AL Only Keeper question

[mhemm]

Hi guys,

I am the commish in the inaugural season of an AL only Keeper league. I was wondering how others would handle a situation where one team's potential keeper leaves for free agency or is traded at the trade deadline to the NL. Should there be a compensitory pick in the upcoming draft (if its a top tier player, that hardly seems like a fair trade)? Should that team get first dibs on the players that are returned in the trade (what if its a big named player for some prospects that may not see any major league action for years to come)? What made me think of this is that one of the worst teams in my league has Mark Texiera, and with all the trade talks that are floating around to the Braves, that makes me nervous. I don't want to make a bad team worse, so to speak. As always, any advice would be appreciated.

[Trojan Pony]

Well, at this point, like you said, they're just "potential" keepers. If one of your keeper prospects gets traded during the season then that just stinks but that's part of playing a one-league format I think. The likelihood that a player will be traded to the NL should be a factor in considering his trade value. If the managers have to declare their keepers at the end of the season (I'm not sure how your league is set up in that regard) and then one of their keepers gets traded to the NL in the off-season then they should be allowed to replace that player with another player from their end-of-season roster. But I don't see how you could fairly compensate for managers losing "potential" keeper players...I don't see how that would be anything but arbitrary and subjective...how do you define a "potential" keeper, ya know? I say that league switches (whether with keepers or not) should be considered part of the game and the managers should plan accordingly.

Hope that's what you were looking for...

[mhemm]

Yeah, I was kind of coming to that conclusion myself. It is part of the game, and someone should take the fact that their players are disgruntled into account when selecting them. I guess I just didn't want my league to become a battle of 2-3 good teams and the rest. Thanks for the advice Trojan.

[nyrblue2]

While it is tough to completely solidify "potential keepers", I think some players might be a given. I've never done a keeper league, or an AL-NL-only league for that matter, but here are my thoughts.

To me, I'm not so sure fantasy managers should have to keep track of "the likelihood of a player to get traded to the other league." Yes, maybe they can get a sense of which players will be FA soon, who is unhappy in their current team, etc. But the likelihood that they get traded to the other league is almost the same that they get traded to the same league (Ok, maybe the chance is slightly less of staying in the same league because GM's won't want to trade top players to their competitors, but I don't think it's THAT much of a difference).

I think an interesting way to handle this would be to look into how MLB handles "sandwich picks" when dealing with teams losing FAs. Basically, as you suggested, it would involve assigning compensatory picks to teams who lose players to the other league. I don't know if the public has access to this, but maybe you can find out how MLB rates FAs (Don't they fall into different classes? Like a class "A" FA would warrant a sandwich pick after the 1st round, a class "B" FA would warrant a pick after the 5th round, etc.). If you can't find that info, maybe you could give it to one of the managers in your league as a little side project. Have them do some research about player values and assign them all a "class" in case they change league. Then, as a league, decide where to stick your compensatory picks in the next years' draft. I think this would eliminate managers claiming thet were going to keep someone, just to gain a draft pick. If all the compensatory picks were at the same time, you would see a lot of that. With the classes, they will only be able to draft someone of equivalent value, you know?

Sorry this is kinda long-winded, and it may even be too complex of a solution. Just an idea though, because I think mimic-ing how MLB does it is generally a good way to go.

[mak1277]

I'm in an NL-only keeper league and we're debating the same thing. Here is the current proposal:

If the player "lost" was drafted in rounds 1-4, they get a compensatory pick at the end of round 4.
" " " " " " " " 5-10, comp. pick at end of round 10.

If drafted in rounds 10 and up, no compensatory pick.

It's probably not perfect, but I think it works better than getting nothing.