draft help plus more...

[kfix19]

Here is a rundown of my league.

We are a 12 team Head-to-Head Keeper league. We currently allow each owner to "Keep" 3 players and then "Protect" a player each time someone is drafted off of your roster from the previous year.

The first few years we had problems with teams tanking it at the end of the year to get the higher draft pick. We tried to correct that by having the draft order go from best non-playoff team to worst and then the playoff teams after the finish of the playoffs.
5th to 12th and then 4th to 1st and then the 2nd round went worst to first and snaked from there.

This in turned back fired in my mind. The bad teams eventually ended up with the poorer draft position and lost out on drafting players to help improve their team.

What does your league do to determine the draft order? What are your Keeper rules?

[Matthias]

Auction.

Keeper price = Purchase Price + $3 the first year; + $5 more the second year; and $10 every year after.

No problems. Perfect.

[Bobbleheadrusty]

Auction.

Keeper price = Purchase Price + $3 the first year; + $5 more the second year; and $10 every year after.

No problems. Perfect.

Wow you are helpful. He was asking about drafts, not auctions.

Unfortunately there are two ways, and you have tried both. I'm a big believer in a loser playoff for last pick. After the playoffs are set everyone left plays for the #1 pick. While it does punish (slightly) the truly bad teams it also keeps everyone interested until the last weeks of the season and avoids tanking. At the same time, in a keeper, the top pick isnt THAT valuable compared to the other 1st rounders, so a team that wants to trade away veterans at the end can still do so without hurting themselves.

[kfix19]

Thanks. The real problem wasn't necessarily with the player the poor team gets to draft - it was compounded by the better teams being able to "protect" more players throughout the draft. After the first 5 rounds the better teams would have 13 players while the poor team might only have 9 or 10. This is the reason I believe the poor teams should get the better draft slots.

[Matthias]

Auction.

Keeper price = Purchase Price + $3 the first year; + $5 more the second year; and $10 every year after.

No problems. Perfect.

Wow you are helpful. He was asking about drafts, not auctions.

Unfortunately there are two ways, and you have tried both. I'm a big believer in a loser playoff for last pick. After the playoffs are set everyone left plays for the #1 pick. While it does punish (slightly) the truly bad teams it also keeps everyone interested until the last weeks of the season and avoids tanking. At the same time, in a keeper, the top pick isnt THAT valuable compared to the other 1st rounders, so a team that wants to trade away veterans at the end can still do so without hurting themselves.

I was saying that this is another reason to switch to auctions and he did ask what other people did for their keeper rules.

But if he wants to stick to something like your current system, think about how it all plays out and what you're really trying to accomplish.

Say you have 1 super-dominant team.... call them Team 1 and everyone else Teams 2 - 12.

Everyone has 3 keepers.

Team 12 drafts 1 player off of Team 1 (his 4th best player).
Team 1 protects his 5th best player.

Team 11 drafts 1 player off of Team 1 (his 6th best player).
Team 1 protects his 7th best player.

Continue on through....
At the end of the way through, everyone has their 3 best players and 1 player off of Team 12.
Except Team 12 has their top 3 players, their 5th best, 7th best, 9th best, 11th best, etc., until it doesn't make sense for him to protect any more. And then he gets to pick someone else's 4th best. They protect their 5th best and you continue on from there.

What ends up happening if I'm thinking this through right is that the team who is supposed to be weakened is made stronger because they get to pick off of higher picks of what everyone else is picking.

There's a couple of ways to address this. First, you could make a rule that every time you draft a player from someone, you also could protect one of your own (in addition to them protecting theirs). This would fix this imbalance. You would probably want to move to only 1 keeper in this instance since otherwise it would be too dynasty-like. Second, you could just get rid of the, "protect your player" rule and do: you do keepers and then draft from there. Third, you could have a round before you start how you do it now where the bottom 8 teams get to pick without other teams being able to protect. That would probably do it, too. Or you could just move to an auction and fix this mess.

Whatever I would do is come up with a proposal, run a mock draft using your current rosters, and see if it gives you the results you want; make sure that you don't mess up with unintended consequences.

[kfix19]

You bring up some good ideas. I like the thought of having a round "Supplemental Round" where the non playoff teams get to draft a player without the playoff teams being able to protect.

I also thought about changing the nubmer of players each team gets to "Keep."

Example
4 playoff teams protect 3 players
Middle 4 teams can protect 4 players
bottom 4 teams can protect 5 players

Would this make sense to do?

I am in favor of a KeeperContract where you would only be able to Keep a player for a certain length of time. What is your experience with this? and any ideas?

[Matthias]

I am in favor of a KeeperContract where you would only be able to Keep a player for a certain length of time. What is your experience with this? and any ideas?

I would stay away from contracts. Before you know it, you have a 25-page rule book (I've seen these) and the league is more about accounting than it is baseball.

I'm not such a fan of the 5 keepers, 4 keepers, 3 keepers for some reason... it just seems a little artificial. But for some reason, the supplemental draft doesn't give me the same level of discomfort.

The most important thing is that everyone thinks that whatever system you is fair to all... otherwise you could end up blowing up a perfectly good league in an attempt to improve it.