FAAB Rule Advice

[thespecialk]

Hey folks.

I have a quick question that I'm hoping to elicit some advice on.

I am a commissioner of a 9-team NL-only Roto auction league with 10 keepers per season (varies from 8-10 teams sometimes). We utilize a $260 draft day salary cap for 23-man roster and we are going to begin enforcing a $415 40-man roster cap as well. We have a FAAB of $100 to spend on free agents throughout the season.

Here's the thing: we allow 10 keepers (any combination of active or rookie), although beginning next season we're moving to a 13-keeper limit, but only 9 or 10 active players. Our issue is that we have been getting some extreme free agent bidding in July from AL acquisitions as well as the occasional MLB draft prospect (i.e. Stephen Strasburg went for $45 as a free agent after being drafted).

Though the 40-man roster cap will help keep these bids in check a little bit, teams that utilize 'dump' trades (trading players away mid-season in exchange for PTBNL to build for the following year) will have enough cap space that this will not really be an impediment to these teams as they will be shedding significant payroll.

My question is... does anyone have any ideas of a rule idea that we could institute to somewhat keep free agent bidding in July reasonable? It simply does not make sense to have guys like Chad Gaudin, who last season went for $24 after being traded despite coming over as a reliever, to have bids wasted when teams realistically won't be keeping 95 percent of these players or even activating them mid-season (as they would be a burden to the salary cap).

I'm trying to come up with some sort of rule to make to keep the bidding in check. I would hate to institute a hard-and-fast limit on any one bid so I'm trying to go another route.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

[RDD15]

Maybe I am not reading this post right, but I fail to see where your problem lies.

If guys have the budget to bid on these FA's, then why would you need to restrict them. I am a big time Capitalist, and I think that if guys have the budget, let them do what they will, don't restrict them.

[thespecialk]

Maybe I am not reading this post right, but I fail to see where your problem lies.

If guys have the budget to bid on these FA's, then why would you need to restrict them. I am a big time Capitalist, and I think that if guys have the budget, let them do what they will, don't restrict them.

Well, we're trying to keep the money distribution proportionate. Though you're correct - if they have x-amount and that's what they want to do with their funds, it's their choice, there's not really anything wrong with it. However, some of our league members don't like teams dropping $50 on a guy to turn around and have no intentions of keeping them or using them for a week or two and wasting their rookie status. Strasburg is a case in point as this owner will activate him in September (if he signs and is brought to the majors) just to spite everyone, thus burning his rookie status. If nothing else, finding a way of limiting these insane bids might keep owners from doing something along those lines.

Perhaps you're absolutely correct. Maybe we're overreacting a bit on it. But it's just kind of gotten out of hand so I'm trying to think of any methods that might keep it respectable.

[bigmck]

I don't think the problem is the FAAB. It is your rules that allow owners to burn the Rookie Status. If you change some of your rules that will limit rosters rather than letting each team have so many players, that might simply things.

[RDD15]

bigmck is right. Rookie status should be based on MLB service time, not on whether some schlub used a poor rule to ruin the player for everyone else. The rule being abused is not teh FAAB rule in this case.