Prospects/Farm team

[23]

I'm an experienced commissioner, but am curious to hear others' experience with drafting/protecting minor leaguers/prospects.

Currently we carry 40-man rosters (24-man active roster) and protect 15 each year. On draft day, the first nine rounds fill out active rosters and then the "Reserve" portion of the draft starts (16 rounds), at which point anyone not on Opening Day MLB rosters can be picked. So what typically happens is the first round of the "Reserve" portion turns into the top prospects round when guys like Longoria, Carlos Santana, Price, Wieters, Beckham, Jennings, Ackley, etc. have been drafted in the past (i.e. touted guys who began the season in the minors).

But ultimately unless you hit on an elite player (e.g. Longoria), you don't get much production from a prospect who plays most of the season in the minors while taking up a spot on your 40-man roster and you don't get rewarded because chances are he isn't one of your top 15 worth protecting at the end of year. Further, a player in the minors can't be released in order to sign a FA in our league.

So my question is how do you guys handle drafting of prospects/minor leaguers, carrying them on your team and potentially keeping them for multiple years? Do you have a separate draft? Do you have a "Farm" team separate from your Roto rosters? Do you protect them differently than big leaguers? I'd be curious to hear any input or explanation/opinions of your league's practices?

Thanks for reading.

[footcow]

I have had experience keeping minors guys in a separate list. Also, you can keep them with minors keeper spots that are not part of your regular keepers, so for your league you might consider keeping 15 major league keepers and a few minors keepers. You can put a rule in so that for players to be kept as a minor must have had less than a maximum number of at bats or innings pitched in the majors.

[23]

Thanks, footcow. So what kind of specifics did you use in terms of drafting/holding prospects?

[bigmck]

The MLB max number of stats for a player to be a Rookie is 130 AB or 50 IP. This is the number we use to determine if a player can be drafted as a Minor Leaguer.

[footcow]

We use the Rookie status that bigmck said, also we can keep players on prospect list without a salary for as long as we want (as long as they are still Rookie Eligible at the start of the season), but if we call them up, they cannot go back th the prospect list (even if still rookie eligible). We do a an auction for major league players and a separate draft afterward for prospect squad.

[23]

Gotcha. I've been Googling some public constitutions and it seems some are along those lines. We actually don't use salaries, so less complicated there. Though I'm not sure I like the idea of using the MLB rookie rule, particularly if a guy is likely to make his Opening Day MLB roster. How big are you farm rosters?

[footcow]

We have small lists with only 5 players, but there are definitely larger ones.

[23]

We have a seven-team, AL-only league so starting out with five-man farm rosters sounds about right - enough to account for most of the top relevant prospects without requiring too much in-depth knowledge.

What is the fee for recalling someone from the farm team in relation to your other transaction fees? And is there any movement within the farm rosters during the season or no? For example, if one of the farm players is recalled or traded, can you replace the spot?