Does your keeper league reward inactivity?

[Sticky Spice]

This is from a message I just sent to my league. We are debating whether to move from a fee/transaction league to a flat fee league. Does your league do anything to keep teams from keeping inactive players in their line-ups or do you have any general opinions about flat fee vs per transaction fees?:

"Unfortunately there is something I consider to be broken with the current system. We reward teams for fielding non-competitive rosters.

Right now we have no rules with regard to having active players on active line-ups. This makes some sense in the current system as we don't want to force rebuilders to spend $10.50 by DL'ing Carlos Santana when the best available free agent is Paul Bako. But there's a sinister side to this as well Rebuilders can purposely leave dead players on active line-ups to get lower in the standings for a better waiver priority... sometimes even leaving productive players on their taxi to either avoid the fees, to purposely sabotage their team, or both.

Sometimes this can really make the difference in some categories. I think Brent traded for Kendry Morales, Jordan Zimmermann, and Joe Nathan pretty early in the year(?).
What if he had left them in his active line-up the rest of the year? That's a lot of missed stats. We have nothing in place preventing him from doing this even though it's against what I consider the spirit of competition and the spirit of our league.

And we're not just talking about the 19th, 20th, and 21st teams here. We are a league of 21 that pays out seven slots. So at some point in the season we could have over half the teams in the league controlling their losses.

So how could a flat fee help us with this problem? If transactions are no cost, then it is no risk for the rebuilder to make moves. We could even have a rule that gives a team a week to do something with a player that's been DL'd or sent down with the penalty being moved to the bottom of the priority list (not sure how that would be enforced with daily transactions). One con to this is that they could still pick up worthless players, but hopefully they go for guys that could turn into trade bait or possible keepers for the following year."

[wrveres]

we addressed this in our auction league this year by handing out an "attendance bonus". If you tank the season to get a better pick, its going to cost you money at next years auction. on the other hand, if you compete all year and find your self in the top half, you are going to get a little extra cash.

finish/cash
1 14.00
2 12.00
3 10.00
4 8.00
5 6.00
6 4.00
7 2.00
8 0.00
9 0.00
10 -2.00
11 -4.00
12 -6.00
13 -8.00
14 -10.00
15 -12.00
16 -14.00

We tinkered with the idea of just charging a buck or what ever, for having an "illegal roster" (starting DL players to drive down your overall score) but it didn't pass vote.

[dmendro]

We have two incentives.

1. Pride. Our World Series winner has to buy our Toilet Bowl winner a t-shirt that's at least generally creative and original that proclaims them the Toilet Bowl Winner. We've had some good ones
2. Don't use WW in an auction league! Use FAAB!!!!! WW order should only decide the tie breakers if two people put the same ammount for the same player. How ever much that player's FFAB winning bid was, that becomes their salary.

Finally if you know people tank on purpose you should kick them out of the league.

[MashinSpuds]

My first few years running a keeper league had cost for wire pickups and trades. Very little activity went on given that people were afraid to spend a few quarters every month or so. Once that went away with a flat fee it was party time. Removing those fees reveals the competitors from the lugnuts.

Also, if people are tanking on purpose or they are just not checking in, you should consider booting them. Activity and correspondence make the league better as well as more legitimate in the eyes of the members.