Minor league keeper question

[dfa]

Hello:

I have a question about a minor league keeper. I am a LM in a 12 team ESPN league with 5 MLB keepers and 1 minor league keeper. When designing the league, there was some interest in the idea of a minor league keeper. So before the keeper deadline for the 2011 draft, I made sure every owner had a minor league keeper. Given ESPN's pretty massive player pool, I was planning on ditching the minor league keeper. Plus coming up with the logistics of what the rules should be regarding the minor league keeper seem difficult to me. To my surprise, during the year end survey, there was a pretty strong groundswell of support for the minor league keeper, but not a lot in terms of figuring out what this should look like. So, I thought I would ask other commissioners.

A few other thoughts:
- We have a rather intricate keeper system, in that there are 5 keepers, and they all have "contracts" in that coming into this season, 1 player had a 5 year contract, 1 player a 4 year contract, etc. In my case, Ryan Zimmerman was my 5 year keeper and Adrian Gonzalez was my 4 year keeper. So next year, I get to add a 5 year keeper, Zimmerman moves to the 4 year keeper and Gonzalez moves to the 3 year keeper. (Essentially this way the draft can be replenished with strong players, and each owner gets to keep their players for a set amount of time.)
- There is a range of minor league keepers. One manager has Bryce Harper, while I had Jeremy Hellickson. So I need to figure out rules that would apply to players with different levels of major league experience, which is really throwing a monkeywrench into the situation.
- My current idea is to allow the minor league keeper "special status" and can be kept for his first 3 major league season (ROY eligibility + 2 following seasons) at which point the owner can put him as a regular keeper. So this would mean that Bryce Harper's owner could control him for his first 8 seasons.

Thanks in advance!

[bigmck]

I know the things you are going through. From 2008 to 2010 our league had Minor League Keepers. It caused a lot of problems as to how they should be handled. One of the biggest problems was if an Owner had a Minor Leaguer on his roster and that player seems sure to make the Major League roster should we require him to be one of the Major League Keepers. == When good players are promoted from the Minors to the Majors, normally there is a flurry of bidding in the FAAB for that player. Since he was drafted earlier in the year, that flurry of bidding did not happen. We just finally decided to eliminate the Minor Leaguer Draft since it is more fun to bid on them as they are promoted rather than draft them before the season. So far there are no regrets with our decision.

[mkultra]

We have a slightly similar situation with salaries, in which my dynasty league has a rule in which minor league players do not increase in salary year-to-year like the guys in the majors do. It's based on MLB's definition of rookie status, which I think is a good guideline, as it avoids issues about where guys start or end the season.