Trade value of expiring contracts in keeper leagues

[Snax]

Just wanted to see what you all think about making fantasy trades for players whose contracts are expiring, and cannot/would not be renewed. In real life, it seems like many deals are 2 for 1 (recent Huff deal)or even 3 for 1 (AJ Pierzinski, gulp!), but are there rules-of-thumb in fantasy?

Another wrinkle: what about in leagues with limited minor league rosters and/or eligilbility restrictions (either positional, or you can only trade active major leaguers, and players currently DL'd or in minors can't be started)?

[noseeum]

If you're not contending, they're worth zilch to you, so it leaves you with little bargaining room, decreasing the value you should get.

I don't like contracts because of this.

[bellings]

If you're not contending, they're worth zilch to you, so it leaves you with little bargaining room, decreasing the value you should get.

I don't like contracts because of this.

Fantasy should reflect reality, which is why some league use contracts. I like the idea of contracts, but like noseeum said, if you aren't competing they are worth zilch. This is where fantasy departs from reality, becaue a real team club needs to sell tickets and field a competitive team. You will probably need some sort of rule to prevent total unloading of final-year contracts.

[noseeum]

Fantasy should reflect reality, which is why some league use contracts. I like the idea of contracts, but like noseeum said, if you aren't competing they are worth zilch. This is where fantasy departs from reality, becaue a real team club needs to sell tickets and field a competitive team. You will probably need some sort of rule to prevent total unloading of final-year contracts.

In reality, though, you can always re-sign your players. I guess if you have setup with auction instead of draft and contracts, then I guess it's similar, but if you do drafts every year, contracts are horrendo.

I still prefer a way to always keep your players but with an escalating cost.

We do a 2 round draft surcharge per year you keep a player. If you end up keeping to the point where he should cost "more" than a first rounder, than you start charging round 1 plus a late round pick that again goes up two rounds a year. Eventually, EVERY player will be too expensive.

[Matthias]

We do a 2 round draft surcharge per year you keep a player. If you end up keeping to the point where he should cost "more" than a first rounder, than you start charging round 1 plus a late round pick that again goes up two rounds a year. Eventually, EVERY player will be too expensive.

that's not a bad system.

[kugino]

our league has "contract years," which are contracts that can be attached to any given player. how many you have depends on the finish of your team, so top teams have fewer years to sign players. our signing of eligible free agents occurs before the draft, and unsigned players are then thrown into the draft pool. we have rather complicated rules concerning who is an eligible free agent, how they are signed, etc., but the rules were in place to try and make the weaker managers more competitive by giving them more years to sign good players (and the tie-breaker in case a player were bid on for the same number of contract years).

the interesting thing about this system is that it tries to mimic "real" baseball so that if a player is traded his contract is also traded. however, as a team is only allowed a certain no. of CYs a season, you cannot go over that amount with the players you have, sort of like a salary cap. managers can try to sign a lot of players to small one year contracts (and risk losing them the following season) or sign a few players to large contracts (with the risk of being accountable for all those years if that player either gets injured or turns out to be a bomb).

sorry for the long-winded post, but to answer the OP, the value of the player is equal to what you can get out of him for the remainder of the season or what you can get for him in trade. if he's productive he still has a lot of value in a trade to a team that's trying to win the league. i would trade for a player to help me win the league even if i had to give up a little more than i wanted...so his value is not zilch, IMO.