Starting a first year keeper league - tips

[dfa]

Hello,

I am starting a first year keeper league with a salary cap but I've run into a few problems. Part of the challenge is that there is a mix of friends, some who are sabr friendly, others who likely don't know what OPS is. So I was hoping for some input to solve a few issues:

- How do I first establish values? I've thought about using a cap of $260 and using auction values, but I'm not sure how that would work in the initial year. Is the best thing to use as initial player values strictly based on some $ value based on round? So would the first rounders constantly be valued at x dollars? Or should there not be a cap for the first year (because on some level how could there be without using an auction style)?

- I've done a bunch of research on trying to best use a salary cap structure for future years from the hardball times dated last year. So while I thought I would pass that along, I also would try to walk out a few steps...Pujols and Hanley will presumably be taken 1 and 2, but how can it be done so that whichever team gets them will have some chance to keep them going forward?

- How to establish a salary cap? I was thinking the $260, but I don't know if that really makes any sense if an auction isn't being used.

- Any tips on starting a minor league draft? I am thinking it would be nice to carry 1 or 2 minor league players, but am really not sure how to value these players either. For how long and for how much? Should this be a separate draft? There is a part of me that likes the notion that if somebody wants to draft Strasburg, they are going to have to use that pick earlier, but then I have to figure how to account for these players too.

- Also, and this is more an espn type question, but is there anyway to limit the player pool to exclude players who haven't appeared in the major leagues?

Thanks in advance. Over the last few weeks, using the search feature on this website has been invaluable.

The url for the hardball times article referenced above:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/keeper-league-roundup/

[Matthias]

I would just do it off of round and a $260 salary cap. It's not the most precise but it will be the easiest.

So if you have 12 teams, do something like:

Picks 1-6 are priced at $45;
Picks 7-12 are priced at $40;
Round 2 picks are $35;
Round 3 picks are $30;
Round 4 picks are $25;
Round 5 picks are $20;
Round 6 picks are $12;
Round 7 picks are $8;
Round 8 picks are $5;
Round 9 picks are $3;
Round 10 picks are $3;
Round 11 picks are $3;
Round 12 picks are $2;
and all the rest of the picks are $2;

or something like that. You can balance the numbers so that it all adds up to $260. And then these would be the salary values for every player picked in future drafts.

If someone wants to keep a player, they go up $5 over last year's price. And then in this year's draft, an owner would have the option of skipping their pick in any round in order to save salary cap.

All this is convoluted. I would just do it as an auction to keep it simple. But if you wanted to avoid an auction and have a salary cap, this is one way to do it.

[bigmck]

If you are not going to have an actual auction with everyone bidding, why even bother with Salaries? Just do a snake draft and let that be the end of it. I would encourage you to do an Auction. I am in both kind of leagues and the Auction is so much more fun. If you are worried about it being complicated, don't be. The Auction lets the Owners put a value on the players themselves and eliminates what you are trying to do with some artificial value. Look at the rules for my Auction League and see what you think.
http://sportsgods.org/auction.htm

[dfa]

This is great, thanks for the info!