Any unique contract rules for keeper leagues?

[JohnBlacksox]

10 team AL only keeper league, auction draft, 5x5, $260, 23 players

I'm looking for any unique/different/crazy ideas for giving out player contracts.

Last keeper league I was in, you had players for up to 3 years max. You could protect 15 out of 23 players per year.

I love the concept of locking up players for longer, similar to real MLB, where some guys are like "the face of the franchise".

Crazy rules I'm considering:
- Contracts $25 and over must be "guaranteed", you can't drop them.
- After 3 years, you can extend a player one year by adding $5 or $10 to his contract

What does everyone else use for contracts, and locking players up?

[bigmck]

We used to have ours the first three years the player got his Auction Salary and every year after that five dollars was added. We changed it due to if you got a player in his first year for $5 and he turned out to be a star, you could keep the guy for like 6 or 7 years before his contract got too high. That is just too long for one owner to have a player. == We now have it so the player gets his Auction Salary for the first two years. The third year it is a five dollar increase and every year after that is a ten dollar increase. This works alot better because it keeps good players in our spring auction. If all of the good players are kept, the auction becomes a non-event and makes it impossible to improve your team. Our league allows up to eleven keepers.

[BALCO All-Stars]

We have a similar style of contracts in our NL-only league:

1. 23 man roster, $260 salary cap. Keep up to 10 players each year.
2. Each player is "signed" for three years at their auction value or at $10 for an undrafted or called up player (each team has 3 minor league spots).
3. During the season, players auctioned for more then $14 must be kept on the roster for the entire season (but can be released in the off-season).
4. Going into the 3rd year, each team can extend the player for $5/year (i.e. add $5/year for a 4th year, $10/year for a 4th and 5th year, and $15/year for a 4th, 5th, and 6th year). For example, Tim Lincecum was a minor leaguer two years ago and called up during the season, so he was a $10 player. Going into last season, the team decided to extend a max contract on Timmy, so he cost the team $25 last year, $25 this year, and $25 for two more seasons.
5. Any player with an extended contract can not be dropped during the season AND can not be released in the off-season, so it can be a double edged sword if the player gets hurt or gets demoted (i.e. demoted from the closer role).

Another league I'm in is a 14 team roto league, and each team just gets to keep five players, no contracts.

Hope this helps.

[dmendro]

Our contracts work like this.

Auction draft is his salary. For free agent pickups, we use FAAB and the FAAB bid winner is the player's new salary. PLayers dropped have their salary reset to what ever is bid on them when they are picked back up, but not their contract status.

After their first season, the salary goes up by $5, after the second by $10, after the 3rd year being kept, it goes up by $15. $th keeper year, the salary goes up by $5.