginning of the year.
Another options is to allow bad teams to have more keepers than good teams. Maybe if you win you get no keepers, if you get 2nd you get one, etc.
Or instead of more keepers, maybe bad teams get to take the keepers in later rounds in the draft.
Or we could install the Florida Marlins Rule: Whichever team wins the league is dismantled and its players made available for other teams to keep (by some to-be-determined mechanism). That would help give bad teams a better chance the next year, and I think it would actually lend a nice sort of "going out in a blaze of glory" sense of closure to a league victory.
Are you intentionally being obtuse? Obviously in a keeper league teams will have different chances of winning a title coming into the season. That is something completely different from every team having a chance to win a title.
As for the suggestions, 1. Without keepers, a keeper league doesn't really work.
Having a players cost to keep being tied to their preseason value also defeats the purpose of a keeper league - identifying and hanging on to quality young players. However, we could have a more aggressive inflation rate - for example a player could be kept for the average of their preseason value (or their value from the previous season) and the round they were drafted in. This would prevent breakout stars from being locked up at middle reliever prices for 3 years.
One thought I had would be that teams that finish out of the money (maybe top 3? top 4?) can select an unkept player from the teams in the money, much like we did our expansion draft. This would redistribute talent if one team ended up loaded. Also, we could tie the draft order in to finish, so the first team out of the money would get the first chance to pick in the "expansion" draft.
I really don't like the Florida Marlins rule - it would be a guaranteed death sentence for the following year. "Congrats! You're the best! Now you're totally fucked for next year!" seems like a really shitty way of doing things. I thought we were trying to keep teams involved for as long as possible, not make sure everyone gets a "turn" to win the league.
I like Spencer's idea of involving an entrance fee, but lots of slots "in the money". Given a $50 fee, you could give $50 for 4th, $75 for 3rd, $100 for 2nd, and the rest to first ($175 if there is a way to do it without any fees). With my "expansion draft" proposal that would give incentive for everyone to try and move up the standings.
I like the idea of allowing people to select excess keepers from other teams. Combined with slightly fewer keepers, that would do a nice job of re-balancing the teams without affecting the current season.
The Florida Marlins rule was mostly a joke, but obviously you could adjust it so that it doesn't doom the player for next year. For example, they get to keep 1 or 2 keepers, or perhaps they're also beneficiaries of the re-distribution in some way or another.
I would propose we eliminate 1 keeper - from 5 to 4 - and figure out a system that would allow unkept players to be picked up as keepers. I also like Bill's idea of changing the value of the players kept to be the average of their preseason value and their draft position.The biggest problem I have with the keeper system is that top 3 round talent is being kept at at 25th round price.. We'd have to figure out a ranking system that would best represent our 8 team AL only league - not sure the Yahoo Rankings does that.
I'm not sure I like the straight average of the round the player was drafted in and the round of their draft value. What if we had a weighted average, such that when a player is first kept it would be closer to the draft round, and eventually moved closer to the preseason value. Maybe in terms of weighting, 60% round drafted/40%preseason for the first year, then 50/50, then 40/60? Or is that just way more complicated than it needs to be?
I think that makes things more complicated then they have to be. I'm not entirely comfortable using some undefined rankings to determine keeper status, but 10% isn't nearly enough inflation.
For someone like Longoria it would make him a 13th, then 6th, then 3rd round pick. Still an awfully good value.
When we came up with 10% inflation, I don't think we realized how good some of the players picked up off free agency would be. If we did 50% rounded up that might work so:
A 25th round pick would go to 13th then 7th then 4th
A 20th round pick would go to 10th then 5th then 3rd
A 15th round pick would go to 8th then 4th then 2nd
A 10th round pick would go to 5th then 3rd then 2nd
A 5th round pick would go to 3rd then 2nd then 1st
Nice. And with aggressive keeper inflation, we could do away with the limit on the number of years you can keep someone.
Probably wouldn't need keeper limits. Only a highly select number of the best will be worth a first round pick for multiple years.
Interesting stuff. This will definitely help level the playing field at the start of every year.
Will it do anything to decrease or discourage dump trades, or do more steps need to be taken?
50% seems a little aggressive to me as it totally kills any long term "value" a non-start player has. That said, it would turn over the keepers more quickly and then teams would be able to hang on to a player forever, if they desired to. I assume we'd still keep the no more than 2 1st round keepers rule?
Yes, it would kill the long term value of most players. That seems to be what makes the biggest difference in the value at the start of the season though. Maybe we can drop the rule on the number of first round keepers then.
It helps a bit with dump trades, since it narrows the discrepancy between a player's value this year and his value as a keeper for next year. So if one player is trading for this year's value, and another for next year's value, you shouldn't see as much of an imbalance. It will also make people more likely to keep better players, and therefore less likely to dump them.
I don't think it completely eliminates the problem, but it might be enough.
Mark, in your talk of 50%, do you mean averaging preseason ranking and round drafted, or just increasing the round cost by 50% each season? I think the latter is not a good idea, and while there are issues with the former, I think it's OK.
What about basing the keeper cost on the previous year's ADP? That way, if you make a great call on someone and are ahead of the curve, you get that bonus for the next season, but then it evens out quickly. Also, that way we deal with the issue of uncertain keeper costs, which would be a pain in the ass from a planning standpoint.
I've explained to Andrew why I think using the previous year's ADP won't work, but I guess I'll reiterate here.
1. It isn't readily available, especially for mono leagues.
2. It is even less available 1 year after the fact.
3. For the first year it it effectively averaging two measures of exactly the same thing - a player's value coming into the previous season.
Jesus, the discussion on this thread really DOES sound a lot like socialism.
So can anybody tell me one legitimate reason why so-called "dump" trades are a bad thing? Everyone's been talking about them like they're coming for our children, but no one has actually tried to explain what is so terrible about them. Taylor is telling people that they "can't have their cake and eat it too," while criticizing dump trades for making it possible for one team to jump up in the standings, and simultaneously complaining that it's too hard to go from being a bad team to being a good one. Ummmm????
My team absolutely sucked (which was my own fault), and I've been able to turn it around precisely because of a dump trade. I looked for a way I could make a big change and I found one. If you don't like it, you should've acted faster and made Spencer a better offer.
If you want teams to easily be able to transition from bad to good, you have to allow as much roster-changing fluidity as possible. Putting in more rules that restrict transactions will just make it harder for bad teams to improve.
I like the idea of having more keepers and actually think it would help to balance things out a bit more from year to year. As it stands, sort of mid-range potential keepers have no value. If we could keep a few more players, one could try to make up for not having Kinslers or Longorias by earning an advantage in the lesser keepers.
One complaint on this thread that I actually agree with is about the waiver wire. If there is anything this year making the league dull, it's the fact that only a handful of players on the waiver wire are actually even playing every day. I would really love to get rid of the extra MI spot (maybe get rid of CI and MI and just replace both with 1 IF spot?) and another spot or two as well (bench? P? OF? UTIL?).
I really don't like the idea of being able to keep other teams' unkept players. I can't fathom why a manager ought to be allowed to claim a player that he never drafted, traded for, or picked up. Like the majority of the new rules being discussed here, it defeats the purpose of a keeper league. The point is that you have to try and be far-sighted. If you do that and do it well, then you benefit. This new scheme is just completely arbitrary.
I generally agree with most of your comments, Luke, but I wanted to try to explain my problem with dump trades. To start with, I have no problem with players trading the players they don't want to keep for young keepers. When I refer to dump trades, I don't mean the typical rebuilding trades that take place as teams decide to give up on the season. I dislike when teams trade half their rosters to another team. The problem is, I can't really make an ethical argument against it...I just don't like it. The entire complexion of the league changes in a trade in which no one really worked hard to create a balanced exchange of players...I generally find it frustrating, but it's otherwise hard to make an argument against it. It doesn't seem like a viable rebuilding strategy, but if that's what players want to do that's fine. It only happens once or twice every season anyway. Whether a rule needs to be made about it or not...I'm not sure. I don't think it's really possible to legislate it.
Also, I really think the idea of increasing parity by allowing MORE keepers is counter-productive. I just can't see how it would work. You say you could balance out not having a Longoria by being able to keep more players, but the team with Longoria can also keep more players...so where's the advantage? Having fewer (3-4) keepers limits the head start that teams can get, increases the amount of talent in the draft, and makes the who-to-keep decision a harder one.
I think some kind of incentive for your finish is key to prevent wholesale combining of teams.
Although I suggested the "expansion" draft I'm not entirely comfortable with it and not convinced it is needed. I'm not convinced that this year, with two teams at the top, is the norm and that we do need to overhaul our keeper system. If there is overwhelming support for it I would be OK with it, but we're talking about keeping 5 players out of 20 starters. And as I wrote before, Andrew is winning on pitching, which was all drafted or picked up as a free agent, and a lot of my offensive strength is from my early round draft picks, where I didn't have any "busts".
I think Bill and Andrew are winning because they know a lot about baseball (certainly a hell of a lot more than me) and have put a lot of thought into accurately evaluating players. Basically, they're just good at fantasy baseball.
I might support making some minor adjustments here and there, but not any drastic systemic overhauls.
I appreciate the compliment, Luke, but I am winning on pitching, and my pitching is more or less dumb luck. Edwin Jackson and Verlander have far exceeded my wildest expectations, and I went ahead and traded Buehrle, so I'm not sure how much you can really credit me with.
I, on the other hand, will happily accept your praise. I definitely didn't luck into BJ Upton in the 18th round of first year's draft or Kinsler in the 11th. All skill baby. All skill.
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