The Hardball Times Fantasy

Keeper League Roundup

by Michael Lerra
February 19, 2009

In my last piece on designing the perfect keeper league, I introduced two rules for designing an ideal keeper league. After reading some comments, I've decided that there was one thing I missed. So without further ado, I present the updated Keeper League Rules. An ideal keeper league should:

1. Allow managers to get an advantage if they select players who outperform the consensus expectations
   
2. Ensure such an advantage is small enough that it isn't a deterrent to keeping other managers interested in competing in the future
   
3. Leave enough interesting, quality players in the draft/auction such that it's still an exciting and important event for each season

I also wanted to summarize the five keeper options I presented in my first article, along with all of the great reader ideas and suggestions in the comments. Going with the theme of the first two rules above, I thought it would be best to present these formats as a spectrum. The first league formats below are those which I'd deem conservative keeper rules. Leagues with these rules will allow for the most competitive leagues year after year, and the risks and rewards are both low. One good auction or draft won't set you up for years of dominance, but it also ensures you won't suffer years of wasted entry fees due to a few poor choices. Towards the end of the list are the formats I feel are most liberal. The reward for making good choices is very high, so managers are more likely to take some risks. Picking up a few prospects that pan out can give you a tremendous advantage for years to come; but at the same time, your opponents can just as easily put you on the receiving end of a Royals-esque decade with some wise choices of their own.

Of course, my ordering of these formats is simply my own subjective opinion; none of us have tried them all (if you have, please put the mouse down, back away from the monitor, and go spend some time with your family and friends). I hope it serves as a rough guide for those commissioners looking to start up a league; move down the list with your prospective managers, and find the point at which you're satisfied with the amount of risk and reward that a particular option provides. I also want to throw out a proactive apology to those whose formats I simplified here. There's nearly limitless combinations of the rules below, so I wanted to try to break them down as simply as possible so that they could be used as building blocks for those who want a more complex league.

Without further ado, the league settings:

• Keep X players as the first X round picks of next year


• As I mentioned in the previous piece, I'm not a fan of this idea. And in terms of this piece, it's listed as the most conservative, least-rewarding league because a team can only really reap benefits from it if their top X picks are all keepers. Even if you have guys you'd like to keep as 2nd through 8th round picks, they become 1st through 7th picks, and are much less valuable.


• Auction each player, with the previous year's owner getting the right to match the final offer (and keep the player) or let the winning bidder keep the player at that price.


• Really not too much benefit here to picking good players. Since we'd expect bidding among the other owners to approach a player's actual value, in some senses you're hoping the bidders bid too highly and you can stick them with an overpaid player (which is, in my estimation, the opposite of the point of a keeper league).


• Keep any number of players at last year's round or price if it would be your first year keeping them; all players who were previously kept once are put back into the draft.


• So if you got a steal last year, you'll keep it once more and then that's that. There's some benefit here to making good picks (in fact, in year two of ownership, this actually provides more of a reward than any other system), but the benefit disappears after that one year. I do like how this satisfies Keeper Rule #3 and really ensures drafts/auctions have a ton of top-tier players to keep it interesting.


• Long-term contract: after owning a player for a year, you can sign him to a long-term contract for $5 extra in each successive season (ex. $6, $11, $16 for a guaranteed 3-year deal). Salary is used even if player is dropped mid-contract.


• I like that this format helps players benefit from good picks, while also introducing one extra cost: the possibility of getting stuck with a lemon for a lot of salary. For that reason, I can't call it a terribly rewarding system, because certainly some long-term contract mistakes will be made, nullifying other rewards. But I like that it also sort of mimics arbitration costs and free-agent processes.


• Keep any player at $5 higher than the price paid in the previous year.


• Same as above, without the risk. Less risk means more often reaping the rewards of a great decision, so this gets slotted one space further towards the high-reward end of the spectrum.


• Keep any number of players, with each of {$1, $4, $7, $10, $13, ...} added on to one particular player.


• I really like this idea. There's obviously a bigger benefit here to keeping a couple guys than the previous $5 flat rate. But at the same time, no one can keep a dynasty together from the year before, because their fifth kept player is going to cost $13 more than the previous season. I also like the fact that this system allows a manager to keep their sentimental favorite player or favorite draft pick for many, many years, if they continue to make that one player their $1 increase.


• Keep any number of players using draft pick equal to the average of the round in which you drafted him last year and the average round he is taken in according to this year's worldwide average draft position. (ex. if you picked Lincecum in the 10th last year and he is being picked in the 4th round this year, he can be kept as your 7th round pick this season).


• Some regression here, to ensure outrageous deals don't last forever.


• Track players with a neutral price guide; cost to keep a player is the average of all price guide prices (one per year) during ownership.


• Likewise with the above system, there's a regression factor here. But whereas in the above example, only the most recent round or price is averaged against the current concensus, this price guide system averages all years under control. So drafting a player in the 15th round, or for $1, lowers the average for every year going forward. The potential for advantage is equal to the above system in the first year of keeping a player, but greater for every year thereafter.


• Keep any number of players, two rounds higher than previous year.


• Not much advantage for top players, but can bring a big advantage for a long time if the right minor leaguer is drafted in the late rounds or picked up as a free agent.


• Auction each player, with the previous year's owner getting the right to keep the player for 15% less than the final offer, or let the winning bidder keep the player at the highest bid.


• I'm tempted to say this is not a high-reward system, because at best a manager will only be getting a 15% discount off of the going rate of a player. For late round pickups that end up becoming stars, this just isn't a huge advantage to carry year-to-year. However, this system rewards players very strongly if they simply draft players who improve. In other words, a great team in this league will not be one with a ton of insightful late-round pickups; it will be one in which the owner wants to keep virtually all of his players (and will thus do so at a 15% discount). I can see a team in this setting having a pretty unprecedented run of dominance, with little or no checks and balances. The best way to stop it might be to essentially collude with other owners to raise his prices, knowing that you might get stuck with overpaying for a couple players, but in concert you'll be crippling his team when others do the same.


• Top finishers can keep 4 players, middle finishers can keep 5 players, lower finishers can keep 6 players, at the same price or round as last year.


• Where you put this format on the spectrum depends on how many keepers you think a team would have. Obviously the second keeper is not as valuable as the first, so likewise the fifth player kept is not as valuable as the fourth, third, second, or first. Diminishing returns make me think that teams who do well one season aren't likely to be hurt too badly by not being able to keep their fifth- and sixth-best bargains. Therefore, I'd expect good teams in this league to have quite a bit of momentum on their side from season to season.


• Keep any number of players, one round higher than previous year.


• Tons of opportunity for exploiting bargains here, and not just in the later rounds. Lincecum, perhaps a 10th round pick last year, may have established a new true talent level of a fourth-rounder. That gives whoever picked him last season a full five seasons of value for that one pick.


• Keep as many players as you like, up to $100 or $150 (approximately half of the total team budget) in salary, same price as last year.


• Most outrageous bargains are going to happen at the lower end of the price scale, so setting a limit of $100 or $150 could easily translate to managers being able to keep 18 players if they like. There may as well be no cap; this is the most liberal system I can think of. Better hope you make some good decisions early on in this league's life, because I'd imagine it would be very difficult to unseat the good teams in this type of league.

And that's it. Best of luck in selecting one (or more) of these if you're starting a league fresh. I'd say my favorite three are the {$1, $4, $7, ...} rule, the average draft rule, and the price guide rule, probably in that order. I think they have a great balance of allowing risk to turn into reward, plus they let players keep sentimental favorites for an extended time without too much of a penalty. We're all looking to win, but being able to keep hometown players or favorites just gives everyone a little more joy when they watch their team on TV or thumb through box scores each day.

Mike is located in Cambridge, MA, working in the search engine marketing field, and waiting for fantasy baseball to get as big as poker so he can "go pro". Feedback on all pieces is welcome and appreciated!

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