Ideas for a non-auction salary cap league

[bonecrusher17]

Does anybody have recommendations for a salary cap format for a non-auction league? Our league does a draft with keepers, but some of the guys want a salary cap. Does anybody have recommendations for a salary source for the players and a method for making it work? Has anybody ever done this? Did it work well?

[bigmck]

You can always find a magazine and use the salary in them and apply them to your players, but that is a lot of work and makes little sense. If you want to use salary, bid on the players. If you don't, just draft the players. Trying to do both just serves no purpose. Bidding on players is so much fun, you should do that if you want to have salaries.

[fast dogs]

many leagues are currently awaiting their source to reveal what salaries they'll use this year; it is a very common method used in fantasy leagues

[johnchezy]

My league is constantly evolving, but we're a a point now where it's becoming more and more fun.

First... we use CBS, which I highly recommend as the best site for fantasy baseball. It affords the best features and most customization around.

We have a $140 cap and you can choose to use all or none of that.
Basically, starting fresh with a brand new, full draft, everyone picks 25 players.
Each team can sign any player to any length contract that they want to. If a player is not signed to a contract, he is a 1 year free agent and goes into the draft pool the following season.
CBS has a player value list that is released every year (the 2011 list came out last week). The list is called "Auction Values" and it has a few different categories: Head to head, roto, AL or NL only, etc.
We are a head to head, mixed league, so we use that column to determine our amounts.
This year, the top of the list is Albert Pujols at $42.
So you can see how $140 can go quickly.
However, a couple owners have wised up and signed minor league prospects at $1 each and in a couple years, they're kicking everyone's tail with a low team salary.
We have a 3% increase for contracts. i.e., if you signed Pujols to 5 years his contract looks like this: Year 1-$42, Year 2-$44, Year 3-$46, Year 4-$48, Year 5-$50.
This helps keep things in check a little.
We also have a luxury tax for anyone that exceeds the cap. The tax is in the form of draft picks--but that's another story.