Experienced Fantasy baseball players...?

Question

Do any of you have any experience running a "keeper league"?
I run a league for money every year and this year i have 14 players.
I want to make this year a keeper league in order to reduce draft time and other things. Any advice from anyone...in a keeper league do you keep all of your players or a certain amount of them and throw the rest into a free agency pool for next year.

Advice or comments please, serious people please

Answer 1

My friends and I have had a Yahoo! league for about 7 years and last year we decided to do an offline draft, put money on the line and incorporate keepers. It was a big shift.

Basically everyone put in $5 (we started cheap...we're up to $10 this year) and I put it in a CD at the bank to earn interest. Final winnings are split up as such 1st Place - 70%, 2nd Place - 20%, 3rd Place - 10%.

After that we did the offline draft which was probably one of the best times ever. Getting a bunch of friends together for a draft is a great time and really makes for a great afternoon.

Then we played the season and at the end of the year I simply typed up everyone roster as of the last day of the season and saved it in on my computer.

Each person is allowed to keep one position player and one pitcher for the next season.

We are doing an offline draft again at the end of March (just before the season starts) and everyone's keepers will be inserted into the final two rounds of the draft. No one has to select who they are keeping until three days before the draft...just in case someone gets hurt in spring training it's not fair to stick them with an injury case.

Our league has 18 total players per team. As such:
C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, OF, OF, OF, UTILITY and SP, SP, SP, RP, RP, P, BENCH, BENCH, BENCH. This keeps from the league getting too deep and people having hords of guys on their bench that never get used and it makes for better management and strategy in the draft and during the season.

We play head-to-head format with 9 offensive categories and 9 pitching categories.

Things get more complicated if you have people join the league. Not so much if people leave the league, but when people join. If people leave you just take all of their players and stick them in free agency, problem solved.

We have two people joining so they are going to flip a coin to see who picks first between them and they will get to do a two round mini-draft where they each draft a pitcher and position player prior to the actual draft to serve as their keepers.

Then we'll draw for draft order and pick the remaining sixteen players to fill-out our rosters for the new season. We draft snake format, just like a Yahoo auto draft and I never activate the league until I have everyone's money, otherwise there are always people who won't pay. Also if you're the guy in charge of the money...make sure you're very good about paying everybody out right after the season...you don't want to prove that you can't be trusted.

Well I suppose that's my suggestion. It's a lot of fun if you're the commissioner, but it's also a little bit of work maintaining the rosters after the season and whatnot. It's also important to check with the league when you set up scoring and stuff to make sure everyone is cool with the options you've chosen.

Also if you're the commish...set up a draft time as soon as possible so everyone can attend or at least be online to submit their picks via instant messenger or something. I set up my draft back in October that way everyone knew and could be sure to have the day off.

Hope that advice helps and have fun. If you have anymore questions or anything just email me at [e-mail]...make sure I can tell what it is or I won't open it.

Answer 2

The hard part is keeping everyone year after year. Very few people want to come into a keeper league after it has been going, because they either get the team/players that someone else wanted to leave or what players are left in the pool. The key is to get a group of people that almost all of them will be playing year after year.

As far as drafting goes, it won't really reduce the draft time. The rules have you select a few of the players that you want to keep going into the next season (You don't keep your whole team, all the players that aren't keepers go into the pool for the following year's draft). The number of players to keep is up to the league, but you don't want to make it too many players because a bad initial draft will leave owners pretty helpless in the future seasons (and make them less likely to stay in your league year after year). The flip side is that you don't want to make the number so small that owners aren't rewarded for selecting young stars.

My suggestion would be that you set it somewhere between 3-6 keepers per team.

Answer 3

Another thing you need to consider is how long a keeper's contract can be for.

In my league, we are allowed to have up to 3 keepers per year. Also, we are only allowed to have a guy for up to 3 seasons.

We also have an auction draft instead of a snake draft. We take turns placing a guy up for auction, with highest bidder wins. We start with $100 to build are entire team with, so you have to budget.

The one other interesting thing that we do with keepers, since the players have a salary, a player's contract increases 10% every year. So if you pay $20 for Jeter, then to keep him the next season, you would have to pay him $22. And then $24 if you wanted to keep him a third year (round up to nearest $).

Only keeping a guy for 3 years allows other managers to have a chance to grab him up in his contract year, so kinda like a Free Agency.

Answer 4

keeper leagues have advantage of keeping owners interested
from yr to yr -- if u have 14 players would recommend keeping
5 / 6 players per year -- remaining players go back in the pool
-- draft for the next year in reverse order of standings -- this
gives weaker teams the chance to rebuild -- the secret of
success in keeper leagues is to keep all teams competitive
with an equal chance to win -- your league will die if the same
few dominate !!!!

Answer 5

Keeper league:

-Keep 3 players in the first season,work it up to 6-8 keepers the following couple of seasons
- Re-draft next season (less rounds every following season)